Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop 1960s Life-The Heart Of The San Francisco Fillmore Night, Circa 1967

 

A YouTube film clip of The Jefferson Airplane performing their classic wa-wa song Someone To Love to give a flavor of the times to this piece.



From The Pen Of [The Late] Peter Paul Markin

[A while back we, a bunch of us who knew Markin who wrote the sketch below back in sunnier days, in hang around corner boy high school days and afterward too when we young bravos imbibed in the West Coast dragon chase he led us on in the high hellish mid-1960s summers of love, got together and put out a little tribute compilation of his written sketches that we were able to cobble from whatever we collectively still had around. Those writings were from a time when Markin was gaining steam as a writer for many of the alternative magazines, journals and newspapers that were beginning to be the alternative network of media resources that we were reading once we knew the main media outlets were feeding us bullshit on a bun, were working hand in glove with big government, big corporations, big whatever that was putting their thumbs in our eyes.  

Yeah, those were the great days, the mid to late 1960s, and after he had gotten back from Vietnam the early 1970s say up to 1974 or so when whatever Markin wrote seemed like pure gold, seemed like he had the pulse of what was disturbing our dreams, had been able to articulate in words we could understand the big jail-break out he was one of the first around our town to anticipate. That was before he took the big fall down in Mexico, let his wanting habits, a term that our acknowledged high school corner boy leader Frankie Riley used incessantly to describe the poor boy hunger we had for dough, girls, stimulants, life, whatever, get the best of him. Of course Frankie “cribbed” it from some old blues song, maybe Bessie Smith, maybe Howlin’ Wolf that Markin also turned us onto although I admit in my own case that it took me many years, many years after Markin was long gone before I appreciated the blues that he kept trying to cram down our throats as the black-etched version of what hellish times were going through in the backwaters of North Adamsville while the rest of the world was getting ahead. Heading to leafy suburban golden dreams.  

From what little we could gather about Markin’s fate from Josh Breslin, a guy from Maine, a corner boy himself, who I will talk about more in a minute and who saw Markin just before he hit the lower depths, before he let sweet girl cousin cocaine run all around his brain, let the stuff alter his judgment, he went off to Mexico to “cover” the beginnings of the cartel action there. Somewhere along the line the down there Markin decided that dealing high heaven dope was the way that he would gather in his pot of gold, would get the dough he never had as a kid, and get himself well. “Well” meaning nothing but his nose so full of “candy” that the real world would no longer intrude on his life. Somehow he had tried his usual end-around, tried to do either an independent deal outside the cartel or stole some “product” to start his own operation, either scenario was possible when Markin got his wanting habits on and wound up dead, very mysteriously dead, in a dusty back street down Sonora way in 1975, 1976 we don’t even have the comfort of knowing that actual date.

Those were the bad end days, the days out in Oakland where they were both staying before Markin headed south when according to Josh he said “fuck you” to writing for squally newspapers and journals and headed for the sweet dream hills. But he left plenty of material behind that had been published or at the apartment that he shared with Josh in Oakland before the nose candy got in the way. That material wound up in several locations as Josh in his turn took up the pen, spent his career writing for lots of unread journals and newspapers in search of high-impact stories and drifted around the country before he settled down in Cambridge working as an free-lance editor for several well-known if small publishing houses around Boston. So when they idea was proposed by Jack Callahan to pay a final written tribute to our fallen comrade we went looking for whatever was left wherever it might be found. You know from cleaning out the attics, garages, cellars looking for boxes where an old newspaper article or journal piece might still be found after being forgotten for the past forty or so years.

The first piece we found, found by Jack Callahan, one of the guys who hung around with us corner boys although he had a larger circle since as a handsome guy he had all the social butterfly girls around him and as a star football player for North Adamsville High he had the girls and all the “jock” hangers-on bumming on his tail, was a story by Markin for the East Bay Other about the transformation of Phil Larkin from “foul-mouth” Phil to “far-out’ Phil as a result of the big top social turmoil events which grabbed many of us who came of political, social, and cultural age in the roaring 1960s. Markin like I said before had been the lead guy in sensing the changes coming, had us following in his wake not only in our heads but his gold rush run in the great western trek to California where a lot of the trends got their start.

That is where we met the subject of the second piece, or rather Phil did and we did subsequently too as we made our various ways west, Josh Breslin, Josh from up in Podunk Maine, actually Olde Saco fast by the sea, and he became in the end one of the corner boys, one of the North Adamsville corner boys. But before those subsequent meetings he had first become part of Phil’s “family,” and as that second story documented also in the East Bay Other described it how Josh, working his new life under the moniker Prince Love, “married” one of the Phil’s girlfriends, Butterfly Swirl. The third one in the series, the one below,  deals with the reality of Phil’s giving up that girlfriend to Prince Love and the “marriage” and “honeymoon,”  1960s alternative-style that cemented that relationship. Yeah, those were wild times and if a lot of the social conventions accepted today without too much rancor like people living together as a couple without the benefit of marriage, same-sex marriage, and maybe even friends with benefits let me clue in to where they all started, or if not started got a big time work-out to make things acceptable.           

For those not in the know, for those who didn’t read the first Phil Larkin piece where I mentioned what corner boy society in old North Adamsville was all about Phil was one of a number of guys, some say wise guys but we will let that pass who hung around successively Harry’s Variety Store over on Sagamore Street in elementary school,  Doc’s Drugstore complete with soda fountain and more importantly his bad ass jukebox complete with all the latest rock and roll hits as they came off the turntable on Newport Avenue in junior high school and Salducci’s Pizza “up the Downs” in high school, don’t worry nobody in the town could figure that designation out either, as their respective corners as the older guys in the neighborhood in their turn moved up and eventually out of corner boy life.

More importantly Phil was one of the guys who latter followed in “pioneer” Markin’s wake when he, Markin, headed west in 1966 after he had finished up his sophomore year in college and made a fateful decision to drop out of school in Boston in order to “find himself.” Fateful in that without a student deferment that “find himself” would eventually lead him to induction into the U.S. Army at the height of the Vietnam War, an experience which he never really recovered from for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do directly with that war but which honed his “wanting habits” for a different life than he had projected when he naively dropped out of college to see “what was happening” out on the West Coast.

Phil had met, or I should say that Josh had met Phil, out on Russian Hill in San Francisco when Josh, after hitchhiking all the way from Maine in the early summer of 1967, had come up to the yellow brick road converted school bus (Markin’s term for the travelling caravan that he and Phil were then part of and which the rest of us, including even stay-at-home me for a few months ) he and a bunch of others were travelling up and down the West Coast on and had asked for some dope. Phil was the guy he had asked, and who had passed him a big old joint, and their eternal friendship formed from there. (Most of us would meet Josh later that summer as we in our turns headed out. Sam Lowell, Frankie Riley, Jack Callahan, Jimmy Jenkins and me all headed out after Markin who had “gone native” pleaded with us to not miss this big moment that he had been predicting was going to sea-change happens for a few years.) Although Markin met a tragic end murdered down in Mexico several years later over a still not well understood broken drug deal with some small cartel down there as a result of an ill-thought out pursuit of those wanting habits mentioned earlier he can take full credit for our lifetime friendship with Josh.-Bart Webber]  

 

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in After Bathing At Baxter’s, The Jefferson Airplane’s Fillmore West-driven classic wa-wa song, Someone To Love.

