**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-Allen Ginsberg: An Elegy

DVD Review

Allen Ginsberg: An Elegy, Allen Ginsberg and assorted “beat” and non-“beat” modern poets and admirers, 2004

If a rough dictionary definition of an elegy is a poem of lament and praises for the dead then this little documentary tribute to the seemingly very inelegant Allen Ginsberg is the correct term here in celebration of his life that ended in 1997. I have discussed in other entries the central role that Ginsberg played in both the “beat” literary movement of the 1950s and the godfather of the “hippie” counterculture movement of the 1960s. I have also mentioned the influence that he had (and they over him as more material from this period, especially his “Journals” have come to publication) over his fellow literary figures from the earlier period, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady and too many others to list here properly.

I have also spoken about the influence and affect such classic Ginsberg poems as “Howl” and “Kaddish” had on me when I first read and then heard them. No, not at the time they were written and read, especially that famous (or infamous) reading of “Howl” in that ‘garage’ in San Francisco in 1956. What could a ten year old boy from the housing projects make of Whitmanesque plea to rethink the contours of modern American industrial society, especially of a pious Catholic boy in regard to a Jewish writer who swore and talked about homosexuality in a positive sense, to boot? Moreover, he did not “speak” to me even during the height of the “hippie” movement but rather a little latter when I actually heard his work read both by himself and others. The essential blues rhythm beat that I believe influenced and drove his work finally meshed with the blues beat in my own head.

And that last point from the last sentence is exactly the point the producers of this effect have tried to reach for by bringing many of the poets from Ginsberg’s time, most importantly Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder, and some of those who were influenced by him to read from his work and share their recollections. Additionally, as seems to be just right for a poet who whatever his vast literary abilities was very aware of the need to play the troubadour to get his work before the public there are plenty of segments of his reading himself, especially the lyrical “death” poem which ends the presentation. Kudos to all kinds of people here from the readers to those like Anne Charters who have spent their whole academic careers trying to get the word out about the “beats” to the modern American literary tradition. Yes, beat and blues that is the essential Ginsberg language. It might e underappreciated now, but we need it more than ever as we face the “monster’ of today’s version of the American post-industrial society.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers"

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of performances of Langston Hughes’ poetry as described in the headline.

February Is Black History Month


Markin comment:

You know, and if you have been reading some of the writings in this space you should know, that clearly I am not the only one in the universe who has gone out searching for that be-bop, blue-pink great American night, or the high white note either. Thanks, Brother Hughes.

Poet's Corner- Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

Markin comment:

I am not a big fan of Robert Frost's poetry (although his public readings were very interesting) but this one every once in a while "speaks" to me when there are two (or more) choices to make in life.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

*Frankie’s North Adamsville Fourth of July-For Arlene, North Adamsville Class Of 1965

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Fourth of July (Independence Day) celebrations.

Frankie, Frankie Riley, couldn’t quite remember exactly when he heard his first Fourth of July fire-cracker, or seen and heard his first fireworks for that matter. He got it all mixed and confused together with his recollections of two-bit carnival times, which also included, at least sometimes, setting off fire-crackers or fireworks displays. But it must have been early, very early, in his life at a time when he, and his mother and father and two brothers, two brothers just then, would visit his grandparents’ house on the Fourth. And the beauty of where those grandparents lived was that it was a bee-line directly across the street from Welcome Young Field on Sagamore Street. Sagamore Street of now blessed memory.

One thing Frankie was sure of though as he thought about Sagamore Street days was that he was going to need help in relating the details of what happened because, frankly, he was confused and mixed up about more than just when he first saw and heard fire-crackers and fireworks displays. But for just this moment he was going to fly on his own. And while depending on his own memories, such as they were, he also knew, knew, flat-out what he wasn’t going to be talking about. Nix, to the tattoo of marching drums, some yankee doodle threesome all bed-sheet patched up from wounds suffered at the hands of the bloody British but still carrying, carrying proudly, the brand new American flag all aflutter, and tattooing that beat up drum and playing the fife to kingdom come. That was standard fare at these Fourth celebrations but that battered patriot thing was not his Fourth, although he had to admit it might have been somebody’s.

No also to an overblown description of some Hatch Shell Fourth, streams of humanity stretched out as far as the eye could see along the Charles River, sweating in the July suns, searching for cool, for water, for shade against the madness and waiting, patiently or impatiently as the case may have been, for the night cools, and the big boom symphony Overture of 1812 finale. Again, frankly, that was not his thing, although he knew just by the numbers that it was certainly somebody else’s. And while he was at it he would not go on and on about the too quickly over fireworks displays the directly succeeded that big boom overture. All of that, collectively, was too much noise, sweat, heat, swelter, and just plain crowdedness for what he wanted to remember about the Fourth. Instead he wanted to lower the temperature a little, lower the noise more, and lessen the logistics, the picnic basket, cooler, blankets, umbrellas, child’s toys logistics, and return to those Sagamore streets of his 1950s youth when Welcome Young Field in North Adamsville’s Atlantic section (why it was called that particular name he never really did get except Sagamore Street Grandma Riley always called it one-horse Atlantic so it had to mean something) was the center of the universe, and if not, it should have been.

Frankie knew that, probably like in your neighborhood in the old days, every year in late June the local older guys, mainly guys from the Dublin Grille and some scattered fathers, including Joseph Riley, Senior, Frankie's father and denizen of the Dublin Grille, would put together a kitty, collecting contributions and seeking donations from local merchants to put together a little “time” for the kids on the 4th of July. Now this Dublin Grille was the favored watering hole (and maybe the only one close enough to be able to “drop in for glass” and also be able to walk home afterwards when that glass turned into glasses) for all the working class fathers in the neighborhood. And nothing but a regular hang-out for all the legions of single Irish guys who were still living at home with dear, sweet mother. Said mother who fed (and fed on time), clothed, darned socks, holy socks worn out from hard living on the Welcome Young softball field, and whatnot for her son (or, more rarely, sons) who was too afraid of woman, or a woman’s scorn at late night Dublin Grille antics, to move out into the great big world. But come late June they, the fathers and occasional older brothers, were kings among men as they strong-armed neighbors and merchants alike for dough and goods.

What Frankie was not clear on (and he is looking for help here) was the details of the organization of this extravaganza, how the money was gathered, what merchant provided what goods, where did the lads get the various Fourth fixings. However he could surely speak to the results. As these things go it was pretty straight forward, you know; foot races of varying lengths for various age groups, baby contests, beauty contests, some sort of parade, pony rides and so forth. But that is only the frame. Here is the real story of the day. Here is what any self-respecting kid lived and died for that day.

Tonic (you know, soda, pop) and ice cream. And not just one tonic or one ice cream but as much as you could hoard. Twice during the day (Frankie thought maybe about 10:00AM and 1:00PM) there would be what one can only describe as a free-for-all as everybody scrambled to get as many bottles of tonic (you know, soda) and cups of ice cream as they could handle. Here is the secret to the success that Frankie’s older brothers, Timmy and Tommy, and he had in grabbing much more than their fair share of the bounty. Go back to that part about where Grandma and Grandpa lived. Ya, right on the corner of Welcome Young Field on Sagamore Street. So, the trio would sprint with one load of goods over to their house and then go back for more until they had filled up the back-door refrigerator.

