***In The Time Of “Beat Daddy” Jean Bon Kerouac-Jack Kerouac’s American Journey 

Book Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Jack Kerouac’s American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey Of On The Road, Paul Maher, Jr.,Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 2007       

Everybody, everybody still breathing and with enough memory to pull it off, and with any literary skills coupled with some wild-eyed youthful romance vision of the open road, long forgotten and suppressed, scurried like crazy to get something in print for the 50^th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s great American novel and classic road travelogue, On The Road, in 2007.

While Jack Kerouac was clearly the leader of the pack of 1950s “beat” writers, and is rightly regarded as such by most literary critics and the general reading public still interested in such matters, the areas to be mined in order to say something new about that classic “coming of age” saga has gotten rather barren of late. So Paul Maher in the book under review, Jack Kerouac’s American Journey, tried a different tact by going to the sources, the real-life adventures by the people that were the models and sketches uses by Kerouac as that project came to fruition. While, as with most works that rely on Kerouac’s note and journals, the line between fiction and real-life after all this time is somewhat blurred there is no question Maher has provoked a certain amount of thought about the effects the book has had on the several “youth nation” generations since the book was first published in 1957.

For this writer, a member in good standing of the Generation of ’68, the generation after Jack’s “beats,” the import of the book was, despite Kerouac’s vociferous disclaimers to the contrary, as a road map to break out of the stifling bourgeois respectability that our parents, parents bringing up children in the frigid red scare Cold War 1950 night wanted to impose on us. In short, we  were mesmerized (we young men anyway) by the buddy duo of Dean and Sal as they headed out on the open highway, breaking convention, busting out the dope, lusting after women, and getting all naked and funky in the process while being be-bop daddies in the wide open towns of this country, especially  San Francisco. For us that was the great appeal and no more needed to be applied.           

Paul Maher’s story line recognizes that aspect of the book but wishes to tell us that we, we of the Generation of ’68, had only half the story, the literary half and that the real story behind that novel which took several years to publish after its completion (that publishing story is included here too) is almost as compelling. Although no question if Mister Maher’s work were the novel that it would have long ago gone on the remainder lists. The roar of the road becomes more humdrum when one see the actual actions of Sal/Jack, Dean/Neal and the large cast of characters that passed through this beat travelogue. While the wine, women and song aspect will always resonant with some of future reading publics the real-life figures were made of clay, would not pass muster on the women question, and would be far less romantic that today’s more appropriate anti-hero novelistic characters. Kerouac after all was trying to tell a story of a lost (maybe “a never was”) America with outsized cowboy and outlaw heroes out of the old West in the age of the New West. Throw in the reality of some extremely individualistic and at time bizarre behavior, Catholic mysticism, and the like and the novel certainly has greater appeal. Some interesting material to think through here but I keep getting this nagging suspicion that wine, women, song and the open road is what will draw the young (and others) to Kerouac’s book as we wait upon the centennial. Read up, please.       

***Not Sam Spade- Dashiell Hammett’s Woman In The Dark  

 

 

Book Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Woman In The Dark, Dashiell Hammett, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1933

Sure, everybody knows, or at least everybody used to know, Dashiell Hammett’s classic prototypical hard-boil detective Sam Spade from his The Maltese Falcon. Hammett along with Raymond Chandler and his Philip Marlowe series of crime novels set the then modern day expression of what a literary detective should look like in comparison with the old parlor detectives. Others may recall a different style with the suave and sophisticated husband and wife pair of Nick and Nora Charles (okay with Asta too) of his last crime novel, The Thin Man (which led to a cinematic series with William Powell and Myra Loy). The novel under review, Woman In The Dark, was written just prior to that one and although it has no rough-hewn or suave detectives to save the day it did have an effect on that last novel. At least according to Robert Parker in his introduction here.        

This plotline is fairly simple although the same terse language and powerful physical and geographical descriptions of the more famous crime novels is still in evident. An ex-con, Steve, just out of the can becomes involved with a “woman of the night,” Luise, in a small town which is “owned” by some local Mayfair swell. The woman is a “guest” of that Mayfair swell but when he plays rough she decides to split. And winds up on Steve’s doorstep. Well said Mayfair swell took umbrage and went looking for her, found her, and set Steve up for another tumble in stir. Steve is not buying that, not buying Luise’s apparent fate as mapped out by our swell, and is handy enough to do something about it. Take a charge at a few windmills for a damsel in distress. Hey this theme sounds familiar is this guy kin to Sam Spade?  

