***The Big Cold War Scorch- Mickey Spillane’s Kiss Me Deadly

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Kiss Me Deadly, starring Ralph Meeker, directed by Robert Aldrich, based on the crime novel of the same name by Mickey Spillane, 1955

There was a palpable fear in the land, in this American land, in the post- World War II red scare Cold War night. A fear of commies, some of Uncle Joe’s friends, Joe Stalin, the man of steel for those who don’t remember, were too young or not born, who during the war we were buddy-buddy allies with but in the aftermath when the spoils were divided and who was going to be king of the hill, or rather what system was going to push the humankind rock up the hill got decided they went their way, we went ours. There were other fears as well, some palpable, like the thought going back to those from hunger days just when the car payments and mortgage were due and cash was short and getting restless with the boredom of normalcy, some now seemingly irrational like alien invasions from other planets or various crazes like hula-hoops and Pat Boone white bucks, or just Pat Boone.

Except, rational or not, there was a new factor in the world equation, the new-found man-made capacity to annihilate half the planet, or something like that, with a few high explosive atom/hydrogen-kinked bombs. The USA had them first, had the franchise, had the secrets stored away under lock and key in I don’t know, Los Alamos I guess but Uncle Joe and his boys grabbed onto the fast track very quickly. And people in high places and low were looking to find out how such a travesty happened. So good honest unassumingly American citizens were looking for, were egged on to look for “reds under the beds,” and every good citizen-youth was to turn without question to the proper authorities every “mommy who was a commie.” So some, actually a lot, of people got caught up in the dragnet, got thrown out of their unions (many of which they helped create, had fought tooth and nail for, including beatings and jail time while their persecutors had held back from the fight), got thrown out of colleges and other public institution for wearing tweet jackets and smoking pipes, spouting stuff about critical thinking or something like that, got blacklisted from the great cultural institutions like the movies, the stage, the music hall, got thrown in jail if they got too uppity in front on some yahoo committee, and took the big step-off in the case of the heroic Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Like other times, too many times in American and world history it did not pay to stick your neck out, stick it out at all. Of course the whole operation was oiled by the willingness, in some cases eagerness, of good American citizens to, well let’s call a thing by its right name, fink on their fellows, play stoolie to get out from under whatever Uncle, in this case Uncle Sam had on them. Not a pretty time in those lush black and white 1950s.              

Now what does all of this talk of the red scare Cold War night, the night of the long knives in America, have to do with a film, a classic film noir of its type according to some sources, a film like that under review, Kiss Me Deadly.  A film which had been based strictly on second-rate pulp fiction from the pen of macho he-man crime novel writer Mickey Spillane. Novels known more for the travails of scantily-clad busty come hither forbidden blondes on the paperback book cover. Well threatening jail, threatening the big step-off, threatening the blacklist, and threatening every other form of coercion to create deadly conformity is not the only way to gather in the flock. The cultural institutions, particularly popular cultural institutions, were dragooned into the service of cornering Uncle Joe and his minions as well. Film was a simple way, a didactic way if you will, to do such propaganda work from creating that now seemingly irrational scary addiction to alien sci-fi movies as surrogates for foreign-ness where the good citizens of this country were threatened with being robbed of their person-hood to those the theme in this film of presenting characters crafty enough to see that if you controlled a piece of something like radioactive material you could hold the world hostage, either for cash or power, or both. Who also were ruthless enough to do what it took to gain the edge.    

And aiding that fight against the bad guys of the geo-political world is where Mickey Spillane’s macho detective, Mike Hammer, a guy usually working the low-end night life scene sneaking under the bed scene, working the adultery racket, sometimes on both ends, while feeling up busty comely dames gets to step up in class and work to rid the world of those crafty evil geniuses who would enslave the whole American way of life.  Of course Hammer didn’t go down to his local FBI office and offer up his services but was almost accidently brought into the action by a wooly-headed blonde who desperately tried to hitch a ride away from her troubles and put trouble right on Hammer’s doorstep. Put the trouble there the minute he picked her up. See she knew too much, and she knew she knew too much and that while maybe she was wooly-headed she had been around the block, had been involved with some rough customers who would stop at nothing to protect their interest. She knew about a certain box in a certain suitcase which contained power and the glory and that was enough to get her killed by unknown sources. And drag Hammer down with her when the bad guys decided that the old car over the cliff, Hammer’s, would take care of their problem.