Just thinking about it now Frankie thought, “Boy that was work, as we panted away, bottles clanking in our pockets, ice cream cups clutched in every hand.” But then, work completed, they could savor their one tonic (read: soda) and one ice cream cup that they showed for public consumption just like the nice boys and girls. There were other sounds of the day like the cheering for your friends in the foot races, or other contests, the panting and the hee-haws of the ponies. As the sun went down it went down to the strains of some local pick-up band of the era in the tennis court as the dancing started. But that was adult time. Our time was to think about our day's work, our hoard and the next day's tonic and ice cream. Ah....

Frankie’s call for remembrance help was heeded. Below is the traffic, mostly unedited, giving other information about those Atlantic Fourth of July celebrations.

Richard Mackey:

Frankie it was, like you said, organized by the guys at the Dublin Grille, guys like my father and yours, and my older brother, Jimmy, in his thirties at the time, who, as you also said, was afraid to go out in the world and lived at home forever with dear, sweet mother (and she was sweet, too sweet). He never married, never missed a softball game, never had a dirty, unsewed sock, or missed a free glass of beer (Pabst Blue Ribbon, if you remember that brand). Jimmy and his buddies, his softball buddies, did a lot of the leg work when he was younger and then they kind of took over the show as the older guys, like my father and yours, had too much to do or something and handed it over to them.

They had a truck, maybe rented or maybe from one of the grocery stores, with a loud speaker that would go up and down the streets and had some of the older kid (15 or 16 years old ) going door to door for donations. I don’t know about the strong-arming part, but maybe. Probably not the neighborhood families so much as the merchants. Remember those were hard-nosed corner boys days and Jimmy was a serious corner boy when things got tight. I know Jimmy used to “set up” his buddies a lot during that collecting time and he never worked all that much.

The day [Fourth of July] started at around 8:00 am and ended with the talent show in the tennis court. I think Mr. Burke won every year that I can remember for his "crazy legs dancing.” Joe Gill, who worked at Estrella’s Market on Newbury Ave, was part of the group that set the whole celebration up. He was a friend of Jimmy’s as well so maybe that is where they got the tonic and ice cream from. The last one I remember was around 1975, because I had my oldest son there.

Frankie Riley:

That Joe Gill Richard Mackey mentioned lived, with his dear sweet Irish-brogued mother, forever, never married, never missed a softball game, never had a dirty, unsewed sock, and never missed a free beer (Knickerbocker, if you remember that brand) directly across the street from my grandparents, Daniel and Anna Riley, on Sagamore Street. That house is the place where we stashed our loot (the tonic and ice cream). Joe, when he worked for Estrella's, would also take my grandfather, disabled from a stroke and a retired North Adamsville fireman, riding around with him when he delivered orders. My grandfather was a, to be kind, difficult man to deal with so Joe must have had some charm.

Sticky Fingers McGee:

The earliest recollection I have of the July 4th festivities at Young Field was when I returned to Atlantic in July 1945, when I was six, after being away for a couple years. I seem to remember that they had foot races and other activities. I remember running one of the races which was close between me and another kid, Spider Jones. They declared Spider the winner, but I threw a fit. Nothing big, just a little shoving, no fists or anything like that. It was just a race, okay. I still think that I won that race and if they had had proper equipment like a camera for photo finishes at the finish line I could have proved that I won. After writing that last thing I guess I still haven’t yet learned to take a loss gracefully but like I said the camera would not have lied.

Later, in the 50's maybe, I remember hearing a girl who sang like Theresa "Tessie" Brewer at the Young Field tennis courts. I think somebody said she was the sister of one Joseph “Babe” Baldwin (Class of 1958) who later became one of North's best all-round athletes. That's all I remember of the Atlantic 4th celebrations, and I'm not totally sure of the accuracy of those memories. The years continue to cloud some memories.

Frank Riley:

Sticky, glad to see you haven’t mellowed with age, at least according to fellow class-mate Jimmy Callahan. Jimmy says hello and to tell you that Spider Jones had you by a mile in that race. He was right at the finish line when you exploded. (He says you did punch Spider, by the way). As for the forget memories part we all know that well-traveled path. Although your memory for some flea-bitten thirty-yard dash for some crumb-bum dollar prize gives me pause on that one.

Irene Devlin:

Hi

Back in the 50's the first 9 1/2 years of my life was on the top floor of a three-decker on Sagamore St., and Welcome Young was were we spent every day. We all waited for the Fourth. Richard [Mackey]is right about the truck. My grandfather, George Kelley, and my uncles would ride on the back of the flatbed truck going up and down the streets playing their musical instruments while others collected donations. We would throw change to the people collecting. On the big day we would line up early in the morning with our costumes on. Buddy Dunne and Elliot Thompson had a lot to do with getting everything together along with a lot of the guys from the Dublin Grille. On our way down Sagamore Street from Newbury Ave heading to Welcome Young everyone would get a shiny quarter for marching. I do remember going to Harry’s Variety Store (later owned by my Uncle Harry Kelley) for free ice cream and "tonic."

The rest of the day would be filled with games and shows, and yes the tennis court would be converted to a stage for the day and night activities.

Richard, didn't you live on the second floor of the Parker's Sagamore Street house?
******

Out In The Corner Boy Night- Rock 'Em Daddy, Be My Be-Bop Daddy-But Watch Out-Belatedly For Elvis Presley

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis Presley performing a sassy, sexy, alternate version of One Night, One Night Of Sin.

CD Review

Rockin’ Bones, Four CD set with booklet, various artists, Rhino Records, 2006

This is the way Betsy McGee, an old time, very old time Clintondale Elementary School flame (locally known as the Acre school, and everybody knew what you were talking about, everybody around Clintondale anyway), and now (1961, in case anybody reads this later) a fellow sophomore classmate at North Clintondale High, wanted the story told, the story of her ill-fated brother, twenty-two year old John “Black Jack” McGee so this is the way it will be told. Why she wanted me to tell the story is beyond me, except that she knows, knows even in her sorrows, that I hang around with corner boys, Harry’s Variety Store corner boys, although I am more like a “pet,” or a “gofer,” than a real corner boy. But that story has already been told, told seven ways to Sunday, so let’s get to Black Jack’s story.

John “Black Jack” McGee like a million guys who came out of the post-World War II Cold war night and came out of the no prospect projects, in his case the Clintondale Housing Project (the Acre, okay, and hell’s little acre at that to save a lot of fancy sociological talk stuff), looking for kicks. Kicks anyway he could get them to take the pain away, the pain of edge city living if he was asked, by the way, politely asked or you might get your head handed to you on a platter asked. Needless to say Black Jack was rough stuff, rough stuff even when he was nothing but another Acre teenage kid, with a chip, no, about seven chips, on his wide shoulders. Needless to say, as well, there was nothing that school could teach him and he dropped out the very day that he turned sixteen. As a sign of respect for what little North Clintondale High taught him threw a rock through the headmaster’s window and then just stood there. The headmaster did not made peep one about it (he was probably hiding under his desk, he is that kind of guy) and Black Jack just walked away laughing. Yes, Black Jack was rough stuff, rough stuff all the way around. That story made him a legend all the way down to the Acre school, and so much so that every boy, every red-blooded boy, in her class made his pitch to get along with Betsy.