***Gypsy Love?-Ray Milland’s Crystal Ball

 

DVD Review

 From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Crystal Ball, starring Ray Milland, Paulette Goddard, 1943

No question the golden age of the romantic comedy, the chaste boy meets girl love romantic comedy, was in the late 1930s and early 1940 at the time of black and white film. When one thinks of that period the names of directors like Frank Capra and Preston Sturgis automatically come to mind with classic films like It Happened One Night and Sullivan’s Travels. However there were other directors and other films that filled that late Great Depression and World War II movie theater night in order to help take away the blues and to give sighs. The film under review starring suave Ray Milland and fetching Paulette Goddard in Crystal Ball is one such effort. No so much for the plotline which is fairly thin, nor for the acting although that is okay but for the “feel good” sense of the thing in order to help those left behind at home while the boys are off doing what they have to do to rid the world of some evils sigh and chase away the blues until said boys come home again.

Here’s why. A down on her luck former beauty contest loser po’ girl and crack rifle shot (played by Goddard) from Texas (although not all such po’ girls are from Texas) needed a job to keep herself going in New York City and not go home in defeat. As luck would faihave it Madame Z at the carnival takes this fetching lass under her wing and gets her work as a ringer. Now Madame Z is involved in all manner of scam using her arts as a classic fake crystal- ball gazer, including providing workers for scamming Mayfair swells women out of their jewelry and other valuables. Enter one such Mayfair swell lovely who has her lawyer (played by Ray Milland) on the love hooks who had been told to seek out Madame Z’s advice to find some lost jewelry. The whole deal was set up in order to get the lawyer to purchase land, oil land with the swell’s cash. Things move along and go awry though when our ringer falls, and falls hard for the lawyer. That falling hard, that inevitable meeting and meshing of ringer and lawyer despite all obstacles, including that Mayfair swell and many scenes of mandatory misdirection until love conquers all is what brings the sighs. And I am sure chased a few 1940s female movie-goer blues away as well.           

Free Chelsea Manning Now- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning!

Chelsea Manning was remembered and honored as the Veterans For Peace contingent marched in the Rockport, Ma annual Fourth of July parade spreading the urgent word of peace in our troubled and dangerous times. We will not leave of sister behind. President Obama pardon Chelsea Manning Now!   

***Sitting On The Rim Of The World- With The Son Of The Neon Wilderness Nelson Algren In Mind-Take Three

He wrote of small-voiced people, the desperately lonely, alienatedpeople who inhabit the Nighthawk Diner (artist Edward Hopper’s or Tom Waits’ take your pick), the restless, the sleepless, the shiftless, those who worked the late shift, those who drew the late shift of life, those who worked better under the cover of night in the dark alleyways and sullen doorways.

He wrote big time, big words, about the small-voiced people, big words for people who spoke in small words, spoke small words about small dreams, or no dreams, spoke only of the moment, the eternal moment. Waiting eternally waiting to get well, to get some kicks. Waiting for the fixer man, waiting for the fixer man to fix what ailed them. Not for him the small voice pleasant Midwestern farmers proving breadbaskets to the world, the prosperous small town drugstore owners, or of Miss Millie’s beauty salon (although one suspects that he could have) for in the pull and push of the writing profession they had (have) their muses. Nor was he inclined to push the air out of the small town banker seeking a bigger voice, the newspaper publisher seeking to control the voices or the alderman or his or her equivalent who had their own apparatuses for getting their small voices heard (although again one suspects he could have, if so inclined, shilled for that set). No, he, Nelson Algren, he, to give him a name took dead aim at the refuge of society, the lumpen as he put it in the title of one short story, those sitting on the rim of the world.

And he did good, did good by his art, did good by his honest snarly look at the underside of society, and, damn, by making us think about that quarter turn of fate that separated the prosperous farmer (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not short-weighting the world), the drugstore owner (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not dispensing his wares, his potent drugs, out the back door to a craving market) , Miss Millie (assuming as we must that she, secretly, was not running a call girl service on the side), the banker (assuming as we must that he, maybe secretly maybe not, was not gouging rack rents and usurious interest), the newspaper editor (assuming as we must that he, very publicly, in fact was printing all the news fit to print), and the politician (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not bought and paid for by all of the above, or others) from the denizens of his mean streets. The mean city streets, mainly of Chicago, but that is just detail, just names of streets and sections of town to balance his work where his characters eked out an existence, well, anyway they could, some to turn up face down in some muddy ravine, under some railroad trestle, in some dime flop house, other to sort of amble along in the urban wilderness purgatory.