Problem was Hammer lived to tell the tale, lived and got very curious when lots of things did not add up and those near and dear to him started to get dead, very dead, or were in imminent threat of death. And that included his busty brunette assistant, adultery lure, secretary, lover Velma who only had eyes for cad lady-killer Hammer. But that love ‘em and leave ‘em business was  secondary stuff because Hammer had to move mountains to find enough leads to figure out that the Pandora ’s Box he was chasing could fall into the wrong hands, fall into criminal or what amounted to the same thing in those days, wrong political hands. And narrowing down the number of possible beneficiaries and the location of the box took up the rest of his time, his movie time. With the kidnapping of Velma taken as a hostage when he got too close acting as a spur for him to solve the whole thing. In the end, naturally, as dictated by Hollywood film noir ethos the bad guys had to take a tumble. And in this case they took the tumble in a spectacular visual film-ending manner which nevertheless left the original audience wondering how safe they were in this wicked old world. Yeah, the guy who said it was right, classic 1950s film noir stuff.                      

***Billie’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame-With Bill Haley And The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock In Mind

 

I, seemingly, had endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing a commercially- produced classic rock series over the past few years. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we, we small time punk in the old-fashioned sense of that word, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kids’ stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie who I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yeah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.

In many ways 1956 was the key year, at least to my recollection. And here is why. Elvis may have been burning up the stages, making all the teenage girls down South sweat, making slightly older women sweat and throw undergarments too, and every guy over about eight years old start growing sideburns before then but that was the year that I actually saw him on television and started be-bopping off his records. Whoa. And the same with Bill Haley and the Comets, even though in the rock pantheon they were old, almost has-been guys, by then. And Chuck Berry. And for the purposes of this particular flash back, James Brown, ah, sweet, please, please, please James Brown (and the Flames, of course) with that different black, black as the night, beat that my mother (and others too) would not even let in the house, and maybe not even in our whole white working- class neighborhood. But remember that transistor radio and remember when rock rocked.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. I told you about him once when I was reviewing a 30th anniversary of rock film concert segment by Bo Diddley. I told the story of how he, and we, learned first-hand down at the base, the nasty face of white racism in this society. No even music, and maybe particularly not even music, was exempted then from that dead of night racial divide, North or South if you really want to know. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or maybe almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music (which is where the innocent Bo Diddley imitation thing just mentioned came from although that story was later than the story I want to tell you now).

But see we were “projects kids,” and that meant, and meant seriously, no dough kids. No dough to make one look, a little anyway, like one of the hot male teen rock stars such as Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. Now this “projects” idea started out okay, I guess, the idea being that returning veterans from World War II, at least some vets like my father, needed a leg up in order to provide for their families. And low-rent public housing was the answer. Even if that answer was four-family unit apartment buildings really fit for one family, one growing three boy family anyway, and no space, no space at all for private, quiet dreams. Of course by 1955, ‘56 during the “golden age” of working- class getting ahead (or at least to many it must seem so now) there was a certain separation between those who had moved on to the great suburban ranch house dream land and those who were seemingly fated to end up as “the projects” fixtures, and who developed along the way a very identifiable projects ethos, a dog-eat-dog ethos if you want to know the truth. It ain’t pretty down at the base, down at the place where the thugs, drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters feed off the rough-edged working poor.