The problem with legends though is unless you keep pace other legends crowd you out, or somebody does some crazy prank and your legend gets lost in the shuffle. That’s the way the rules are, make of them what you will. And Black Jack, wide shouldered, tall, pretty muscular, long brown hair, and a couple of upper shoulder tattoos with two different girls’ names on them was very meticulous about his legend. So every once in a while you would hear a rumor about how Black Jack had “hit” this liquor store or that mom and pop variety store, small stuff when you think about it but enough to stir any red-blooded Acre elementary schoolboy’s already hungry imagination.

And then all of sudden, just after a nighttime armed gas station robbery that was never solved, Black Jack stepped up in society, well, corner boy society anyway. This part everyone who hung around Harry’s Variety knew about, or knew parts of the story. Black Jack had picked up a bike (motorcycle, for the squares), and not some suburban special Harley-Davidson chrome glitter thing either but a real bike, an Indian. The only better bike, the Vincent Black Lightning, nobody had ever seen around, only in motorcycle magazines. And as a result of having possession of the “boss” bike (or maybe reflecting who they thought committed that armed robbery) he was “asked” (if that is the proper word, rather than commissioned, elected, or ordained) to join the Acre Low-Riders.

And the Acre Low-Riders didn’t care if you were young or old, innocent or guilty, smart or dumb, or had about a million other qualities, good or bad, just stay out of their way when they came busting through town on their way to some hell-raising. The cops, the cops who loved to tell kids, young kids, to move along when it started to get dark or got surly when some old lady jaywalked caught the headmaster’s 'no peep' when the Low Riders showed their colors. Even “Red” Doyle who was the max daddy king corner boy at Harry’s Variety made a very big point that his boys, and he himself, wanted no part of the Low-Riders, good or bad. And Red was a guy who though nothing, nothing at all, of chain-whipping a guy mercilessly half to death just because he was from another corner. Yes, Black Jack had certainly stepped it up.

Here’s where the legend, or believing in the legend, or better working on the legend full-time part comes in. You can only notch up so many robberies, armed or otherwise, assaults, and other forms of hell-raising before your act turns stale, nobody, nobody except hungry imagination twelve-year old schoolboys, is paying attention. The magic is gone. And that is what happened with Black Jack. Of course, the Low-Riders were not the only outlaw motorcycle “club” around. And when there is more than one of anything, or maybe on some things just one, there is bound to be a "rumble" (a fight, for the squares) about it. Especially among guys, guys too smart for school, guys who have either graduated from, or are working on, their degrees from the school of hard knocks, the state pen. But enough of that blather because the real story was that the Groversville High-Riders were looking for one Black Jack McGee. And, of course, the Acre Low-Riders had Black Jack’s back.

Apparently, and Betsy was a little confused about this part because she did not know the “etiquette” of biker-dom, brother John had stepped into High-Rider territory, a definite no-no in the biker etiquette department without some kind of truce, or peace offering, or whatever. But see Black Jack was “trespassing” for a reason. He had seen this doll, this fox of a doll, this Lola heart-breaker, all blonde hair, soft curves, turned-up nose, and tight, short-sleeved cashmere sweater down at the Adamsville Beach one afternoon a while back and he made his bid for her. Now Black Jack was pretty good looking, okay, although nothing special from what anybody would tell you but this doll took to him, for some reason. What she did not tell him, and there is a big question still being asked around Harry’s about why not except that she was some hell-cat looking for her own strange kicks, was that she had a boyfriend, a Groversville guy doing time up the state pen. And what she also didn’t tell him was that the reason her boyfriend, “Sonny” Russo, was in stir was for attempted manslaughter and about to get out in August. And what she also did not tell him was that Sonny was a charter member of the High-Riders.

Forget dramatic tension, forget suspense, this situation, once Sonny found out, and he would, sooner or later, turned into “rumble city," all banners waving, all colors showing. And so it came to pass that on August 23, 1961, at eight o’clock in the evening the massed armies of Acre Low-Riders and Groverville High-Riders gathered for battle. And the rules of engagement for such transgressions, if there is such a thing, rules of engagement that is rather than just made up, was that Sonny and Black Jack were to fight it out in a circle, switchblades flashing, until one guy was cut too badly to continue, or gave up, or… So they went back and forth for a while Black Jack getting the worst of it with several cuts across his skin-tight white tee-shirt, a couple of rips in his blue jeans, bleeding but not enough to give up. Meanwhile true-blue Lola is egging Sonny on, egging him on something fierce, like some devil-woman, to cut the love-bug John every which way. But then Black Jack drew a break. Sonny slipped and John cut him, cuts him bad near the neck. Sonny was nothing but bleeding, bleeding bad, real bad. Sonny called it quits. Everybody quickly got the hell out of the field of honor, double-quick, Sonny’s comrades helping him along. That is not the end of the story, by no means. Sonny didn't make it, and in the cop dust-up Lola, sweet Lola, told them that none other than lover-boy Black Jack did the deed. And now Black Jack is earning his hard knock credits up in stir, state stir, for manslaughter (reduced from murder two).

After thinking about this story again I can also see where, if I played my cards right, I could be sitting right beside maybe not-so-old-flame Betsy, helping here through her brother hard times, down at the old Adamsville beach some night talking about the pitfalls of corner boy life while we are listening to One Night of Sin by Elvis Presley; Boppin’ High School Baby by Don Willis; Long Blonde Hair, Rose Red Lips by Johnny Powers (watch out Johnny); Sunglasses After Dark by Lo Lou Darrell Rhodes (Clintondale's pizza parlor max daddy Frankie Doyle’s favorite song); Red Hot by Bob Luman (yes, red hot); Long Gone Daddy by Pat Cupp; Put Your Cat Clothes On by Carl Perkins; Duck Tail by Joe Clay; Switch Blade Sam by Jeff Daniels (maybe not); Susie-Q by Dale Hawkins; Who Do You Love by Ronnie Hawkins; Summertime Blues by Eddie Cochran; Rumble Rock by Kip Taylor, Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Going On by Jerry Lee Lewis; and, Get Hot Or Go Home by John Kerby on the old car radio. What do you think?

*Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- “The Weary Blues”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of performances of Langston Hughes’ poetry as described in the headline.


Markin comment:

You know, and if you have been reading some of the writings in this space you should know, that clearly I am not the only one in the universe who has gone out searching for that be-bop, blue-pink great American night, or the high white note either. Thanks, Brother Hughes.

**Out In The Tex-Mex Be-Bop Night- Orson Welles’ “ Touch Of Evil" (1957)

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.