Brother Algren gave us characters to chew on, plenty of characters, mostly men, mostly desperate (in the very broadest sense of that word), mostly with some jones to work off, mostly with some fixer man in the background to wreak havoc too. He gave us two classics of the seamy side genre, one, the misbegotten Frankie Machine, the man with the golden arm, the man with the chip on his shoulder, the mid-century(20^th century, okay) man ill at ease in his world, ill at ease with the world and looking, looking for some relief, some kicks in that mid-century parlance, and, two, that hungry boy, that denizen of the great white trash night, Dove Linkhorn, who, perhaps more than Frankie spoke to that mid-century angst, spoke to that world gone wrong, for those who had just come up, come up for some place where time stood still to gain succor in the urban swirl, to feast at the table,come up from the back forty lots, the prairie golden harvest wheat fields, the Ozarks, all swamps and ooze,mountain wind hills and hollows, the infested bayous and were ready to howl, howl at the moon to get attention.

I remember reading somewhere, and I have forgotten where now, that someone had noted that Nelson Algren’s writing on Dove Linkhorn roots was the most evocative piece on the meaning of the okie–arkie out migration segment of that mid-century America ever written, the tale of the wandering boys, the railroad riders, the jungle camp jumpers, the skid row derelicts. Hell, call it by its right name, the white trash, that lumpen mush. And he or she was right, of course, after I went back and re-read that first section of Walk On The Wild Side where the Linkhorn genealogy back unto the transport ships that brought the first crop of that ilk from thrown out Europe are explored. All the pig thieves, cattle-rustlers, poacher, highwaymen, the “what did some sociologist call them, oh yeah, “the master-less men, those who could not or would not be tamed by the on-rushing wheels of free-form capitalism picked up steam, the whole damn lot transported. And good riddance.

The population of California after World War II was filled to the brim with such types, the feckless hot rod boys, boys mostly too young to have been though the bloodbaths of Europe and Asia building some powerful road machines out of baling wire and not much else, speeding up and down those ocean-flecked highways looking for the heart of Saturday night, looking for kicks just like those Chicago free-flow junkies, those twisted New Orleans whoremasters. Wandering hells angels riding two by two (four by four if they felt like it and who was to stop them) creating havoc for the good citizens of those small towns they descended on, descended on unannounced (and unwelcomed by those same good citizens). In and out of jail, Q, Folsom, not for stealing pigs now, but armed robberies or some egregious felony, but kindred to those lost boys kicked out of Europe long ago. Corner boys, tee-shirted, jacket against cold nights, hanging out with time on their hands and permanent smirks, permanent hurts, permanent hatreds, paid to that Algren observation. All the kindred of the cutthroat world, or better cut your throat world, that Dove drifted into was just a microcosm of that small-voiced world.

He spoke of cities, even when his characters came fresh off the farm, abandoned for the bright lights of the city and useless to that short-weighting farmer who now is a prosperous sort, making serious dough as the breadbasket to the world. They, the off-hand hot rod king, the easy hell rider, the shiftless corner boy, had no existence in small towns and hamlets for their vices, or their virtues, too small, too small for the kicks they were looking for. They needed the anonymous city rooming house, the cold-water flat, the skid- row flop house, the ten- cent beer hall, hell, the railroad jungle, any place where they could just let go with their addictions, their anxieties, and their hunger without having to explain, endlessly explain themselves, always, always a tough task for the small-voiced of this wicked old world. They identified with cities, with city 24/7/365 lights, with Algren’s blessed neon lights, city traffic (of all kinds), squalor, cops on the take, cops not on the take, plebeian entertainments, sweat, a little dried blood, marked veins, reefer madness, swilled drinks, white towers, all night diners (see it always comes back to that lonely, alienated Nighthawk Diner just ask Waits), the early editions (for race results, the number, who got dead that day, the stuff of that world), a true vision of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk for a candid world.