That didn’t stop Billie, or me for that matter, from having our like everybody else dreams, quiet spaced or not. In fact, Billie had during his long time there probably developed the finest honed-edge of “projects” ethos of anyone I knew, but that came later. For now, for the rock minute I want to speak of, Billie was distractedly, no beyond distraction as you will see, trying to make his big break through as a rock performer. See Billie knew, probably knew in his soul, but anyway from some fan magazine that he was forever reading that old Elvis and Jerry Lee (and many of the rockers of the day, black and white alike) were dirt poor just like us. Rough dirt poor too. Farm land, country, rural, shack, white trash, dirt poor which we with our “high style” city ways could barely comprehend.

And there was Elvis, for one, up in big lights. With all the cars, and not junkie old fin-tailed Plymouths or chromed Fords but Cadillacs, and half the girls in the world, and all of them “hot” (although we did not use that word then), or so it seemed. Billie was hooked and hooked hard on that rock star performer fantasy. It consumed his young passions. And for what purpose? If you answered to impress the girls, “the projects” girls right in front of him, hey, now you are starting to get it. And this is what this little story is about.

This was late 1956, maybe early 1957, anyway it’s winter, a cold hard winter in the projects, meaning all extra dough was needed for heat, or some serious stuff like that. But see here old Billie and I (as his assistant, or manager, it was never clear which but I was to be riding his star, no question) had no time for cold, for snow or for the no dough to get those things because what was inflaming our minds was that a teen caravan was coming to town in a few weeks. No, not to the projects, Christ no, but downtown at the high school auditorium. And what this teen caravan thing was (even though we were not officially teens and would not be so for a while) was a talent show, a big time talent show, like a junior American Bandstand television show, looking for guys and girls who could be the next teen heartthrobs. There were a lot of them in those days, those kinds of backwater talent shows and maybe now too.

This news is where two Billie things came into play so you get an idea of the kind of guy he was back then. First, one night, one dark, snowy night Billie had the bright idea than he and I should go around town and take down all the teen caravan announcement advertisements from the telephone poles and other spots where they were posted. We did, and I need say no more on the matter. Oh, except that a couple of days later, and for a week or so after that, there was a big full-page ad in the local newspaper and ads on the local radio. That’s one Billie thing and the other, well, let me back up.

When Billie got wind of the contest he went into one of his rants, a don’t mess with Billie or his idea of the moment rant and usually it was better if you didn’t, and that rant was directed first to no one else but his mother. He needed dough to get an outfit worthy of a “prince of rock” so that he could stand out for the judges. Moreover the song he was going to do was Bill Haley and The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock. I will say he knew that song cold, and the way I could tell was that at school one day he sang it and the girls went crazy. And some of the guys too. Hell, girls started following old Billie around. He was in heaven (honest, I on the other hand, was indifferent to them, or their charms just then). So the thought that he might win the contest was driving him mad (that same energy would be used later with less purpose but that story is for another day)

Hell, denim jeans, sneakers, and some old hand-down ragamuffin shirt from an older brother ain’t going to get anyone noticed, except maybe to be laughed at. Now, like I said, we were no dough projects boys. And in 1956 that meant serious problems, serious problems even without a damn cold winter. See, like I said before the projects were for those who were on the down escalator in the golden age of post-World War II affluence. In short, as much as he begged, bothered and bewildered his mother there was no dough, no dough at all for the kind of sparkly suit (or at least jacket) that Billie was desperate for. Hell, he even badgered his dad, old Billie, Senior, and if you badgered old Billie then you had better be ready for some hard knocks and learn how to pick yourself up off the ground, sometimes more than once. Except this time, this time something hit Old Billie, something more than that bottle of booze or six, hard stinky-smelling booze, that he used to keep his courage and television-watching up. He told Mrs. Billie (real name, Iris) that he would spring for the cloth if she would make the suit. Whoopee! We are saved and even Billie, my Billie, had a kind word for his father on this one.