 

It wasn’t my idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967. Married Prince Love (a.k.a. Joshua Breslin, late of Olde Saco High School Class of 1967, that’s up in Maine) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my “family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had “adopted” the Prince here on Russian Hill one day when he was looking for dope. Funny how we connected over dope which five years ago would have been a no-go and we would have looked at each other in a surly manner to see if one of us was a cop. But such are the times that a complete stranger could come up, say the magic words and out pops a big old blunt. Before that meeting with Josh turned Prince Love I had traveled all through the great western blue-pink night, as my old North Adamsville corner boyfriend, Peter Paul Markin, would say, the guy who pleaded with me like crazy to join him on the western trek and not miss out on the big events coming to our generation and since I didn’t have any reason to say no I met up with him, this his three trip out, in Ames, Iowa where  I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry prankster bus.



I had brought Butterfly and Lupe Matin (her Ames “road” name then although more recently she has been going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea she has gone male, gone dyke, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my back to prove it.  It’s just her, well, thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from Vassar, that’s a high-end New York college for women, one of the seven sisters, Ivy League, okay) up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,” Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Far-Out Phil (a. k. a. Phil Larkin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay) “married” them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown the coop on me. 



It was all Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jacoby) just then, which was always a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now that they, the “they” being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on the hills of San Francisco the notion that Prince Love and Butterfly Swirl were “married” under the sign of “Far-Out Phil” and would have now have a proper bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question. Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his stride.    



Here is the “skinny.”  The Captain knew somebody, hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind, connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain twenty prime tickets to the concert. [Everybody suspected that the deal was more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced acid, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely, from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets. That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs.] So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric Kool-Aid acid test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception.   And, see, the Prince and Butterfly, were not to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay). And once the acid hit the Captain said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all, that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception.     



Saturday night came, and everybody was dressed to the nines. (Yeah, that’s an old Frankie Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to say hot, edgy, be-hop.)  Let’s just concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of what nines looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on the subject,  it wasn’t really see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been “seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and made no apologies for being so.  She also wore a short mini-skirt that was de rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing skirts were to come into fashion a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling, starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total  effect that even had the Captain going, and the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang Sally.                  



And the “groom”? Going back to Olde Saco roots he wore along with his now longer flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy times and a magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way, I told the Captain later that the Prince had no idea of making a statement, and being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around, he just grabbed what was at hand).

Now back to the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left the merry prankster yellow bus to make the one mile trip over to the Fillmore. So everybody, including the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of Kool-Aid. The Prince and Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the Captain proposed to use Kool-Aid for the toast. Well, we shall see.  And they shall see.         



And they “saw,” or rather saw once the acid (LSD) kicked in about an hour later, more or less, just in time for the concert to rev them up. Now what you “see” on an acid trip is a very individual thing, moreover other than that powerful rush existential moment that you find yourself living in it defies description, literary niceness description, especially from a couple of kids on their “wedding night.”  So what is left? Well, some observations by “father” Far-Out Phil, now a veteran acid-eater, as I hovered over my new-found “family” to insure that they made a safe landing. 



The first thing I noticed was that Butterfly Swirl was gyrating like crazy when the female singer in front of Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, started up on their acid rock anthem, White Rabbit. Some of Butterfly’s moves had half the guys in the place kind of male hippie “leering” at her (mainly giving her a sly nod of approval, and making a mental note to check her out later when the dope hit her at the high point in another couple of hours or so). Remember she had on that diaphanous peasant blouse, and also remember that sexual thoughts, leering sexual thoughts or not, did not fade away when under the influence of LSD. In many cases the sexual arousal effect was heightened, particularly when a little high- grade herb was thrown into the mix. I thought nothing in particular of her actions just then, many guys and girls were gyrating, were being checked-out and were making mental notes of one kind or another. It was only when Butterfly started to “believe” that she was Alice, the Alice of the song and of wonderland, and repeated “I am Alice, I am alive,” about thirteen times that I moved over to her quickly and gave her a battle-scarred veteran’s calming down, a couple of hits off the Columbia Gold that I had just coped from some freak.       



And where was Prince Love during the trial by fire honeymoon night? Gyrating with none other than Lance Peters, who you may know as Luscious Lois or seven other names, but who was my main honey now that Butterfly has flown my coop. Don’t call her Lance Peters this night because after a tab of acid (beyond her congratulations Kool-Aid cup earlier) she was now Laura Opal in her constant name-game change run through the alphabet. Prince Love had finally “seen” the virtues of being with older women like I had learned back in Ames, Iowa time, an older voluptuous woman and although she was wearing no Butterfly diaphanous blouse Prince felt electricity running through his veins as they encircled each other on the dance floor. Encircled each other and then, slyly, very slyly, I thought when I heard the story the next day, backed out of the Fillmore to wander the streets of Haight-Ashbury until the dawn.  Then to find shelter in some magic bus they thought was the Captain’s but when they were awoken by some tom-toms drumming out to eternity around noontime found out that they were in the “Majestic Moon” tribe’s bus.



No hassle, no problem, guests always welcome. Yah that is the way it was then. When I cornered, although cornered may be too strong a word,  the Prince later all that he would commit to was that he had been devoured by Mother Earth and had come out on the other side. That, and that he had seen god, god close up. Laura Quirk, if she is still running under that name now, merely stated that she was god. Oh yah, and had seen the now de rigueur stairway to heaven paved with brilliant lights. She certainly knew how to get around her Phil when the deal went down, no question.  



And how did the evening end with Butterfly and me, after I “consoled” her with my ready-teddy herbal remedy? After a search for Prince and Lance, a pissed off search for me,  we went over into a corner and started staring at one of the strobe lights off the walls putting ourselves into something of a trance-like mood. A short time later, I, formerly nothing but a hard-luck, hard-nosed, world-wide North Adamsville corner boy in good standing started involuntarily yelling, “I am Alice, I am alive,” about ten times.  Butterfly though that was the funniest thing she had ever heard and came over to me and handed me a joint, a joint filled with some of that same Columbia Gold that settled her down earlier. I, like Butterfly before me, did calm down. Calmed down enough to see our way “home” to Captain Crunch’s Crash-Pad where we, just for old time’s sake, spend the hours until dawn making love. (I send my apologies to those two thousand guys at the Fillmore who had made notes to check on Butterfly later. Hey, I was not a king hell corner boy back in the North Adamsville be-bop night for nothing. You have to move fast sometimes in this wicked old world, even when the point was to slow the circles down.)  Asked later what her “trip” had felt like all Butterfly could utter was her delight in my antics. That, the usual color dream descriptions, and that she had climbed some huge himalaya mountain and once on top climbed a spiraling pole forever and ever. I just chuckled my old corner boy chuckle.  