DVD Review

Touch Of Evil, Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, directed by Orson Welles, 1957

Put the blame on Mame. Or rather on the quintessential 1940s film star Rita Hayworth for her role in the 1946 film noir classic as the good femme fatale in Gilda. I was so smitten by Ms. Hayworth’s performance that I had to run out and get several other of her films. First place amount those works was her bad (very bad, indeed) femme fatale role in The Lady From Shang-hai, directed by the director of the film under review, Orson Welles. I might add that Welles also co-starred in that film as the roustabout sailor who also was very smitten by Rita’s charms, Irish Blackie. (See I am not the only one who was taken in by Ms. Hayworth’s charms).

In this film, Touch Of Evil, old beanbag (and I am being kind about his girth) star Orson Welles(Sheriff Hank Quinlan) is very much smitten as well, but not by any such sensible thing as being smitten by a beautiful dame but is rather in thrall to small time Tex-Mex border police power and a rather overblown sense of what passes for “justice”, his rough and tumble justice, as meted out in the hinterlands. The plot line is rather straight forward. Old Orson has to investigate what turns out to be a second-rate romantic variant of murder for hire of a well-known Texas citizen ( along with his, ah,lady friend) who is murdered when his car is blown up by a planned bomb, said bomb planted on the Mexican side of the border. Enter newlywed ace Mexican honest cop Miguel Vargas played by Charlton Heston (gee, I didn't know he was Mexican he could have fooled me with that makeup)just married to a very fetching gringa, played by Janet Leigh. But duty calls, at least the script call for it, especially when Mike becomes wary, very wary of Orson’s investigative techniques which include putting the “frame” on the nearest Mexican national that he can get his hands on. The rest of the film is highlighted by the struggle by Orson to cover up his dirty work and by Charlton to expose Orson as just another red-necked gringo sheriff with no respect for third world sensibilities.

The plot may be simple, and the political incorrectness by the gringos, led by Orson, may be way too obviously incorrect for today’s audiences but this is a classic Welles break-out of a film. Both the direction that, by the end, forces you to almost smell the evil of small town, last of the old frontier life, down in gringo good-time borderland Texas in the 1950s and by Welles’ performance where you can almost smell the corrupted human flesh as it loses its relationship to any rational view of the world are what makes this a late noir classic. Add in the always engrossing close-up black and white photography that is a Welles hallmark and that enhances the grittiness of the scenes and highlights the sometimes startling grotesqueness of the human animal when held under a microscope and there you have it. Thanks, Rita.

**Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- A Tale To Sit Around The Soda Fountain By-Frankie Goes Wild

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Angels performing Cry Baby Cry.

Markin comment:

Recently I did, as part of a rock 'n' roll be-bop night record review, a little vignette about soda fountain life in the early 1960s, featuring my boyhood best friend, Frankie, Frankie from our down at the heels and not going to get better as America deindustrialized no more shipyard busy working class neighborhood. Frankie of one thousand stories, Frankie of one thousand treacheries, about twenty-three of them directed toward me, and Frankie of a one thousand kindnesses, including about ninety-eight directed toward me and hence the longevity of our friendship. Somehow it did not seem right to leave Frankie hanging around that old review soda fountain and rather than leave him to that fate I have decided to rewrite the story with the commercial review tag removed, although lots of the old story will filter through here anyway:

See, it really is a truism by now, by 2010 teen-age now, that every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century, maybe two centuries, ago has developed it own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades and the ubiquitous Internet screen connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. And moreover would trend very lightly, very lightly indeed, on that sacred ground.

What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 convenience stores came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market, if we could squeeze room around the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters who frequented those holy sites and worried about "turf" and our being within ten miles of it; the ever present heaven-sent smell pizza parlor (hold the onions on that slice, please, always hold the onions in case I get lucky with that certain she) with its jump jukebox where coin was king and we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters to hear our favorites of the day or minute; for some of the dweebs, or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, or thought you were doing somebody a favor to take his sister out, but only as a last resort, the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with "hot" car hops who filled the night air with their cold sex, their faraway cold tip-driven sex, for more “expensive” dates (meaning take your eyes off the damn car hops, or else); and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain, especially in car-less teen times. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually owned and operated drug store (Doc’s Drug Store, for real) that used the fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those were for old people, we were invincible) into the store.

As part of that record review mentioned earlier I noted that the cover of the CD had an almost Edward Hooper Nighthawks-like illustration of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with three whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood, beaten down or not) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one cone-shaped paper cup while a faux Fabian-type looks on. Ah, be still my heart. Needless to say this scene could have been from any town USA then, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t although the local rock radio station was blasting away as we tapped out the beat at all hours), the booths with the vinyl-covered summer sweat-inducing seats and Formica top tables (dolled up with paper place settings, condiments, etc., just like home right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my boys) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come in the store (read: girls), and a Drink Coca-Cola-inscribed full length mirror just in case you missed a beat. Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that's a New England thing, look it up), milkshakes, banana splits, ice cream floats, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well, of course, a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say anything about girl and boy watching. Ya, I did. What do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours to drink a Pepsi even in teen-land?

But enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. I already "hipped" you to the his treacheries and kindnesses. Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister, although now that I think of it she is really the "stooge" in this thing.

Now when we were juniors in high school in the early 1960s, Frankie (as king of the hill) and I (as his lord chamberlain) , mainly held court at the local pizza parlor, a pizza parlor which was in the pecking order of town teen social life way above the soda fountain rookie camp teen life scene. That soda foundation stuff was for kids and dweebs, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s drug store soda fountain to check out the action there.

Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” pizza parlor, which I will tell you about some other time because it plays no part in this heart-rendering tale, the old soda fountain side of that drug store (the other side had aisles of over-the-counter drugs and sundries, a couple of permanently in use enclosed telephone booths for those (read: teens) who had not telephone at home(like me much of the time) or didn’t want their business exposed on the “two-party” home line, and your regulation pharmacy area for the good legal doctor's note drug stuff) was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, in those days to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. Whatever. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”) who connected the dots about who was who and what was what in the local scene (I do not have to tell you at this point the focal point of that scene, right?). Moreover, later, after we found out about life a bit more (read: sex) the soda jerk acted as a “shill” for Doc for those teens looking for their first liquor (for medical purposes, of course) or, keep this quiet, okay, condoms. But the thing was, younger or older, that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead wit that flap cap they wore.

So one night we are dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, Lorrie, talking up a storm, all dewy-eyed, over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And more than that this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more, hell and back red.

I can hear the yawns already, especially from every guy who had a goofy, off-hand younger sister just starting to feel her oats (or for that matter every gal who had such a younger brother, or any other such combinations). See, though, and maybe it’s hard to explain if you didn’t live in those misbegotten times, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he had only one serious frail (read: girl again okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before when I did a thing on Roy "The Boy" Orbison). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male boy (and adult too, as we found out later) double standard of the age about boys being able to do whatever they wanted to but girls had to be true-blue or whatever color it was, but no messing around, especially in regard to his sister. But there you have it, and he was seeing that old red that meant no good, for somebody.