I won’t bore you with the details of Mrs. Billie’s (there you have me calling her that, I always called her Mrs. Bradley, or ma’am) efforts on behalf of Billie’s career. Of course the material for the suit came from the Bargain Center located downtown near the bus terminal. You don’t know the Bargain Center? Sure you do, except it had a different name where you lived maybe and it has names like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, etc. now. Haven’t you been paying attention? Where do you think the material came from? Brooks Brothers? Please. Now this Bargain Center was the early low- rent place where I, and about half the project kids got their first day of school and Easter outfits (the mandatory twice yearly periods for new outfits in those days). You know the white shirts with odd-colored pin-stripes, a size or two too large, the black chinos with cuffs, christ with cuffs like some hayseed, and other items that nobody wanted someplace else and got a second life at the “Bargie.” At least you didn’t have to worry about hand-me-downs because most of the time the stuff didn’t wear that long.

I will say that Mrs. B. did pretty good with what she had to work with and that when the coat was ready it looked good, even if it was done only an hour before the show. Christ, Billie almost flipped me out with his ranting that day. And I had seen some bad scenes before. In any case it was ready. Billie went to change clothes upstairs and when he came down everybody, even me, hell, even Old Billie was ooh-ing and ah-ing. Now Billie, to be truthful, didn’t look anything like Bill Haley. I think he actually looked more like Jerry Lee. Kind of thin and wiry, lanky maybe, with brown hair and blue eyes and a pretty good chin and face. I would say now a face that girls would go for; although I am not sure they would all swoon over him, except maybe the giggly ones.

So off we go on the never on time bus, a bus worthy of its own stories, to downtown and the auditorium, even my mother and father who thought Billie was the cat’s meow when I brought him around. Billie’s father, Old Billie of the small dreams, took a pass on going. He had a Friday night boxing match that he couldn’t miss and the couch beckoned (an argument could be made that Old Billie was a man before his time in the couch potato department). However all is forgiven him this night for his big idea, and his savior dough. We got to the school auditorium okay and Billie left us for stardom as we got in our rooting section seats. A few minutes later Billie ran up to us to tell us that he was fifth on the list so don’t go anywhere, like out for a cigarette or something.

We sat through the first four acts, a couple of guys doing Elvis stuff (so-so) and a couple of girls (or rather trios of girls) who did some serious be-bop stuff and had great harmonies. Billie, I sensed, was going to have his work cut out for him this night. Finally Billie came out, prompted the four-piece backup band to his song, and he started for the mike. He started out pretty good, in good voice and a couple of nice juke moves, but then about half way through; as he was wiggling and swiggling through his Rock Around The Clock all of a sudden one of the arms of his jacket fell off and landed in the front row. Billie didn’t miss a beat. This guy was a showman. Then the other jacket arm fell off and also went into the first row. Except this time a couple of swoony girls, girls from our school were tussling, seriously tussling, each other for it. See, they thought it was part of Billie’s act. And what they didn’t know as Billie finished up was that Mrs. Billie (I will be kind to her and not call her what Billie called her) in her rush to finish up didn’t sew the arms onto the body of the jacket securely so they were just held together by some temporary stitches.

Well, needless to say Billie didn’t win (one of those girl trios did, and rightly so, although I didn’t tell Billie that). But next day, and many next days after that, Billie had more girls hanging off his arms than he could shake a stick at. And you know maybe Billie was on to something after all because I started to notice those used-to-been scrawny, spindly-legged, pigeon-toed giggling girls, their new found bumps and curves, and their previously unremarkable winsome girlish charms, especially when Billie would give me his “castoffs.” So his losing was for the best. My “for the best.”

***The Teen Scene In Between- With Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 In Mind  

 

 

 