And what of Butterfly and Prince’s comments on their maiden voyage as newlyweds? They pronounced themselves very satisfied with their Fillmore honeymoon night. They then went off for what was supposed to be a few days down to Big Sur where Captain Crunch had some friends, Captain had friends everywhere, everywhere that mattered, who lent them their cabin along the ocean rocks and they had a “real” honeymoon. A few weeks later Prince Love, now a solo prince, came back to the bus. It seemed that Butterfly had had her fill of being “on the bus,” although she told the Prince to say thanks to everybody for the dope, sex, and everything but that at heart her heart belonged to her golden-haired surfer boy and his search for the perfect wave.    



Well, we all knew not everybody was built for the rigors of being “on the bus” so farewell Kathleen Clarke, farewell. And just then, after hearing this story,  I thought that Prince had better keep his Olde Saco eyes off Lannie Rose (yes she has changed her name again) or I might just remember, seriously remember, some of those less savory North Adamsville be-bop corner boy nights. Be forewarned, sweet prince.   

Artists’ Corner- Happy 600^th Birthday Piero della Francesca

 

Zack James comment:

 

Normally my tastes in art run to the late Expressionists, Surrealists, Abstract Expressionists, works in that vein, more modern material that represents to my mind a more truthful representation of a fractured world we live in. But a painter like early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca interests me because if you look at his work while he is as religiously oriented as any other 14^th century painter he does not play for that that wicked sense of adoration that the more traditional artists strove for to show their love of God, or something sublime like that. As the paint above demonstrates della Francesca has a more modern look, tells a story but without the glitter and halos. So thanks. And happy 600^th birthday brother.

Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop 1960s Life-When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love-An Encore

Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop 1960s Life-When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love-An Encore

 

 

From The Pen Of [The Late] Peter Paul Markin

[A while back we, a bunch of us who knew Markin back in sunnier days before he took the big fall down in Mexico, let his wanting habits, a term that our acknowledged high school corner boy leader Frankie Riley used incessantly to describe the poor boy hunger we had for dough, girls, stimulants, life, whatever, get the best of him got together and put out a little tribute compilation of his written sketches that we cobbled from whatever we collectively still had around. You know from cleaning out the attics, garages, cellars looking for boxes where an old newspaper article or journal piece might still be found after being forgotten for the past forty or so years.

The first piece we found, found by Jack Callahan one of the guys who hung around with us corner boys although he had a larger circle since as a handsome guy he had all the social butterfly girls around him and as a star football player for North Adamsville High he had the girls and all the “jock” hangers-on bumming on his tail, was about the transformation of Phil Larkin from “foul-mouth” Phil to “far-out’ Phil as a result of the big top social turmoil events which grabbed many of us who came of political, social, and cultural age in the roaring 1960s. Markin had been the lead guy in sensing the changes coming, had us following in his wake not only in our heads but his golf rush run in the great western trek to California where a lot of the trends got their start. That is where we met the subject of this piece, or rather Phil did and we did subsequently as we made our various ways west, Josh Breslin, Josh from up in Podunk Maine, actually Olde Saco fast by the sea, and he became in the end one of the corner boys, one of the North Adamsville corner boys.        

For those not in the know, for those who didn’t read the Phil Larkin piece where I mentioned what corner boy society in old North Adamsville was all about Phil was one of a number of guys, some say wise guys but we will let that pass who hung around successively Harry’s Variety Store over on Sagamore Street in elementary school,  Doc’s Drugstore complete with soda fountain and more importantly his bad ass jukebox complete with all the latest rock and roll hits as they came off the turntable on Newport Avenue in junior high school and Salducci’s Pizza “up the Downs” in high school, don’t worry nobody in the town could figure that designation out either, as their respective corners as the older guys in the neighborhood in their turn moved up and eventually out of corner boy life.

More importantly Phil was one of the guys who followed in “pioneer” Markin’s wake when he headed west in 1966 after he had finished up his sophomore year in college and made a fateful decision to drop out of school in order to “find himself.” Fateful in that without a student deferment it would eventually lead him to induction into the U.S. Army at the height of the Vietnam War, an experience which he never really recovered from for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do directly with that war but which honed his “wanting habits” for a different life than he had projected when he naively dropped out of college to see “what was happening” out in the West.

Phil had met, or I should say that Josh had met Phil, out on Russian Hill in San Francisco when Josh, after hitchhiking all the way from Maine in the early summer of 1967, had come up to the yellow brick road converted school bus (Markin’s term) he and a bunch of others were travelling up and down the West Coast on and had asked for some dope. Phil was the guy he had asked, passed him a big old joint, and their eternal friendship formed from there. (Most of us would meet Josh later that summer as we in our turns headed out. Sam Lowell, Frankie Riley, Jack Callahan, Jimmy Jenkins and me all headed out after Markin pleaded with us to not miss this big moment that he had been predicting was going to sea-change happens for a few years.) Although Markin met a tragic end murdered down in Mexico several years later over a still not well understood broken drug deal with some small cartel down there as a result of an ill-thought out pursuit those wanting habits mentioned earlier he can take full credit for our lifetime friendship with Josh.-Bart Webber]  

 

“Jesus, I never thought I would get here and here I am in San Francisco all in one piece standing at the foot of  Russian Hill,” Russian Hill where all the ‘hippies’ were hanging out before they went over to Golden Gate Park a few months before and ‘blew their minds, really blew their minds from what somebody had told him about the trendy electric kool-aid acid tests, taking hits of powerful psychedelics like LSD in Dixie cups filled, for the unwary or those who preferred to pay homage to their childhood delight with name your flavor Kool-Aid, cool. The speaker of those words, Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love or Prince, and hereafter so identified reflecting the mania for the sometimes off-the-wall monikers to go with the new sensibilities of the age, to break out of the slave names as some clever wit put it with tongue in-cheek), late of Olde (very old to hear him tell it) Saco (Maine) High School Class of 1967, but just now of youth nation, youth nation descending on friendly, friend-sized, go West young man (and woman), go West, heaven said to his boon companion of three days, Benny Buzz (real name Lawrence Stein, Brooklyn High School of Science, Class of 1967), also currently of youth nation. It was Benny Buzz who, having the vast experience of having been in ‘Frisco for a week now, and having “been up the hill,” a few times already who guided Prince Love to the foot of Russian Hill  in preparation for, well, for his first summer of love experience. No, not the  eternal teen summer of love at some beach, camp or vacationland amusement park where boys ogle girls (and they back, maybe) but the long expected jail break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan every step of your life world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles.      

Yes, Prince Love, could write the book on hassles, hassles followed by man, or not. Just a few week before he, having just graduated from Olde Saco High, had a “job offer,” a job working as a janitor in Shepard’s Textile Mill, yeah, the ones who make those “boss” cashmere sweaters the girls are all crazy for these days. Crazy for in winter anyway because right now warm suns, California, Denver, hell even Maine suns, require nothing more than some skimpy top, shoulders showing, and a pair of shorts, short shorts depending on the legs or vanity. His father, Prescott, a longtime employee of the mills, the lifeblood of Olde Saco just then, “pulled a few wires” to get him the job for the summer before he went off to State U in the fall. Last year, last year when he was nothing but a raw hang out in front of the Colonial Doughnut Shoppe on Main Street (officially U.S. Route 1) with his boys (and occasionally girls, but only for a few moments while they picked up their orders) he would have jumped with both feet, maybe with both hands and feet, at the job to get some money for college.          