Now this sister, Lorrie, when I first meant her back in the days when I first met Frankie in middle school was nothing but a...sister, a Frankie, king of the hill, sister but still just a sister. Meaning I really never paid much attention to her. But this night I could see, dewy-eyed or not, that she has turned into not a bad looker, especially with that form-filling cashmere sweater all the girls were wearing those days and that I swear they were wearing so that guys would notice that form-filling part. And I could see that, while she took away from her "cool" in my eyes by the ubiquitous chewing of gum that made her seem about ten years old, that guys could go for her, eighteen or not, soda jerks or not. As to the soda jerk, Steve was his name as I found out later, who was not a bad looking guy and old Lorrie didn't need glasses to see that. He seemed like a lot a guys, a lot of Frankie and me guys, ready to chat up any skirt that would listen to him for two minutes, maybe less.

And see, as well, it is not like Frankie really had some old-fashioned medieval sense of honor, or some Catholic, which we and half the freaking town were then or were trying to get away from then, hang-up about sex, teen-age or otherwise. So it was not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become "king of the hill" by “courting: Frankie’s, Francis X. Riley’s sister. See that's the way that he operated, and for all I know maybe had to operate, to stay king. Maybe he read about it someplace, like in Machiavelli’s The Prince (Frankie and I were crazy for that kind of book in those days, Christ we even read Marx’s Communist Manifesto just to be “cool”), and figured he had to do things that way.

And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted, not bad–looking but no Steve McQueen, wrapping the girls up with his pseudo-beat patter Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked (with his black chinos, flannel shirt, work boot and midnight sunglass regulation faux beat look). So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away from him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting on the counter in a cup in front of a girl customer (a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bops, no be-bops, no be-bop bops one soda jerk, new or not, with it. Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform, wearing about three kinds of ice cream (no, not what you think, some harlequin strawberry, vanilla, chocolate combo but frozen pudding, cherry vanilla, and mocha almond, hey, I really will have to check that girl out) on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.

Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business (not related) after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one that incident night, that same triple combo mentioned above, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie, one very foxy cashmere sweater-wearing Lorrie, sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s boss cherry red with full-chrome accessories 1959 Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.

**Out In The Be-Bop Night- In the Beginning Of Rock- Bop- Once Again, From the Vaults Of Sun Records

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Carl Perkins performing Boppin' The Blues.

CD Review

The Sun Gods, 3-CD set, Dressed To Kill Records, 1999

One of the purposes of this space is to review various cultural trends that drove American popular culture in the 20th century. More specifically in the post-Word War II, the lifetimes of many of today’s baby boomers. A seminal point, musically at least, was the breakout of the mid-1950s fueled by a strange and sometimes contradictory mix of black-based rhythm and blues, Arkie, Okie, Appalachian “hillbilly” rock-a-billy and plain old jazz and show tune Tin Pan Alley. The mix of course we now know as rock ‘n’ roll, sadly for this aging reviewer now called the age of classic rock 'n' roll. No sadly that it does not exist except in CDs such as the one under review, The Sun Gods, but that frenetic fury to change the musical direction of popular culture seems to have lost steam along the aging process. But take heart. While we have all probably slowed down a step or seven we will always have Sun Records CD memories to carry us.

And there is no question, no question at all that, pound for pound, the music that came out of Sam Phillips’ Memphis-based Sun Records for about a decade in the 1950s was central to the mix that created rock 'n' roll. Think Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry to name just three of the more famous singers to come out of that label. And as this CD demonstrates beyond doubt, highlighted by the work of Sonny Burgess and Warren Smith here, also a whole tribe of lesser lights, one hit Johnnies and Janies, and those who never made it that formed the background milieu that drove the others forward and created this musical chemistry that can boggle the mind. If you want to find, in one spot, a CD set that rediscovers the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, especially the contributions from the rock-a-billy side well here you are.

I have highlighted some of the tracks on each disc.

Disc One: Carl Perkins performing Roll Over Beethoven, a song made famous by Chuck Berry (and that I went crazy over when I first heard it as a kid) which I think that he may actually do better than Chuck, if you can believe that: there are several Elvis interviews recorded here as part of the promotion of his records and/or concerts in the early days. I would say, thank god, that he had that great musical talent because off these innocuous, bland interviews he would have starved otherwise. Still these are good to hear from a time before the king became “the King.”

Disc Two: Red Hot by Billy Lee Riley, a rock-a-billy hard-driving classic that expresses just what the break-out was all about; We Wanna Boogie by Sonny Burgess (a definitely underrated force), Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache by Warren Smith (Bob Dylan covered this one in a tribute album); and, Crazy Women by Gene Simmons. This is one of those CDs that you have to listen to all the way through to get a real feel for this music, and you should.

Disc Three: Rock Boppin’ Baby by Edwin Brice; Let’s Bop by Jack Earls; Thinkin’ Of Me by Mickey Gilley; Rockhouse by Harold Jenkins; and, You Don’t Care by, Narvel Felts. Yes, I know, you probably have never heard of any of them. But if you listen to this CD you will see where Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck got their stuff from. And you know, successful or as failures, as I have mentioned before in reviewing Sun Record material, all these guys (and a few gals) all sound like they are happy to be rocking and rolling rather than whatever else they were slated to do in life.

**Out In The Be-Bop Rock Night- Present At The Creation -The Birth Of Rock

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing the classic rock anthem, Rock Around The Clock.

DVD Review

One For The Money: The Birth Of Rock, various artists, 2005


The birth of the “beat” movement or, at least the public awareness of its break-out, occurred in the 1950s. It even reached down to “the projects” kids like me with my dark sun-glassed, flannel shirted, black chino-ed look, and a mandatory pinch of teen angst if not of any real understanding of what that break-out meant. The seminal cultural moment for us kids, us clueless 1950s kids, was when the clean, free, breathe of fresh air that we call rock ‘n’ roll crashed onto the scene that also occurred in the be-bop 1950s.

Although the “beat” movement, especially its literary end, was driven, and driven hard by the cool, clear, high white note jazz performed by the likes of Charley Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and in no way frontally drove rock the two easily mingle in memory of that be-bop night. Especially for those of us who really were too young to be washed over by the beats and got our “beatitude” in a more second-hand way but who were dead center when that wild jungle night, “devil's music”, “what was that sound, and where can we hear more of it?” drum beat hit our virgin ears about 1955 or so. Call us the stepchildren of one movement, and the children, mad, crash-out, runaway children of the other.

That is the premise behind this one hour documentary as it tries to tap into what the roots of rock were, how it exploded onto the central 1950s teenage stage and how it was tamed beyond redemption, teenage redemption anyway within a few short years. One only needs to say the names Bill Haley and The Comets, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, and Eddie Cochran, and then say Fabian, Rick Nelson, Conway Tweety, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Vinton and Paul Anka to know that the music had died. And it wasn’t coming back, at least not in its innocent, hungry form, just as our youth never did either.

For an hour documentary this one covers a lot of territory. Much time is spent on the roots of rock and who pushed it along and also on the space that what we now call, sadly, classic rock, filled at just that moment in the 1950s when we, meaning teenage America, were desperate to have our own music, our own not-our parents-seal of approval music. If you think about the roots, it is almost a "no-brainer" that black rhythm and blues would be an important factor as a source for rock. Especially as it came all rambly and scrambly out of the Mississippi Delta and got electrified in the immediate post-World War II period as it followed the black migration north to the Southern river cities and then the Midwest industrial cities. And as it got more sophisticated as its mainly black listeners and a few white “hipsters” settled in. Just listen to early Bill Haley “jump” with that bass line and saxophone on classics like Rock Around The Clock and Shake, Rattle and Roll (even though Big Joe Turner’s version on the latter is about ten times better and sexier). Also a no-brainer, since it seems that every poor white boy child of the Great Depression who could strum three chords or pluck a few ivories was putting R&B together with that old time Appalachian mountain twang music, hillbilly music is the influence of rockabilly.. No question that this rock is purely American songbook-worthy music.