…she hadn’t thought about the upcoming date all that much, hadn’t thought about how Art was going to squire her to the first dance of the school year, the decisive Fall Frolic. She had been slow, late 1950s bewildered young woman who had gotten her “friend” late slow in the boy department (her period but every girl called it anything but that and she had come  to rely on that designation as being as appropriate as any although it was anything but a friend more like a curse). Although given her total logged time on the girlfriend telephone, many times the midnight telephone when she was lonely, lonely more so of late as she had been more distracted, with Jenny who was more up-to-date on matters of the opposite sex. And sex although don’t let that so-called advanced knowledge of Jenny’s part throw you off since most  of what Jenny knew was wrong, wrong gotten from an older brother, Ted,  who like all young men, young Catholic men and maybe every other religious upbringing too, got what he knew of sex from the streets just like everybody else and thus not surprisingly mostly wrong which almost caught her flat-footed in the pregnancy department one time when Sal “protection” might not have protected.  She, despite Jenny’s badgering, was certainly interested in boys and at least theoretically sex, although that interest had a quality of being sealed with seven seals and tied up, tied up with a big bow as she clung to that prevalent mores of saving herself for marriage, or some such thing, saving that is.

This Fall Frolic by the way had a long track record in creating class “items” come senior year. While it was not a formal dance, not even semi-formal like the junior prom, every young woman who planned to attend planned to have a “fox” dress fitting for the occasion and expected that her date would put some extra effort into looking good for the dance. All classes at old North Adamsville at least since 1951 when the underclassmen put up a stink about being shut out were entitled (and encouraged) to attend but no question the event reeked of a senior project. Most of the dance committee were well-known seniors and the band selection and theme of the year’s dance were a senior monopoly. It would take several more years and something like a civil war to break the senior monopoly but by then nobody was committed to an all-out defense of the old traditions. That was the 1960s when everybody was ready for a jailbreak and there was even talk by school officials that the damn thing would be canceled if the drug use could not be controlled (it was out of control as everybody got stoned in cars or in back alleys before the dance and at intermission and there were so many “far outs” uttered that even the senile chaperones knew something was off). So this was the environment which she was approaching her task ahead, a task involving getting the best date possible for the big dance of the fall.             

She knew, knew from Jenny, and knew from about six other sources that the lead-up here was decisive in that one’s date, one’s successful date, at that event usually foretold who one would be going to the senior prom with. Since the end of junior year that choice had come more and more to seen to be Art Graham. Art who began to talk to her in World History class after ignoring her and about every other girl in class as far as she could gather when she, not much for history, started to get peppered by Mr. Nolan, the World History teacher, who thought girls were dumb when it came to history and would publicly try to humiliate as many as possible. Toward the end of the year he had aimed his barbs her way. Art, a history nut and sort of Mr. Nolan’s pet, took pity on her and tried to coach her a little. The coaching paid off and old Nolan backed off a bit. Then she found herself talking to Art about other subjects and he didn’t seem to mind that they were not about history so she started to dream a little about Art, but just a little as summer break kind of ended what had started. They met at the beach a few times during the summer, spent a few hours together but not what any self-respecting girl in 1958 would call a date. So she laid her plans.        

It wasn’t that she was crazy for Art, not in the way best friend, Jenny, was crazy over Sal, Sal with the wavy black hair and athletic build, crazy enough over Sal to let him do what he wanted with her, but she did see him as one part of her “item” for the senior year if only he showed a little spark her way. Although she knew exactly what Jenny let sexy Sal do with her since Jenny burned many a midnight telephone call describing what went down in the town’s lovers’ lane section of the beach she had no intention of letting Art have his way with her, she wasn’t like that. She began to think less of Jenny the more she told her about her sexual experiences but she wanted that dance date and was frustrated when Art kept her at arm’s length.

Damn, she almost had to force the issue and invite him to the dance herself after they had spent some time together in school talking once classes resumed in September and she relied on him to bail her out in Problems in Democracy class where she was more under water that in World History, if that was possible. Then he started walking her home after school, talking, talking about his big future plans, talking about maybe they could go to the movies or to the school football games together. Anything but that damn dance (her term so she, not given to swearing, was certainly frustrated). They spent their time together like that before the date of the dance was getting perilously until one afternoon she asked him if he liked to dance, he said he did although he cushioned the remark with “I’m not very good” and they kind of by osmosis made a date for the Fall Frolics.