He spoke of jazz and the blues, as if all the hell in this wicked old world could be held off for a minute while that sound sifted thought the night fog air reaching the rooming house, the flop, the ravine, the beer hall as it drifted out to the river and drowned. Music not upfront but as a backdrop to while the steamy summer nights away, and maybe winter too. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, he spoke of a small-voiced white world, residents of white slums and pursuers of white- etched dreams and only stick character blacks but his beat, his writing rhythm made no sense without the heat of Trouble In Mind or that cool blast of Charlie Parker, Miles, Dizzie be-bopping, made absolutely no sense, and so it went.

He spoke of love too. Not big flamed love, big heroes taking big falls for some hopeless romance like in olden times but squeezed love, love squeezed out of a spoon, maybe, but love in all its raw places. A guy turning his woman into a whore to feed his endless habit love, and her into a junkie love. A woman taking her man through cold turkey love. A man letting his woman go love, ditto woman her man when the deal went wrong. When the next best thing came by. Not pretty love all wrapped in a bow, but love nevertheless. And sometimes in this perverse old world the love a man has for a woman when, failing cold turkey, he goes to get the fixer man and that fixer man get his woman well, almost saintly and sacramental. Brothers and sisters just read The Last Carousel if you want to know about love. Hard, hard love. Yah, Nelson Algren knew how to give voice, no holds barred, to the small-voiced people.

***In The Time Of The Hard Motorcycle Boys- With Marlon Brando’s The Wild One In Mind-Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots"

 

Okay here is the book of genesis, the motorcycle book of genesis, or at least my motorcycle book of genesis. But, before I get to that let me make about seventy–six disclaimers. First, the whys and wherefores of the motorcycle culture, except on those occasions when they become subject to governmental investigation or impact some cultural phenomena, is outside the purview of the things I generally discuss. I am much more comfortable with the ins and outs of boy meets girl (or really boy longs to meet girl) in various teenage settings like at the drugstore soda fountain either sipping sodas or absent-mindedly listening to some selections on Doc’s jukebox, doing the stuff in drive-in theaters or drive-in restaurants or down by the shore getting all moony and spoony watching the “submarine races.”  But for all of their bad press, for all that every mother feared for her daughter’s safety when they were within fifty miles of town, for all a mother’s feat that she would lose her Johnny to the gangs I have been fascinated by motorcycles since my early youth when these were definitely outlaw vehicles.

Frankly there is no political rule, no political line, as a rule, on such activity, for or against, nor should there be. Those exceptions include when motorcyclists, usually under the rubric of “bad actor” motorcycle clubs, like the famous (or infamous) Oakland, California-based Hell’s Angels are generally harassed by the cops and we have to defend their right to be left alone (you know, those "helmet laws", and the never-failing pull-over for "driving while biker") or, like when the Angels were used by the Rolling Stones at Altamont and that ill-advised decision represented a watershed in the 1960s counter-cultural movement. Or, more ominously, from another angle when such lumpen formations form the core hell-raisers of anti-immigrant,  anti-gay, anti-women, anti-black liberation fascistic demonstrations and we are compelled, and rightly so, to go toe to toe with them. Scary yes, necessary yes, bikes or no bikes.

Second, in the interest of full disclosure I own no stock, or have any other interest, in Harley-Davidson, or any other motorcycle company. Third, I do not now, or have I ever belonged to a motorcycle club or owned a motorcycle, although I have driven them, or, more often, on back of them on occasion. Fourth, I do not now, knowingly or unknowingly, although I grew up in working-class neighborhoods where bikes and bikers were plentiful, hang with such types. Fifth, the damn things and their riders are too noisy, despite the glamour and “freedom” of the road associated with them. Sixth, and here is the “kicker”, I have been, endlessly, fascinated by bikes and bike culture as least since early high school, if not before, and had several friends who “rode”. Well that is not seventy-six but that is enough for disclaimers.

Okay, as to genesis, motorcycle genesis. Let’s connect the dots. A couple of years ago, and maybe more, as part of a trip down memory lane, the details of which do not need detain us here, I did a series of articles on various world-shaking, earth-shattering subjects like high school romances, high school hi-jinks, high school dances, high school Saturday nights, and most importantly of all, high school how to impress the girls( or boys, for girls, or whatever sexual combinations fit these days, but you can speak for yourselves, I am standing on this ground). In short, high school sub-culture, American-style, early 1960s branch, although the emphasis there, as it will be here, is on that social phenomena as filtered through the lenses of a working class town, a seen better days town at that, my growing up wild-like-the-weeds town.