As for those who pushed the music first place, rightly I think, goes to Alan Freed (and last place to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, although I like every other breathing 1950s kid frenetically raced home to watch the thing in the afternoon, every afternoon okay). He gets his just desserts here, especially in his attempts to bring to the fore the black groups who originally recorded many of the songs that would be covered by whites and who would gain much wider recognition for those efforts. Also deserving of mention is Sam Phillips and his Sun Record operation that was the first stop north for those who wanted to reach those teens waiting, waiting patiently, waiting out until hell froze over in the cold war night just to hear the likes Of Ike Turner, Chuck Berry, Elvis and Jerry Lee.

Well I’ve covered the roots, I covered the movers and shakers, and I should mention the ”talking head” music historians who give their take, half a century later, on what it all meant. But that is no the real reason to watch this thing. The real reason is to see Bill Haley’s sax and bass men hold forth like high heaven’s own angels; to see Elvis shake , rattle and roll like some demon sex fiend making all the girls sweat and all the boys practice their moves in dank cellars or before merciless mirrors; to hear Little Richard go wild, male/female wild, high pitched wild at the piano; to see Jerry Lee reach down in some primitive place and drive those ivories to bloody hell; to see Chuck Berry duck walk his stuff; and to see between segues all that jitterbuggery, that shear, happy energy as the kids danced their hearts out. That, my friends, my nostalgic friends was what it was like in that be-bop night of 1950s classic rock.
**********
Rock Around The Clock Song Lyrics from Bill Haley

One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock,
Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, rock,
Nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, rock,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight.

Put your glad rags on and join me, hon,
We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When the clock strikes two, three and four,
If the band slows down we'll yell for more,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When the chimes ring five, six and seven,
We'll be right in seventh heaven.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When it's eight, nine, ten, eleven too,
I'll be goin' strong and so will you.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When the clock strikes twelve, we'll cool off then,
Start a rockin' round the clock again.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

*Out In The Be-Bop Night-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The High White Note -2007

Markin comment:

The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.

Scene Eleven: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The High White Note-2007

The High White Note, The High White Western Night and The High White Wave Merged
I am a driven man. I am a driven man, imprisoned, six by twelve room driven, but more by a mental six by twelve internal, eternal, infernal almost paternal quest, and that is the only word that fits for the elusive high white note, or the high white something, that I have spent a lifetime searching for. Certainly longer that other search, that more physical search for the blue-pink great American West that disturbed my youth, and beyond, and pushed me through many a long, lonesome highway hitchhike mile. But you know that story already now that you have read the previous scenes.

This one is more wistful, although I have caught a whisper of it here and there along the way. Now it looks like I’m stuck with it to the end, the quest that is. Here I sit, in any case, quarantined, in desolate, high, hard wind-swept, sunless-sea-ed, busted sand-duned, green sea-grass-blown, icy white-capped waved, Atlantic–oceaned, ragged, rugged, jagged Maine-coasted shack of a room getting ready to search, and search hard this time, for that white puff of a thing that keeps disturbing my rest.

I will, for the duration, put up with an ill-lit stove, half broken from generations of use by others, passing strangers, maybe seeking their own high white notes, or high white something. Or, maybe, just passing sweaty, drunken nights in some fore-doomed attempt to avoid oblivion. I will, moreover, put up with that high-pitched, annoying, buzzing refrigerator in back of me that means, at least, a touch of civilization. And the bubbly, perking, hard-hearted coffee-making machine, chipped plates, moldy-cushioned sofa, and this stuffy-aired place in order to make sense of what drove me here once again to place my shoulder against the wind, the whistling wind that signals that it is time to take note, and to seriously take note, of the demands of the quest.

And I came here for a purpose, always a purpose, to leave home and sweet-loved, sweet love. And to get away, to clean a man’s mind from the humdrum, fairwayed, fresh-ponded, sun-walked, run-runned, walk-runned, city-maddened depths. Also while we are on the subject from the technological-driven, cell-phoned, personal computer-strapped like some third hand or second-brained, four-walled nightmare. Nightmare-evading Maine fits the bill just fine, although truth to tell Maine figures, Maine always figures in the white note fight, although it is hardly the only place.

I can almost read your thoughts about my thoughts right now. It goes something like this- here he goes again, you say, on some incensed holy grail trip of the mind, or maybe he is for real, real time, real places but still a trip that would embarrass and shame any self-respecting errant knight of yore, searching for that perfect fair damsel in distress to bring home, or more likely, to carry off, kicking and screaming, to some cozy, stone-faced, thatched-roofed, smoke-filled, forested cottage for two. Or of old mad, maddened, maddening Captain Ahab and his foolish fish, or whatever woe begotten thing that he was really looking for in the Melville deep. Or, maybe, some fiendish, freakish, madman pioneer monkishly doing his own shouldering against the storms, against the snowstorms, against the storms of life of the white-peaked Western trek nights. Ah, the vision of the blue-pink Western sky. I wish you well pioneer brother, wherever you landed.

No, it is not like that at all. This is not some half-baked, half-bright, half-thought out, interior dialogue that I usually get myself tangled up into. Tangled so bad I have to break it up for a while. No, none of that this time. No intellectual gymnastics, no mental tepidity, no squarey circles or circley squares. No this is purely, or almost purely, a memory trip and that seems about right, you know, if you really want to know it has been painful at times, but no way, no way at all, that it is one of those ill-digested whims that you are thinking of. No way.

And, beside that, from the great American West night hitchhike road I have already gone through many pairs of worn-out, worn-soled, worn-heeled, down at the heel shoe leather (now thick-soled, thick-heeled, logo-addled running sneakers); worn-thumbed, back-pack-ladened, some forgotten town destination sign-waving, hitch-hiked mile (that means bumming free rides on the road, the wide American highway, for those too young, or too proper to the know the long gone, way long gone, exotic word that sustained many a hobo, tramp or bum in his (or her) search for the Great American night) through every nowhere, no-name, no wanna know the name, bus-depot-ed, stranger-unfriendly town from here to Mendocino. Moreover, here I have marks, and here you can call it intellectual or spiritual or whatever, from every diesel-trailed, oil-slicked, mud-flatted, white-lined, white-broken-lined, two-laned, no passing , hard-bitten, steam-fooded truck stop from here to Frisco as well. So don’t tell me I haven’t paid my dues.