But that was then and this is now, as they say. Now, or rather the now just a few weeks or so before he got to the foot of Russian Hill, he had received word through that mysterious youth nation grapevine that parents, squares, cops, and authority guys were frantic to figure out, but who, in the end, were  clueless  about,  of a “great awakening”  that was going on in ‘Frisco. That news fed, fed deeply, into the wells of the discontent Prince Love was feeling about his own desire to break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan every step world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles mentioned before.

The grapevine, by the way, was not all that mysterious. Some young, long-haired, wild-looking guy dressed in a blotted multi-colored shirt (later he found out such things were called “tie-dyed,” an interesting process that was popular among the kind of “back to nature,” and if not back that far then maybe to some simple agrarian society, crowd who were beginning to ad hoc come up with new ideas about how to clothe, feed and transport youth nation and get away from the rat race plan every step ways) from the West Coast had come east to see his grandparents who lived on Olde Saco Beach a few miles down the road and had run into Prince Love at the doughnut shop when he was looking for some joe and cakes to tide him over before a walk on the beach and told him about what was happening on the West Coast. Simple as that, okay.     

That information, those pressing on the brain existential jail-break things that Josh was feeling press against his brain, and well, the cold hard fact that he had just broken up with his girl, his long time high school honey, Julie Cobb, were what drove him to seek the road west. Simple as that. Well not so simple, really, because, if the truth be known, Julie left him for another guy, an older guy who was already working in the mills (not Shepard’s but Cullen’s, the high society linen-makers), had some dough, had a boss 1964 Mustang and, most  importantly, wanted to get married, and pretty soon too. That was the sticking point between the Prince and Julia, the conventional marriage game thing that had been going on in the town since, since, well Prince didn’t know how long but it was pretty common. Here was the drill. Graduate Olde Saco, work in the mills, get a couple of bucks, get married, get a tiny house on Atlantic Avenue, maybe,  have two point six children, throw in a dog or two cats, and then finish up whitewashing that picket fence in front of the house with the grandchildren.

No sale, not for Prince Love. He was going to college, leave the dust of that old town behind, and make a name for himself at something before he settled down in not-Olde Saco, maybe, maybe on the settle down part but just then he had the wanderlust, had it bad. And from what he had heard along the way on his way west, and since he had arrived in San Fran a lot of people were feeling, wondering, groping for some answers just like him. And, yeah, just like them the Prince was looking to try some dope, listen to some far out music, grab some cool chick to shack up with, and really leave that home town dust behind before going back east for the fall semester of school.                

Now you are filled in, a little, on the what and the why of Prince (and Benny Buzz who however had been right then leaving Prince to go see a man, well, go see a man about something, let’s just leave it at that)  being on Russian Hill, that classic San Francisco hill mentioned a while back.  A hill not previously known to first time Frisco Prince, although maybe well-known to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working its way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away.

I just remembered, you know everything, everything except how Prince Love got here which is not a big deal since he took some dough he had  originally saved up for college and used it for the Greyhound bus fare to get him here. Not for him the hitchhike road like the old time beat “beats” craved to get what they called the feel for authentic America which the Prince just slightly drenched with the end of the “beat” minute had to laugh at since according to guru Jack Kerouac’s book On The Road which he had finally read the previous summer old Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) was blazing about one hundred and ten miles per hour so the whole thing was a blur. Beside he didn’t need the hassles, man, the hassles first of Mother Breslin going crazy over the idea that he son would be some “jungle” hobo just like one of her cousins and didn’t need the hassles from weird guys picking up lone guys in Winnemucca or a place like that and then trying something funny. Not for him either merry prankster buses driven by mad monk zen masters in the heated western night since he had heard of nobody going west like that, heard the yellow brick bus road was mainly a California thing then (although not for long after the news of the summer of love filtered through the grapevine).

But this too Well, come on now, not everybody got every piece of news, especially in Podunk Maine, about the ways west, VW bus west, stick out the thumb west and that there were people, your kind of people, ready to pick you up and take you down the road a piece. Even back up on super-highway interstates to pick up a fellow youth nation straggler left on some desolate stretch fair game for hungry police eyes. Besides, after about a two-day bout with his parents about not taking that summer job, using the dough for college for such foolishness (to quote his everywoman mother), and other assorted arguments, family arguments started back in childhood, he had promised them to take the bus west. Let’s just say hassles, man, hassles and be done with it. Now we are done with the past.

Right then though, after saying a few things in parting with Benny Buzz after Benny had “scored” (you figure out what in summer Frisco ’67) about catching up with each other later, as he started walking up the hill toward the entrance to the mini-“people’s park” that was about half way up Russian Hill Prince spied a tall young man, maybe a few years older than him although such things were always hard to tell with making guys look older beards, the trauma of three-day drug haggards, and glazed looks.  He was, at second glance,  tall but not as tall as Prince, lanky, maybe not as lanky as him either and from the look of him with his drug stews diet having taken some additional pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well,  not really normally lanky.  Dressed, always worthy of description in 1967 ‘Frisco, male or female, in full “hippie” regalia, faded olive drab World War II army jacket, half-faded blue jeans, bright red bandana headband to keep his head from exploding, stripped checkerboard flannel shirt against the cold bay winds, against the cold bay winds even in summer, and nighttime colds too, and now that we are on the West Coast, with roman sandals on his feet).

And to draw the eye more fully to the scene this guy is sitting with two foxy looking young women. One, the younger one, maybe a high school student, blonde, blue-eyed, slender, short shorts belying West Coast origin,  and de rigueur practical road-worthy peasant blouse. A poster child for San Francisco summer of love if he ever saw one, and of his own feverish Maine night teenage desire summer or winter of love now that Julia was past. The other women, who called herself  Lupe Matin just then although the Prince found out later from the lanky guy that she had run through several monikers previously, a college student for sure , dark-haired, dark-eyed, slightly voluptuous, seemingly a little out of place with her male companion completed the entourage. (Her real name, Susan Sharp, Vassar College, Class of 1966, and “trying to find herself.”)  

Prince cast several glances at that regal company, nodded slightly, a knowing nod eyes fixed as was the fashion just then, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on the blonde (yah, he had a thing for blondes, see Julia was just that same kind of waspy blonde, minus the tan and year-round sunshine, that he fell for, fell for hard and fast), “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” The male, who Prince would later come to know as “Far-Out” Phil (Phillip Larkin, North Adamsville, Massachusetts, Class of 1964), looked at him in a bemused manner (nice touch, bemused, right).  Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this Prince traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have, thought “Far Out” to himself,  been his  brother, biological brother.

That line, that single Prince Love line, could have been echoed a thousand, maybe ten thousand times that day along a thousand hills (well maybe not that many in San Fran), aimed at any small clot of like-minded spirits. And Phil sensing that just that one sentence spoke of kindred said, “Sure, a little Columbia Gold for the head, okay?” And so started the long, well hippie long, 1960s long anyway, relationship between one Phillip Larkin and one Joshua Breslin.  And the women, of course.                  