One of the subjects worked over in that series was the search, the eternal search I might add, for the great working-class love song. Not the Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel generic mush that could play in Levittown, Shaker Heights or La Jolla as well as Youngstown or Moline. No, a song that, without blushing, one could call our own, our working class own, one that the middle and upper classes might like but would not put on their dance cards. As my offering to this high-brow debate I offered a song by written by Englishman Richard Thompson (who folkies, and folk rockers, might know from his Fairport Convention days, very good days, by the way), Vincent Black Lightning, 1952. (See lyrics below.) Without belaboring the point the gist of this song is the biker romance, British version, between outlaw biker James and black-leathered, red-headed Molly. Needless to say such a tenuous lumpen existence as James leads to keep himself “biked" cuts short any long term “little white house with picket fence” ending for the pair. And we do not need such a boring finish. For James, after losing the inevitable running battle with the police, on his death bed bequeaths his bike, his precious “Vincent Black Lightning,” to said Molly. His bike, man. His bike. Is there any greater love story, working class love story, around? No, this makes West Side Story lyrics and a whole bunch of other such songs seem like so much cornball nonsense. His bike, man. Wow! Kudos, Brother Thompson.

Needless to say that exploration was not the end, but rather the beginning of thinking through the great American night bike experience. And, of course, for this writer that means going to the books, the films and the memory bank to find every seemingly relevant “biker” experience. Thus, readers of this space were treated to reviews of such classic motorcycle sagas as “gonzo” journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and other, later Rolling Stone magazine printed “biker” stories and Tom Wolfe’ Hell Angel’s-sketched Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and other articles about California subset youth culture that drove Wolfe’s work in the old days). And to the hellish Rolling Stones (band) Hell’s Angels “policed” Altamont concert in 1969. And, as fate would have it, with the passing of actor/director Dennis Hooper, the 1960s classic biker/freedom/ seeking the great American night film, Easy Rider. And from Easy Rider to the “max daddy” of them all, tight-jeaned, thick leather-belted, tee-shirted, engineer-booted, leather-jacketed, taxi-driver-capped (hey, that’s what it reminds me of), side-burned, chain-linked wielding, hard-living, alienated, but in the end really just misunderstood, Johnny, aka, Marlon Brando, in The Wild One.

Okay, we will cut to the chase on the plot. Old Johnny and his fellow “outlaw” motorcycle club members are out for some weekend “kicks” after a hard week’s non-work (as far as we can figure out, work was marginal for many reasons, as Hunter Thompson in Hell’s Angels noted, to biker existence, the pursue of jack-rolling, armed robbery or grand theft auto careers probably running a little ahead) out in the sunny California small town hinterlands.(They are still heading out there today, the last time I noticed, in the Southern California high desert, places like Twenty-Nine Palms and Joshua Tree.)

And naturally, when the boys (and they are all boys here, except for couple of “mamas”, one spurned by Johnny, in a break-away club led by jack-in-the-box jokester, Lee Marvin as Chino) hit one small town they, naturally, after sizing up the local law, head for the local café (and bar). And once one mentions cafes in small towns in California (or Larry McMurtry’s West Texas, for that matter), then hard-working, trying to make it through the shift, got to get out of this small town and see the world, dreamy-eyed, naïve (yes, naive) sheriff-daughtered young waitress, Kathy, (yes, and hard-working, it’s tough dealing them off the arm in these kind of joints, or elsewhere) Johnny trap comes into play. Okay, now you know, even alienated, misunderstood, misanthropic, cop-hating (an additional obstacle given said waitress’s kinships) boy Johnny needs, needs cinematically at least, to meet a girl who understands him.