Or it could have been some smoke-filled, nicotine-plastered walls in some long defunct coffee house (when smoking was de rigueur), or some gin-sweated, smoke-fogged Cambridge bar (in the days when smoking was allowed), listening to some local group trying to make it out of town, one way or another. Or it could have been being chained-smoked cigarette (ditto above) writing like crazy, every soul thing, every non-soul thing, every anti-soul thing after passing on the last call train out to the sticks at that old reliable, just don’t have the eggs scrambled Hayes-Bickford, where we all believed that if you just spent enough nights, enough hot, heavy-aired July nights, or enough snow-bound, frost-bitten January nights (this before Super Bowl suspense filled in January) maybe something major would come out, and maybe fame, big fame too, fame etched by the gods.

Hey, did I tell you how I got here, got here to ocean-winded Maine, this time that is? Did I forget that in my frenzy to tell you what is? Ya, I guess I did forget reading back. Let me tell you of my dreams, or at least the story of my dreams to make it right, okay? One recent, sweat-drenched night I woke up, or was I woken up by one of the cats, in a start. I had a weird old dream, or maybe just a flash of a dream, where I saw, in living, livid color a big old beautiful high white note floating, free and easy, as you might guess on a very stormy high white wave. After than flash, if that is what it was, I could not get back to sleep and lay there, soaking a little and trying to soak off that soaking with an old bedraggled railroad man’s roaring red handkerchief. Or that is at least what I call them ever since I first saw a railroad guy walking down the line when I was a kid, carrying one in the left back pocket of his dirt-stained denims as he uncoupled one train from another, maybe sending it into the great western night.

But we have already been into that great Western night, or what I think is my idea of the great Western night so I don't know how it figures in the meaning of this dream. It is really bothering me, and it should because, lately, I have been thinking and thinking hard about that very subject. The relationship between the two. No, it did not just come out of the blue, come on now, you guys know better than that. Ain’t you read Freud, or his acolytes or renegades, these things all have secret meanings of their own. But no surprise if you think about it. I have been thinking about the high white note for a while, ever since I read poor old, black, gay, exiled against his will, writer James Baldwin and his infernal short story, Sonny’s Blues.

You know I really should make you read the whole thing and then you could come back and get an idea about my dream, or the thought of what my dream was all about. And then the great Western trek into the night, hell in the day time even, would make a great deal more sense. But I am going to let you off the hook this time and just tell you that old “Sonny” is a story about brothers, and I have been thinking about that too lately, although not in the friendly, gee I should get back in touch with my own brother sense, but about brothers who drifted back and forth in each others lives until one day the reality set in hard and hard was that Sonny, a high white note-seeking jazz pianist really got high on the white note. Busted, busted hard, busted back to clean but busted and his brother, would you know that it was his big brother, had to help him put back the pieces, even though the pieces were what made Sonny interesting and alive. That's me, living on old sweet, sweet dream of that white note, and, as well, Angelica-ish-driven memories of that old time blue-pink night before I go.

*Out In The Be-Bop Night-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- California Dreamin’, Maybe, January, 1970

Markin comment:

The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.

Scene Ten: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-California Dreamin’, Maybe, January 1970

I waved good-bye to Angelica, once again, as she drove off from the ocean front campsite that we had been camping out on, the Leo Carrillo State Park near Point Magoo about fifty miles or so north of Los Angeles. She will now drive the road back in her green Ford Hertz unlimited mileage, mid-size rental (paid for, as she explained one night, by her parents whose golden age of the automobile-frenzied minds counted it as a strike against me, a very big strike, that when I had “kidnapped” their daughter on the 1969 blue-pink summer road west down in Steubenville, Ohio I didn’t even have a car). She planned (on my advise) to drive back mostly on the ocean-abutted, white-capped waves smashing against jagged ancient shore rocks, Pacific Coast Highway down through Malibu and Santa Monica to take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as the final point on her first look ocean trip, on the way to LAX to take a flight back to school days Muncie, Indiana.

She will also be driving back to the airport and getting on that miserable plane east knowing as I do since we talked about it incessantly during her stay, that some right things, or at least some maybe right things, like our being together last summer heading free west and for these two January weeks in front of the sea, our homeland the sea, before her classes started again, got caught up in the curious web of the human drama. For no understandable reason. Hey, you already knew this if you have ever had even that one teeny-weeny, tiny, minuscule love affair that just had no place to go, or no time to take root, or just got caught out there in the blue-pink night. Ya, you know that story. But let me take some minutes to tell you this one. If it seems very familiar and you “know” the plot line well then just move on.

To get you up to speed after Angelica and I had been on the heartland hitchhike road (and places like Moline, Neola, and Omaha are nothing but the heartland, good or bad), she, well, she just got tired of it, tired of the lacks, tired of the uncertainties of the road. Hell hell-on-wheels, I was getting tired of it myself except I was a man on a mission. The nature of that mission is contained in the words “search for the blue-pink great American West night” so the particulars of that mission need not detain us here. So in Neola, Iowa, Neola, Iowa of all places aided by “fairy grandmother” Aunt Betty, who ran the local diner where Angelica worked to help make us some dough to move on, and her own sense of dreams she called it quits back in September. Aunt Betty drove us to Omaha where Angelica took the bus back east, Indiana east from Nebraska, to hometown Muncie and I hit Interstate 80 West headed first to Denver before the snows, or so I hoped.

Honestly, although we exchanged addresses and telephone numbers where messages could be left, or where we could speak to each other (her parents’ house not being one of them), and made big plans to reunite in California in January during her school break, I didn’t really think that once we were off the road together that those plans would pan out.
Now I may not remember all my reasoning at the time this far removed, the now of my telling this story many years later, but I had had enough relationships with women to sense this one was good, very good, while it lasted but it could no survive the parting. Not one of those overused “absence makes the heart grow fonder” things you hear about. And, truth to tell, because I thought that was the way things would play out, I started getting focused back on Boston Joyel more than a little as I walked a lot, stood at the shoulder of the hitchhike road a lot, and fitfully got my rides on the road west.

But see this is where you think you have something figured out just so and then it goes awry. Angelica called, left messages, sent letters, even a telegram, to Denver (to the commune where, Jack and Mattie, my traveling companions on the final leg west whom I had met earlier in the spring on a different trip down to D.C., were staying). She sent more communications in early December saying that she was still coming to Los Angeles as well where we three stayed with a few artistic friends of Jack and Mattie’s. Cinema-crazed artistic friends, including one budding film director who, moreover, had great dope connections right into the heart of Mexico. This is where they would stay while I planned to push the hitchhike road north heading to San Francisco.

I once, in running through one of the scenes in this hitchhike road show, oh ya, it was the Neola scene, mentioned that in Angelica what you saw was what you got, what she said was what she meant, and both those were good things indeed. And so if I had thought about it a minute of course she was coming to California in January and staying with me for her two week break, and maybe longer. So when January came she contacted me though John and Mattie, who like I said were now staying with this very interesting experimental film-maker, David, in the Hollywood hills and canyons. I started back south to L.A. in order to meet her at the airport. From there I had it planned that we would go to Point Magoo and camp out like in the “old days” at an ocean front state park.

Needless to say when I greeted her at LAX we both were all smiles, I was in more than all smiles mode, because I had been “stag” for a while and she was, well, fetching as always, or almost always. Here though is where I noticed that the road really is not for everyone. In Neola, and later getting on the bus back home in Omaha, poor Angelica looked pretty haggard but at the airport, well like I said, she was fetching.