That sense that Far Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred had been based on the way that the Prince posed that first question. His accent spoke, spoke hard of New England, not Boston but farther north. And once the pipe had been passed a couple of times and the heat of day started getting everybody a little talkative then Prince spilled out his story. Yes, he was from Olde Saco, Maine, born and bred, a working-class kid whose  family had worked  the town mills for a couple of generations, maybe more, but times were getting hard, real hard in those northern mill towns now that the mill-owners had got the big idea to head south and get some cheaper labor, real cheap. So Joshua, after he graduated from high school a few weeks before decided, on a whim (not really a whim though), to head west and check out prospects here on the coast for later use after college. Josh, now fully into his Prince Love persona finished up his story by saying, “And here I am a few weeks later sitting on Russian Hill smoking righteous dope and sitting with some sweet ladies.”

The Prince was just being a little off-handedly flirtatious as was his style when around women, young or old (old being thirty, tops), aiming his ammunition in general but definitely honing in on the blonde, the blonde now identified for all eternity as Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School, California, Class of 1968). (Phil, by the way, never ever said what his reaction to that last part of the Prince’s spiel, the flirtatious part, which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old North Adamsville corner boy Phil menace would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer of love it just passed by like so much air)  Naturally Phil, a lordly road warrior now, on the bus now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited the Prince  to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Prince Love was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.            

And of course, family, meant home, and home for Far Out, Butterfly Swirl, and Lupe Matin meant the now locally famous (West Coast local, okay) yellow brick road bus now known as Captain Crunch’s Crash Pad (after the owner of the bus, and “leader,” whatever that meant, of the expedition). Prince Love, from the first night, not only felt that he had found a home, a home that he never felt he had in Olde Saco but that whatever happened out here he would survive. And as more dope-filled pipes were passed that night, and as the music played louder into the sea-mist bay night, and lights gleamed from all directions the Prince grew stronger in that conviction. Especially when Far Out Phil, acting out of some old testament patriarchal script, came sauntering over to The Prince around midnight and whispered in his ear, “Butterfly Swirl wants to be with you, okay?”         

And that night the Prince and Butterfly Swirl were “married.”

The Trouble With Harry P. - With Fritz Lang’s Blue Gardenia In Mind  

By Zack James

 

Harry Peddle, was a real piece of work. Harry P. is what everybody called him, what every girl who got ensnared by his so-called charms called him, called him when she wasn’t thinking, and not thinking very quickly and frantically about what he was peddling, what disgusting thing he wanted her to do to play out the end of the evening with his “come on” etchings scam that guys have been doing since Adam grabbed Eve, maybe before. Yeah, Harry with his eternally proffered filled up wine glass and averted eye as he undressed every woman under sixty and maybe some older too after all Hollywood the Mecca of ageless youth, his bailiwick, could work miracles under soft lights even for those beyond their bloom.

Yeah Harry P. was one of a kind in his own way. I should know because I knew him as well as anybody and if there ever was a snake-in-the-grass about women it was Harry, yeah, Harry P.  Harry showed up one morning dead, very dead with a very big bloody crack in his head, broken wine glasses all over their contents creating big stain blotched all over his Persian rugs, broken fireplace mirror from some nefarious thrown object, assorted women’s accessories (meaning shoes and handkerchiefs not bras and panties for the perverts out there listening to Harry’s sing-song and what he got away with), and his patented blue gardenia from the café of that same name where he liked to take his girls, in his bungalow studio off of Vine. Nobody, least of all me, was surprised.

Vine a place back in the 1950s when that locale had some cache (and was an automatic magnet for young women on the way up, on the way up some thought to a bigtime acting career in the bright lights of Hollywood just like Ava, Liz and Lauren from Omaha and Davenport before they got wised up on one too many casting couch). But despite his faults, his big “love ‘em and leave ‘em” sometimes two or three in one night faults, Harry was a friend and so I took it upon myself to see who the hell, meaning what woman scorned of his took that bloody fireplace poker and sent old Harry P. to his final hellish resting place.

Let me explain, first of all my name is Phil, Phil Larkin. In those days of my youth, the silent slumming late 1940s after I got out the Army when  the Pacific Wars were done in WWII I decided California was as good a place to start life as going back to Riverdale in haughty Massachusetts. When I met Harry I had just blown off “the cops” in the City of Angels, in what they now call La La Land but then back in the 1950s before all the freeways and all the desperate people from Omaha and Davenport came looking, well, looking for something it wasn’t a bad town to live in, nice weather, the beach filled with plenty of young women looking to be something and not choosey about how they got there-once they figured out the score. Or got the word from the older wiser girls. That “blowing off the cops” thing was that I could not take any more guff about graft, anymore bullshit about not stepping on this guy’s toes or ignoring that guy’s indiscretions, you know the big shot payoff that maybe was overrated in Omaha and Davenport but was real in enough in movie-power mad Hollywood.

What broke the camel’s back was one night a famous producer, a big shot whose name if I told who it was would make you shudder, had been drunk, had been drunk with a woman not his wife of which he had had several and slipped off the  Pacific Coast Highway near Laguna and the girl got killed. He walked away clean and without anything being done. Nothing, not even pay-off dough to the girl’s parents when they came in from Fargo to make a stink and got booted out of town for their troubles, that and their daughter got called nothing but a two-bit hooker by the Hollywood blats which that big-name producer had bought and paid for with his big budget weekly ads in the Movie sections of their crummy newspapers. Jesus. They wanted me to cover up, cover up big time, and say that the place where that big-time producer paid the girl’s rent off of Wiltshire was nothing but a whore’s apartment complete with boxes of condoms, Vaseline by the jars and every kind of sex toy. Damn. I just walked away.

That’s when I got into the private detection business and how I wound up meeting Harry P. See he and I had offices of sorts on the same floor in the Taylor Building off the not plush, then, high numbers on Wiltshire and I would notice that he had plenty of good-looking and busty young women walking in and out of his “office” all the time. I checked it out one day by just walking in the foyer to his office and found that Harry P. was the famous Harry Peddle who did pin-up girl calendars, you know the ones that you would see back then in Army barracks lockers, auto garages and in men’s rooms at low-end bars showing very provocative for the time good-looking busty women exploding out of their bathing suits or tight sweaters showing plenty of cleavage and –desire- but not much else. Harry was smart that way, leaving much to the imagination at least for those guys taking a leak or washing their hands in some smelly greasy men’s room.