The development of that young hope, although hopeless, boy meets girl romance relationship, hither and yon, drives the plot.  Oh, and along the way the boys, after a few thousand beers, as boys, especially girl-starved biker boys, will, at the drop of a hat start to systematically tear down the town, off-handedly, for fun. Needless to say, staid local burghers (aka “squares”) seeing what amount to them is their worst 1950s “communist” invasion nightmare, complete with murder, mayhem and rapine, (although that “c” word was not used in the film, nor should it have been) are determined to “take back” their little town. A few fights, forages, casualties, fatalities, and forgivenesses later though, still smitten but unquenched and chaste Johnny (and his rowdy crowd) and said waitress part, wistfully. The lesson here, for the kids in the theater audience, is that biker love outside biker-dom is doomed. For the adults, the real audience, the lesson: nip the “terrorists” in the bud (call in the state cops, the national guard, the militia, the 82nd Airborne, The Strategic Air Command, NATO, hell, even the “weren't we buddies in the war” Red Army , but nip it, fast when they come roaming through Amityville, Archer City, or your small town).

After that summary you can see what we are up against. This is pure fantasy Hollywood cautionary tale on a very real 1950s phenomena, “outlaw” biker clubs, mainly in California, but elsewhere as well. Hunter Thompson did yeoman’s work in his Hell’s Angels to “discover” who these guys were and what drove them, beyond drugs, sex, rock and roll (and, yah, murder and mayhem, the California prison system was a “home away from home”). In a sense the “bikers” were the obverse of the boys (again, mainly) whom Tom Wolfe, in many of his early essays, was writing about and who were (a) forming the core of the surfers on the beaches from Malibu to La Jolla and, (b) driving the custom car/hot rod/drive-in restaurant-centered (later mall-centered) cool, teenage girl–impressing, car craze night in the immediate post-World War II great American Western sunny skies and pleasant dream drift (physically and culturally). Except those Wolfe guys were the “winners”. The “bikers” were Nelson Algren’s “losers”, the dead-enders who didn’t hit the gold rush, the Dove Linkhorns (aka the Arkies and Okies who in the 1930s populated John Steinbeck’s Joad saga, The Grapes Of Wrath). Not cool, iconic Marlin-Johnny but hell-bend then-Hell Angels leader, Sonny Barger.

And that is why in the end, as beautifully sullen and misunderstood the alienated Johnny was, and as wholesomely rowdy as his gang was before demon rum took over, this was not the real “biker: scene, West or East. Now I lived, as a teenager in a working-class, really marginally working poor, neighborhood that I have previously mentioned was the leavings of those who were moving up in post-war society. That neighborhood was no more than a mile from the central headquarters of Boston's local Hell’s Angels (although they were not called that, I think it was Deathheads, or something like that). I got to see these guys up close as they rallied at various spots on our local beach or “ran” through our neighborhood on their way to some crazed action. The leader had all of the charisma of Marlon Brando’s thick leather belt. His face, as did most of the faces, spoke of small-minded cruelties (and old prison pallors) not of misunderstood youth. And their collective prison records (as Hunter Thompson also noted about the Angels) spoke of “high” lumpenism. And that takes us back to the beginning about who, and what, forms one of the core cohorts for a fascist movement in this country, the sons of Sonny Barger. Then we will need to rely on our street politics, our fists, and other such weapons.

*************

ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Lyrics and Chords

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike

A girl could feel special on any such like

Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you

It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952

And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems

Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme

And he pulled her on behind

And down to Box Hill they did ride

/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /

/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand

But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man

I've fought with the law since I was seventeen

I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine

Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22

And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you

And if fate should break my stride

Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae

For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery

Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside

Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside

When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left

He was running out of road, he was running out of breath

But he smiled to see her cry

And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world

Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl

Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do

They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52

He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys

He said I've got no further use for these

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome

Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

And he gave her one last kiss and died

A 1950s Atlantic Fourth Of July – With Cindy P., “The Girl With The Faraway Eyes” In Mind 

Cindy P., my best friend, was very helpful in preparing this sketch, especially one recent afternoon in her office when she related her own youthful Fourth of July experiences to me. I like to dedicate these things I write to various people or groups, but get this, she has insisted, do you hear me, insisted that I dedicate this piece to her. Get this too, she has insisted that I place a photo of her here as well so, and I paraphrase, all the boys can check her out just like they do all the women classmates. (Keep this between us I check them out too.) Well, when a woman doth command (is that the right tense?) what is a guy to do. [Sorry -No photo I could not reproduce it for this blog.]