And, guess what, she brought her sleeping bag that we got for her in a Lexington, Kentucky Army-Navy Store when we first seriously started on the road west. And the first thing she said about it was, referring to a little in-joke between us, “it fits two, in a pinch.” Be still my heart. So we gathered up her stuff, did the airport exit stuff (easier in those days) and picked up the outside shuttle to the Hertz car rental terminal. We were jabbering away like crazy, but best of all, we were like, a little, those first days last summer back in that old-time Steubenville truck stop diner and cabin when I first met her.

Of course, part of the trip for her, part of what she went as far as she could with me on the hitchhike road for, was to get to California and see what it was all about, and what the ocean was all about since she was a heartland girl who had never seen the ocean before. When we got to Point Magoo she flipped out, she flipped out mostly at the idea that we would stay, could stay right on the beach in front of the ocean. And just like a kid, just like I did when I was kid and saw the ocean, when she saw the Pacific, she jumped right in. Hell, she was so excited she almost got caught in a small riptide. I had to go drag her out. I won’t say we had fun every minute of those weeks acting out our ocean nomad existence, but most minutes, and I could see that she felt the same way.

Naturally, as time drifted away toward her return flight date we talked more and more about what the future, if any, held in store for us. She was adamant about not going back on the road, she was adamant as well that she wanted to finish school and make something of herself. I had no serious defense against that practical wisdom. And, truthfully, I wasn’t, toward the end of her stay, pushing the issue, partially because even I could see that it made sense but also, we had had a “flare-up” over the Boston Joyel question (I am being polite here).

But it was more than that; the flat out, hungry truth was that I really didn’t know how to deal with a Midwestern what you see is what you get woman like Angelica. I was more used to virtuous Irish Catholic girls who drove me crazy as a kid getting me all twisted up about religion, about nice girls, and about duplicity when I found out what the real score was with this type of young girl/ woman later. I was also, and Joyel was the epitome of this type, totally in sync (well, as much as a man can be) with the Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of human relationships 24/7 kind of woman. And fatally attracted to them (and still am). This Angelica look at things only a couple of ways, let’s work things out easy-like, heavens, let’s not analyze everything to the nth degree flipped me out. Angelica was a breath of fresh air and, maybe, maybe, about ten years later, and two divorces later to boot, I would have had that enough sense god gave geese to hold onto her with both hands, tightly, very tightly. But I was in my blue-pink search phase and not to be detoured.

Of course all this hard work of trying to understand where we stood put a little crack in our reason for being together in the first place. The search for, search for something. Maybe, for her, it was just that life minute at the ocean and then on to regular life minutes out in the thickets of the white picket fences. She never said it then in so many words but that seemed to be the aim. And to be truthful, although I was only just barely thinking about it at the time, as the social turmoil of the times got weird, diffuse, and began to evaporate things started to lose steam. As we were, seemingly, endlessly taking our one-sided beatings as those in charge started a counter-offensive ( a counter-offensive still going on) people, good people, but people made of human clay nevertheless got tired of the this and that existence, even Joyel. Joyel of Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of relationships 24/7 was also weary and wary of what was next and where she fit into “square” society. Christ, enough of that, we know, or knew, that song too well.

A couple of days before Angelica was to leave, and on a day when the sun seemed especially bright, especially bright for then smog-filled Los Angeles January, and warm, not resident warm but Boston and Muncie warm, sat like two seals sunning ourselves in the glow of mother ocean she nudged me and asked me if I had a joint. Now Angelica liked a little vino now and then but I can’t recall her ever doing a joint (grass, marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever you call it in your woods). So this is new. The problem, although not a big one in ocean-side state park 1970 Southern California, was that I was not “holding.” No problem though, a few spots down the beach was an old well-traveled, kind of beat-up Volkswagen van that I knew, knew just as sure as I was standing on that white sand beach, was “holding.” I went over, asked around, and “bingo” two nice big joints came traveling with me back to our campsite. Oh, daddy, daddy out in the be-bop blue-pink night thank you brother van man. For just a minute, just that 1970 California minute, the righteous did inherit the earth.

Back at our camp site Angelica awaited the outcome of my quest, although she also wanted to wait until later, until the day’s sun started going down a bit more to go into that smoked-filled good night. When that later came Angelica was scared/ thrilled, as she tried to smoke the one I lit up for her and started coughing like crazy, but that was nothing then. Everybody, at least everybody I knew, went through that same baptism. But Jesus, did we get mellow, that stuff, as was most stuff then, was primo, not your ragweed bull stuff that ran the rounds later. And why should it have not been so as we were so close to the then sane Mexican border of those days to get the good stuff.

But all of this build-up over this dope scene is so much filler, filler in those days when if you didn’t at least take a pipe full (inhale or not, like it or not) you were a square “squared.” What the stuff did for Angelica, and through Angelica to me, got her to open up a little. No, not about family, or old boyfriends, or her this and that problems. No, but kind of deep, kind of deep somewhere that she maybe didn’t know existed. Deep as I had ever heard her before. She talked about her fate, the fate of the fates, about what was going on in the world, no, not politics; she was organically incapable of that. Mystics stuff, getting in touch with the sea homeland stuff, earth mother stuff too in a way. Dope-edged stuff sure but when she compared the splashing foam-flecked waves to some cosmic force that I forget how she put it (remember I was dope-addled as well) then for just that moment, just that moment when the old red-balled sun started to dip to the horizon on one of those fairly rare days when it met the ocean I swear that Angelica knew, knew in her heart, knew in her soul even, what the blue-pink American West dream stuff I had bombarded her with was all about. That was our moment, and we both knew it.

So when leaving came a couple of days later and we both knew, I think, as we packed up her things, including that well-used sleeping bag, we had come to a parting of the roads. As I put her stuff in the rental car she sweetly blurted out something I was also thinking, “I’ll always remember that night we made the earth under the cabin in Steubenville shake.” And I thought I bet she will, although she forgot the part about the making the roof of the cabin move too. And so there I was, waving as she drove off to her Angelica dreams. And I never saw her again.

Postscript: That last statement about never seeing her again is not exactly true. I have, at least up until a few years ago, and you have probably too, seen her in films and magazines. I don’t know all the later details, because I eventually lost contact with John and Mattie after they went to Mexico and got caught up, got badly caught up in, the small-time end of the international drug trade of the time, but Angelica eventually moved out to California with her boyfriend, and connected with David, the film-maker I mentioned before. And it seems I am a prophet for the still and moving cameras caught that look, that look I sensed when I first met Angelica because she went on to have a successful small-part movie and commercial-making career. She was not the in-your-face-beautiful leading lady in the films but the who-was-that-other-good-looking-ah-fetching actress who you started thinking about later and really set your soul ablaze. The one that would, if you knew her, set your silly, twisted philosophical head straight after about two minutes with her. Or, if in a commercial, her look told you that, yes, maybe I had better buy about a dozen of those widgets she is selling although what on earth I will do with them is beyond me. Ya that look, that Muncie fresh, guileless look. I hope, hope to high heaven, that she got her version of the blue-pink night as well.