Of course that was just the public stuff back then, the stuff the Vice Squad could give a fuck about, what made Harry his dough and got him plenty of “hot” numbers in his little black book was the stuff he sold to “discriminating collectors” as he called them. See his “racket” was to go to let’s say for example some big insurance company steno pool, maybe hit the colleges where plenty of girls were enrolling what with the Korean War taking all the young men away and they needed to fill those joints up, say UCLA or USC, maybe hang out in some drugstore on Hollywood and Vine and start sketching some doll, maybe a plain jane with no tits, maybe some Jane Russell it didn’t matter because 99 times out of a one hundred he made the doll look like a sex goddess and that was his entre. Later in his “studio” in the Taylor Building or at his loft over off of Vine where he was found in that bloody condition one very bleak morning after plying the doll with booze or drugs he would nudge her into some nude pose. Most of them didn’t, or couldn’t, squawk because what would mother, her friends or the town if it was small enough say back in Grand Island or Saint Paul when he sold the material.  Wouldn’t or couldn’t squawk if they did object because he would claim they had forced themselves on him-and show some made-up nasty poses of them doing strange sexual things. Nice grift if you can live with yourself after each caper which seemed to get nastier as he got more successful with his damn grift. Harry could, loved the thrill of degrading a woman. Half the time I think he really hated women, was as the expression went then “light on his feet,” a fag is what we called guys with limp hands like that in the old working class neighborhood around Riverdale in Massachusetts where I grew, what they call today gay. You know the story of guys taking advantage of women whether liked them or liked to degrade then, it has been going on since before Adam and Eve got tangled up with some strong applejack. Harry was just a little rawer about it.      

That stuff Harry was peddling before Hugh Hefner and Playboy real high grade color nude photographs exploded on the scene and such drawings, even the nasty ones, were considered quaint and old-fashioned in the super-heated sex –charged atmosphere when the old values broke down. When a young woman, plain jane or Jane Russell would be knocking down the doors of porno magazines to get in the girlie magazines. Nowadays you can’t even Google the letters “s” and “x” without being inundated by every kind of sex act done by male and female alike looking like they were actually enjoying what they were doing. So maybe somebody did old Harry a favor by wasting him with that poker but back then I wanted answers.  I never got them as you could figure out from what I just said about somebody, some party unknown, doing old Harry in but it wasn’t for lack of trying. See Harry would sometime give me one of his “rejects” some woman he was tired of or just because right then he had too many in his little black book. What drove me, made me afraid really, was that one of the “rejects” might take umbrage at me for Harry’s indifference and I might wind up like poor old Harry with my own bloody skull cracked.           

The place to start was the “little black book” as the blats and the cops called it which contained not just those “lost soul” girls from Steubenville or Richmond but some starlets and up and coming actresses. Most of the more famous ones, the ones not permanently consigned to the casting couch or who never got that far, were “protected” by some producer like that guy whose antics made me call the public cops quits and I could never get close to. They didn’t figure anyway since Harry’s day was beginning to pass as I said when Hugh Hefner changed the mores on girlie magazines and any kinky past probably played to their vanities.   

The steno pools proved to be more useful, and I thought I had a solid lead when the roommate, Clara, of this girl Harry had gone out with had told me that Iris had come in on the night of Harry’s murder with no shoes on and her dress all messed up and wet. It had been serious California raining the night Harry died. She was also inebriated. So drunk that she dived right into bed and slept half the next day. This Iris was a looker no question from the photograph that Clara showed me. Just the meat for Harry. The back story as far as I got it was that Iris had met Harry in the cafeteria of the Fidelity Insurance Company when he was “sketching” some other girl and she had walked up to him and “dared” him to sketch her. Just what Doctor Harry had ordered.  He did have a very quick hand with the pencil or anything else from what I could gather and she was impressed with the sketch that made her look like Veronica Lake. Catnip for Harry.

So they had gone out according to Clara a number of times, sometimes to his place on Vine sometimes when Clara had come home from a date she would hear them in the love swoon in Iris’ room. Then he stopped coming back. And Iris became more depressed, and more angry and augmentative with Clara. Clara though Iris had begun to put on weight, telltale weight but by the time I got to Clara Iris had blown town with all her belongings. Including shoes from which I could have deducted her shoe size in comparison to the ones found in Harry’s living room. Sometimes a case goes cold, this one went cold just like Harry.

The only good thing that came out of investigating Harry’s death was a few very intimate dates with Clara-and her showing me the naughty sketches Harry had made of her when she asked me up to her place to see her etchings. Such is life.               

Scenes From  An Ordinary Be-Bop 1960s Life - When "Stewball" Stu Stewart’s ’57 Chevy Ruled The “Chicken” Roads

[A while back we, a bunch of us who knew Markin who wrote the sketch below back in sunnier days, in hang around corner boy high school days and afterward too when we young bravos imbibed in the West Coast dragon chase he led us on in the high hellish mid-1960s summers of love, got together and put out a little tribute compilation of his written sketches that we were able to cobble from whatever we collectively still had around. Those writings were from a time when Markin was gaining steam as a writer for many of the alternative magazines, journals and newspapers that were beginning to be the alternative network of media resources that we were reading once we knew the main media outlets were feeding us bullshit on a bun, were working hand in glove with big government, big corporations, big whatever that was putting their thumbs in our eyes.

On big series, a series that Markin was nominated, or won, I don’t remember which an award for, which I will tell you about some other time was from a period toward the end of his life, a period when he was lucid enough to capture such stories. He had found himself out in Southern California with a bunch of homeless fellow Vietnam veterans, no homeless was not the right word, guys from ‘Nam, his, their word not mine since I did not serve in the military having been mercifully declared 4-F, unfit for military duty by our local draft board, who having come back to the “real” world just couldn’t, or wouldn’t adjust and started “creating” their own world, their own brethren circle, such as it was out along the railroad tracks, rivers and bridges. Bruce Springsteen would capture the pathos and pain of the situation in his classic tribute-Brothers Under The Bridge.  Markin’s series was called To The Jungle reflecting both the hard ass jungle of Vietnam from which they ahd come to the old-timey hobo railroad track jungle they found themselves in.     

Yeah, those were the great million word and ten thousand fact days, the mid to late 1960s, and after he had gotten back from Vietnam the early 1970s say up to 1974 or so when whatever Markin wrote seemed like pure gold, seemed like he had the pulse of what was disturbing our youth dreams, had been able to articulate in words we could understand the big jail-break out he was one of the first around our town to anticipate. Had gathered himself to cut the bullshit on a bun world out.

That was before Markin took the big fall down in Mexico, let his wanting habits, a term that our acknowledged high school corner boy leader Frankie Riley used incessantly to describe the poor boy hunger we had for dough, girls, stimulants, life, whatever, get the best of him. Of course Frankie had “cribbed” the term from some old blues song, maybe Bessie Smith who had her habits on for some no good man cheating on her and spending all her hard-earned dough, maybe Howlin’ Wolf wanting every gal he saw in sight, skinny or big-legged to “do the do” with that Markin also had turned us onto although I admit in my own case that it took me many years, many years after Markin was long gone before I appreciated the blues that he kept trying to cram down our throats as the black-etched version of what hellish times were going through in the backwaters of North Adamsville while the rest of the world was getting ahead. Heading to leafy suburban golden dreams while we could barely rub two dimes together and hence made up the different with severe wanting habits-even me.  