And so we move forward to the big night and she was now up in her room (and darting to the bathroom as well) preening herself, fluffing her hair, tightening that damn girdle to make her more slender than she already was, applying yet another touch-up on the make-up, as expected of any girl going to the Frolics with a guy that might form part of an “item” for senior year. She just hoped, hoped to high heaven that he, not known for being a sharp dresser like Sal, would look okay and also not forget to bring her a corsage so she would not be the only girl without one, especially since she practically had to order the thing herself.

She wasn’t sure when she heard the rumble of the engine coming up the street, maybe just before the car stopped in front of her house, but she definitely heard it before Art knocked on the door downstairs as her mother welcomed him in while she was finishing her last preparations. As she came down the stairs she noticed that he looked especially handsome in his suit and with his hair parted just so. Things already looked up for the evening. She did not know the half of it though until he opened the front door for her as they were leaving and she spied that big old Cadillac sitting in front of her sidewalk. Seems that old Art, once he got the message from the time they had danced around the dance invitation, started his own version of the courting ritual and convinced his friend, Spider Mack, to let him borrow his souped-up Caddy. Spider was well known around town, notorious to many parents, especially girl parents for getting the back seat of that vehicle messed up around midnight or maybe later after so two o’clock “chicken run” victory and he collected the spoils of war, some wet girl thrilled by the prospect of that backseat with the king of the North Adamsville muscle car night.

So she knew that if Art had such an automobile and moreover that Spider trusted Art with his most precious possession that the night might be interesting, and she might make it interesting for Art once she thought about that possibility. And off they went, first to pick up Jenny and Sal, she proud to be seem in the company of a man who knew how to bring a girl to the dance in style, and she too thinking how envious Jenny was that she was sitting in the front seat of Spider’s car just like she belonged there.

 

But that was only the beginning of it once they got to the school gym when the Frolics were held annually. She could hardly believe the transformation of the old smelly medicine ball gym into something that looked like a downtown hotel setting (even if only a hokey North Adamsville setting) with flowers festooned all over, tables covered with school colors white and blue tablecloths, the walls filled with various rock posters to hide the creepy cinderblocks, and the entrance with a trestle also garlanded with flowers. Yes, special. But more special Art seemed a man transformed as the cover band hired for the evening by the Fall Frolic senior committee (like I said before it was always a senior-sponsored affair back then, a kind of last gift to their fellow schoolmates leaving or to be left behind), the Ready Riders, kissed off the old classics, you know Patti Page, Frank, Dean, those guys, that had guided previous dances and kicked out the jams. Kicked out the ones guaranteed parent approved and hence boring, or something like that. She noticed that Art, a guy who said he had two left feet and maybe he did but he looked, well, sexy, had become almost a whirling dervish as he rocked by himself in her direction, that was no other way to put it since previously everybody did a waltz or a variation at school dances also parent approved, to some older rhythm and blues stuff and then laid out the full program when the band tore into a big riffing dose of Ike Turner’s Rocket 88.

That was the tune that everybody at Doc’s Drugstore over on Main was dropping endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box to hear over and over. Although it was actually an older song, maybe the early 1950s, Doc had refused to place it on his jukebox (or rather he was pressured to not put it on his jukebox by those meddlesome parents) since it was considered a “colored” record, you know a race record, back then. Jesus. But the kids, late 1950s kids including apparently Art, flipped out over it. And so the night went as she got more in tune with Art’s new form of dancing and mimicked his moves to his delight. As the dance ended, ended with a slow one by the Dubs’ Could This Be Magic, she, they ran into Jenny and Sal, and she, she who had so often secretly scorned the stuff Jenny told her that she and Sal did down at Adamsville Beach, suggested that the foursome take Spider’s car and go down to that very beach to, well, she said “cool off” after the dance. But you know what she meant just in case her parents might be around, or some girlfriend who would have plenty to say come Monday morning before school girls’ lav talk about how she had come of age, had come into the time of her time. So, yes, if anybody was interested she and Art were an “item” that year …              

             