*******

Probably like in your growing-up neighborhoods during the 1950s some group put together a Fourth of July event for kids and adults alike in order to righteously celebrate American independence in a festive form. That was true in the old Atlantic neighborhood at Welcome Young Field in the 1950s where my junior high school friend Frankie Riley held forth. And where I held forth, although indirectly. I did not know Frankie then since my family lived down in the Germantown projects for most of that decade but we would come up to Atlantic where my grandparents lived on Young Street on the Fourth from as early as I can remember. Once again, this is mainly a Frankie Riley story but it definitely could have been mine as well.  When Frankie thought back to those days he told me that he did not remember a lot of specific information and so he went on to a North Quincy-related site asking for information from others which he received and has been placed here as part of the sketch. Frankie did not ask permission to use the names of those who responded so I have fictionalized them here. If you have anything else to add please feel free to comment.     

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Frankie, Frankie Riley, couldn’t quite remember exactly when he had heard his first Fourth of July fire-cracker, or had seen and heard his first fireworks for that matter. He had gotten the two 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 in the early 1950s, would visit his grandparents’ house on the Fourth coming down from Walker Street. 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 the time when he first saw and heard fire-crackers and fireworks displays. He would eventually ask for help but for just that 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 that directly succeeded that big boom overture on the Charles. 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 level even 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 Quincy’s  Atlantic section was the center of the universe, and if not, it should have been. (Why it was called Atlantic he never really did get except Grandma Riley always called it “one-horse Atlantic” so it had to mean something)

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 local bar, the Red Feather, and some scattered fathers, including Joseph Riley, Senior, Frankie's father and also a denizen of the Red Feather, 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 Red Feather 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, holey 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 a younger woman, or a younger woman’s scorn at late night Red Feather antics, to move out into the great big world. But come late June the singles, the fathers, and occasionally the older brothers, were kings among men as they strong-armed neighbors and merchants alike for dough and goods.

Frankie was thankful for what he did remember. When he thought things though he suddenly realized that as these things go the day 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 was only the frame. Here is the real story of the day. Here is what any self-respecting kid like Frankie lived and died for on 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 from tables set up on Sagamore Street. Here is the secret to the success that Frankie’s older brothers, Joseph 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. Yah, right on the corner of Welcome Young Field on Sagamore Street. So, the trio would sprint with one load of goods up to their house and then go back for more until they had filled up the back-door refrigerator.

Just thinking about it Frankie thought, “Boy that was work, as we panted away, bottles clanging 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 too like the cheering for your friends in the foot races, or other contests, the panting and the hee-haws of the ponies but he would always remember the clang of the bottles. As the sun went down on the day it went down to the strains of some local pick-up band of the era in the tennis court as the dancing and talent show started. But that was adult time, a time for hazy adult-sized dreams. That time for him was to think back on his day's work, his hoard and the next day's and the next tonic and ice cream. Ah....

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What Frankie had not remembered clearly were the details of the organization of this extravaganza, how the money was gathered, what merchants provided what goods, and where did the lads get the various Fourth fixings. He called on help from a North Quincy-related website and gathered some interesting and informative responses:

Richard Mackey:

Frankie it was, like you said, organized by the guys at the Red Feather, 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, unsown 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 collecting money 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, Newbury, Atlantic, Walker, Young, Kendall, Chestnut, all the streets up to the high school and down to Wollaston Beach and had some of the older kid (15 or 16 year olds) 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 at the bar 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 and dreamy adult dance stuff in the tennis court. I think Mr. Burke won every year that I can remember for his "crazy legs dancing.” Joe Gilliam, 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 daughter with me there.

To which Frankie responded:

That Joe Gilliam Richard Mackey mentioned lived, with his dear sweet Irish-brogued mother, forever, never married, never missed a softball game, never had a dirty, unsown 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 Quincy 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 charms.

And then onto old time Atlantic denizen 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” Murphy (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.

To which Frankie replied:

 Sticky, glad to see you haven’t mellowed with age, at least according to your 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 forgotten memories part we all know that well-traveled path. Although you’re total memory recall for some flea-bitten thirty-yard dash for some crumb-bum dollar prize gives me pause on that one.

And then finally Irene Delaney chimed in:

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 where 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 Red Feather. On our way down Sagamore Street from Newbury Ave heading to Welcome Young everyone would get a shiny quarter for marching in the parade.

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…

 

A YouTube film clip of Jimi Hendrix performing the Stars-Spangled Banner at Woodstock, circa 1969. Yeah, I know that event is way after the time of this sketch and of our graduation but is there any better evocation of the national anthem for our generation than sweet boy Jimi’s version?