From what little we could gather about Markin’s fate from Josh Breslin, a guy from Maine, a corner boy himself, who I will talk about more in a minute and who saw Markin just before he hit the lower depths, before he let sweet girl cousin cocaine “run all around his brain, the say it is going to kill you but they won’t say when” let the stuff alter his judgment, he went off to Mexico to “cover” the beginnings of the cartel action there. Somewhere along the line the down there Markin decided that dealing high heaven dope was the way that he would gather in his pot of gold, would get the dough he never had as a kid, and get himself well. “Well” meaning nothing but his nose so full of “candy” all the time that the real world would no longer intrude on his life. Somehow in all that mixed up world he had tried his usual end-around, tried to do either an independent deal outside the cartel, a no-no, or stole some “product” to start his own operation, a very big no-no. Either scenario was possible when Markin got his wanting habits on and wound up dead, very mysteriously dead, in a dusty back street down Sonora way in 1975, 1976 we don’t even have the comfort of knowing that actual date of his passing.

Those were the bad end days, the days out in Oakland where they were both staying before Markin headed south when according to Josh he said “fuck you” to writing for squally newspapers and journals and headed for the sweet dream hills. But he left plenty of material behind that had been published or at the apartment that he shared with Josh in Oakland before the nose candy got in the way. That material wound up in several locations as Josh in his turn took up the pen, spent his career writing for lots of unread small journals and newspapers in search of high-impact stories and drifted around the country before he settled down in Cambridge working as an free-lance editor for several well-known if also small publishing houses around Boston. So when the idea was proposed by Jack Callahan to pay a final written tribute to our fallen comrade we went looking for whatever was left wherever it might be found. You know from cleaning out the attics, garages, cellars looking for boxes where an old newspaper article or journal piece might still be found after being forgotten for the past forty or so years.

The first piece we found, found by Jack Callahan, one of the guys who hung around with us corner boys although he had a larger circle since as a handsome guy he had all the social butterfly girls around him and as a star football player for North Adamsville High he had the girls and all the “jock” hangers-on bumming on his tail, was a story by Markin for the East Bay Other about the transformation of Phil Larkin from “foul-mouth” Phil to “far-out’ Phil as a result of the big top social turmoil events which grabbed many of us who came of political, social, and cultural age in the roaring 1960s. Markin like I said before had been the lead guy in sensing the changes coming, had us following in his wake not only in our heads but his gold rush run in the great western trek to California where a lot of the trends got their start.

That is where we met the subject of the second piece, or rather Phil did and we did subsequently too as we made our various ways west, Josh Breslin, Josh from up in Podunk Maine, actually Olde Saco fast by the sea, and he became in the end one of the corner boys, one of the North Adamsville corner boys. But before those subsequent meetings he had first become part of Phil’s “family,” and as that second story documented also in the East Bay Other described it how Josh, working his new life under the moniker Prince Love, “married” one of the Phil’s girlfriends, Butterfly Swirl. The third one in the series dealt with the reality of Phil’s giving up that girlfriend to Prince Love and the “marriage” and “honeymoon,” 1960s alternative-style that cemented that relationship.

Yeah, those were wild times and if a lot of the social conventions accepted today without too much rancor like people living together as a couple without the benefit of marriage, same-sex marriage, and maybe even friends with benefits let me clue in to where they all started, or if not started got a big time work-out to make things acceptable. But that was not all he wrote about, just the easy to figure a good story about 1960s. Markin also wrote about those wanting habits days, our growing up poor in the 1950s days which while we had no dough, not enough to be rich was rich in odd-ball stuff we seemingly were forced to do to keep ourselves just a little left of the law, very little sometimes. Naturally he wrote about the characters like the one here, Stew-ball Stu, whom I hope doesn’t read this sketch if he is still alive because he might still take umbrage and without Markin around he might come after me with a wrench or jackknife, who we young boys, maybe girls too but then it was boys’ world mostly looked up to. The actual Stew-ball Stu he sued here was from a story told to him by Josh Breslin long after he shed his 1960s moniker of Prince Love when Markin was looking for corner boy stories. But believe me while the names might have been different old North Adamsville had its own full complement of Stus.        

       

For those not in the know, for those who didn’t read the first Phil Larkin piece where I mentioned what corner boy society in old North Adamsville was all about Phil was one of a number of guys, some say wise guys but we will let that pass who hung around successively Harry’s Variety Store over on Sagamore Street in elementary school,  Doc’s Drugstore complete with soda fountain and more importantly his bad ass jukebox complete with all the latest rock and roll hits as they came off the turntable on Newport Avenue in junior high school and Salducci’s Pizza “up the Downs” in high school, don’t worry nobody in the town could figure that designation out either, as their respective corners as the older guys in the neighborhood in their turn moved up and eventually out of corner boy life.

More importantly Phil was one of the guys who latter followed in “pioneer” Markin’s wake when he, Markin, headed west in 1966 after he had finished up his sophomore year in college and made a fateful decision to drop out of school in Boston in order to “find himself.” Fateful in that without a student deferment that “find himself” would eventually lead him to induction into the U.S. Army at the height of the Vietnam War, an experience which he never really recovered from for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do directly with that war but which honed his “wanting habits” for a different life than he had projected when he naively dropped out of college to see “what was happening” out on the West Coast.

Phil had met, or I should say that Josh had met Phil, out on Russian Hill in San Francisco when Josh, after hitchhiking all the way from Maine in the early summer of 1967, had come up to the yellow brick road converted school bus (Markin’s term for the travelling caravan that he and Phil were then part of and which the rest of us, including even stay-at-home me for a few months ) he and a bunch of others were travelling up and down the West Coast on and had asked for some dope. Phil was the guy he had asked, and who had passed him a big old joint, and their eternal friendship formed from there. (Most of us would meet Josh later that summer as we in our turns headed out. Sam Lowell, Frankie Riley, Jack Callahan, Jimmy Jenkins and me all headed out after Markin who had “gone native” pleaded with us to not miss this big moment that he had been predicting was going to sea-change happens for a few years.) Although Markin met a tragic end murdered down in Mexico several years later over a still not well understood broken drug deal with some small cartel down there as a result of an ill-thought out pursuit of those wanting habits mentioned earlier he can take full credit for our lifetime friendship with Josh.-Bart Webber]

 

From The Pen Of The Late Peter Paul Markin   

Scene: Brought to mind by the cover artwork that graces the front of the booklet that accompanied an album  I had been reviewing. The artwork contained, in full James Dean-imitation pout, one good-looking, DA-quaffed, white muscle-shirted young man, an alienated young man, no question, leaning, leaning gently, very gently, arms folded, on the hood of his 1950’s classic automobile, clearly not his father’s car, but also clearly for our purposes let us call it his “baby.”



And that car, that extension of his young manhood, his young alienated manhood, is Friday night, Saturday night, or maybe a weekday night if it is summer, parked, priority parked, meaning nobody with some Nash Rambler, nobody with some foreign Volkswagen, no biker even , in short, nobody except somebody who is tougher, a lot tougher, than our alienated young man better breathe on the spot while he is within fifty miles of the place, directly in front of the local teenage (alienated or not) "hot spot." And in 1950s America, a teenage America with some disposal income (allowance, okay), that hot spot was likely to be, as here, the all-night Mel’s (or Joe’s, Adventure Car-Hop, whatever) drive-in restaurant opened to cater to the hot dog, hamburger, French fries, barbecued chicken cravings of exhausted youth. Youth exhausted after a hard night, well, let’s just call it a hard night and leave the rest to your knowing imagination, or their parents’ evil imaginations.



And in front of the restaurant, in front of that leaned-on “boss” automobile stands one teenage girl vision. One blondish, pony-tailed, midnight sun-glassed, must be a California great American West night teeny-bopper girl holding an ice cream soda after her night’s work. The work that we are leaving to fertile (or evil, as the case may be) imaginations. Although from the pout on Johnny’s (of course he has to be a Johnny, with that car) face maybe he “flunked out” but that is a story for somebody else to tell. Here is mine.

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Not everybody, not everybody by a long-shot, who had a “boss” ’57 cherry red Chevy was some kind of god’s gift to the earth; good-looking, good clothes, dough in his pocket, money for gas and extras, money for the inevitable end of the night stop at Jimmy John’s Drive-In restaurant for burgers and fries (and Coke, with ice, of course) before taking the date home after a hard night of tumbling and stumbling (mainly stumbling). At least that is what one Joshua Breslin, Josh, told me, he a freshly minted fifteen- year old roadside philosopher thought as for the umpteenth time “Stewball” Stu left him  by Albemarle Road off Route One and rode off into the Olde Saco night with his latest “hot” honey, fifteen year old teen queen Sally Sullivan. Here is the skinny as we used to say as per one Joshua Breslin:



Yah, Stewball Stu was nothing but an old rum-dum, a nineteen year old rum-dum, except he had that “boss” girl-magnet ’57 cherry red and white two-toned Chevy (painted those colors by Stu himself) and he had his pick of the litter in the Olde Saco, maybe all of Maine, night. By the way Stu’s official name, was Stuart Stewart, go figure, but don’t call him Stuart and definitely do not call him “Stewball” not if you want to live long enough not to have the word teen as part of your age. The Stewball thing was strictly for local boys, jealous local boys like Josh,  who when around Stu always could detect a whiff of liquor, usually cheap jack Southern Comfort, on his breathe, day or night.



Figure this too. How does a guy who lives out on Tobacco Road in an old run-down trailer, half-trailer really, from about World War I that looked like something out of some old-time Great Depression Hoover-ville scene, complete with scrawny dog, and tires and cannibalized car leavings every which way have girls, and nothing but good-looking girls from twelve to twenty (nothing older because as Stu says, anything older was a woman and he wants nothing to do with women, and their women’s needs, whatever they are). And the rest of us got his leavings, or like tonight left on the side of the road on Route One. And get this, they, the girls from twelve to twenty actually walk over to Tobacco Road from nice across the other side of the tracks homes like on Atlantic Avenue and Fifth Street, sometimes by themselves and sometime in packs just to smell the grease, booze, burnt rubber, and assorted other odd-ball smells that come for free at Stu’s so-called garage/trailer.



Let me tell you about Stu, Sally, and me tonight and this will definitely clue you in to the Stu-madness of the be-bop Olde Saco girl night. First of all, as usual, it is strictly Stu and me starting out. Usually, like today, I hang around his garage on Saturdays to get away from my own hell-house up the road on Ames Street, meaning almost as poor as Stu except they are not trailers but, well, shacks, all that the working poor like my people could afford in the golden age and I am kind of Stu’s unofficial mascot. Now Stu had been working all day on his dual-exhaust carburetor or something, so his denims are greasy, his white tee-shirt (sic) is nothing but wet with perspiration and oil stains, he hasn’t taken a bath since Tuesday (he told me that himself with some sense of pride) and he was not planning to do so this night, and of course, drinking all day from his silver Southern Comfort flask he reeked of alcohol (but don’t tell him that if you read this and are from Olde Saco because, honestly, I want to live to have twenty–something as my age). About 7:00 PM he bellows out to me, cigarette hanging from his mouth, an unfiltered Lucky of course (filtered cigarettes are for girls in Stu world), let’s go cruising.



Well, cruising means nothing but taking that be-bop ’57 cherry red and white two-toned Chevy out on East Grand and look. Look for girls, look for boys from the hicks with bad-ass cars who want to take a chance on beating Stu at the “chicken run” down at the flats on the far end of Sagamore Beach, look for something to take the edge off the hunger to be somebody number one. At least that last is what I figured after a few of these cruises with Stu. Tonight it looks like girls from the way he put some of that grease (no not car grease, hair-oil stuff) on his nappy hair. Yes, I am definitely looking forward to cruising tonight once I have that sign because, usually whatever girl Stu might not want, or maybe there are a couple of extras, or something I get first dibs. Yah, Stu is righteous like that.

So off we go, stopping at my house first so I can get a little cleaned up and put on a new shirt and tell my brother to tell our mother that I will be back later, maybe much later, if she ever gets home herself before I do. The cruising routine in Olde Saco means up and down Route One (okay, okay Main Street), checking out the lesser spots (Darby’s Pizza Palace, Hank’s Ice Cream joint, the Colonial Donut Shoppe where I hang during the week after school and which serves a lot more stuff than donuts and coffee, sandwiches and stuff, and so on). Nothing much this Saturday. So we head right away for the mecca, Jimmy John’s. As we hit Stu’s “saved” parking spot just in front I can see that several stray girls are eyeing the old car, eyeing it like tonight is the night, tonight is the night Stu, kind of, sort of, maybe notices them (and I, my heart starting to race a little in anticipation and glad that I stopped off at my house, got a clean shirt, and put some deodorant on and guzzled some mouthwash, am feeling tonight is the night too).

 

But tonight is not the night, no way. Not for me, not for those knees-trembling girls. Why? No sooner did we park than Sally Sullivan came strolling out (okay I don’t know if she was strolling or doo-wopping but she was swaying in such a sexy way that I knew she meant business, that she was looking for something in the Olde Saco night and that she had “found” it) to Stu’s Chevy and with no ifs, ands, or buts asked, asked Stu straight if he was doing anything this night. Let me explain before I tell you what Stu’s answer was that this Sally Sullivan is nothing but a sex kitten, maybe innocent-looking, but definitely has half the boys, hell maybe all the boys at Olde Saco High, including a lot of the guys on the football team drooling over her. I know, because I have had more than one sleepless night over her myself.

 

See, she is in my English class and because Mr. Murphy lets us sit where we want I usually sit with a good view of her. So Stu says, kind of off-handedly, like having the town teen fox come hinter on him was a daily occurrence, kind of lewdly, “Well, baby I am if you want to go down Sagamore Rocks right now and look for dolphins?” See, Sagamore Rocks is nothing but the local lovers’ lane here and “looking for dolphins” is the way everybody, every teenage everybody in town says “going all the way,” having sex for the clueless. And Sally, as you can guess if you have been following my story said, “Yes” just like that. At that is why I was dumped, unceremoniously dumped, while they roared off into the night. So like I said not every “boss” car owner is god’s gift to women, not by a long shot. Or maybe they are.