*********

Rocket 88        

You woman have heard of jalopies
You heard the noise they make
Let me introduce you to my Rocket '88
Yes, it's great, just won't wait
Everybody likes my Rocket '88
Baby, we'll will ride in style movin' all along

V-8 motor and this modern design
Black convertible top and the girls don't mind
Sportin' with me, ridin' all around town for joy
Blow your horn, rocket, blow your horn

Step in my rocket and don't be late
We're pullin' out about a half past eight
Goin' on the corner and havin' some fun
Takin' my rocket on a long, hot run
Ooh, goin' out, oozin' and cruisin' and havin' fun

Now that you've ridden in my Rocket '88
I'll be around every night about eight
You know it's great, don't be late
Everybody likes my Rocket '88
Girls will ride in style movin' all along

Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/jackie-brenston/rocket-88-lyrics/#jxXskKb8Yxv3Z2RP.99

“The Last Of The Beats”- Frank Jackman’s In Search Of Todo el Mundo-A Critical Review

Book Review by Professor V.E. Grant, Chair, Creative Writing Workshop-Racine    

In Search Of Todo el Mundo, Frank Jackman, Black Dog Press, Boston, 2014     

In Search of Todo el Mundo (hereafter Todo) is Mr. Frank Jackman’s first longer work since he received some acclaim several years ago for his compilation, Ancient dreams, Dreamed, including from this reviewer who saw in that effort a turning away from his earlier, there is no other way to put it, self-indulgent jabs at the world in his prior short story compilations. More than that move away from self-indulgence though was a turn toward a, for a lack of a better expression, more karmic sense of the universe, a more spirited work which broke some new ground in reflecting on the condition of humankind in the last third of the 20^th century among those who had come of age in the generation before mine, what he called the generation of ’68, those who came of age in the 1950s post-World War II baby boom. A generation whose reflections we will now be inundated with as that generation takes stock of itself and its follies now that it will have more time on its hands and access to more self-publishing outlets. Unfortunately Mr. Jackman has reverted back to that former incessant self-indulgence in this short tale of his addictions, mainly but not exclusively drugs, back in the 1980s when he went to Todo on the Central California coast in a failed bid to “dry out” thinly veiled and explored through his main character, Josh Breslin, in this short work.  (A work which he has called a sketch, although it reads more like a short novella and probably could have been judiciously trimmed to a longish short story). Perhaps it is the distaste that I have for the current seemingly endless wave of post-addiction cautionary tales that the reading public favors if the best-seller charts are any indication which has colored my take on the work but this one that could have been left in Mr. Jackman bottom drawer until he had some other trimmed short stories with which to surround it.                

The eminent cultural critic, Stanley White, a man who has imparted  many very important insights about the writers of the so-called “beat” generation which surfaced in the 1950s and to avoid any additional generation-naming Mr. Jackman’s subsequent “generation of ’68” put the problem, put my problem with the book, in perspective when he wrote in the introduction the following:       

“It is always hard to fathom at this remove, a remove now of well over fifty years, what effect writers and poets like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, William Burroughs and the lesser lights associated with publicizing that cultural phenomenon, known collectively as the “beat” generation (Jack’s coined word meaning beaten down, beaten around, from hunger beat, from unsated wanting habits beat, from Zen-like karma angel-dream beatitude beat all meshed in one and hence all misunderstood by a rush to judgment world) had on the subsequent generations other than the obvious romance of the road that most young people associate with that term.  And hard as well to fathom the effect characters created by and lives led by the beats such as attractive-repulsive fugitive figures like William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, his various wives and mistresses, and the winos and wistfuls who populated the Route 66, or whatever route, roads and the way that mass culture was shaped for a period by such personalities. In a sense the answer to that question will determine whether this nifty little work by Frank Jackman will have a shelf-life or will be submerged by an onslaught of more pressing and expressive post-modern literary movements.”

I had asked that very question myself long ago about those who influenced my own youth, a youth influenced by those writers two generations before mine, the hard shell, no nonsense razor-like writings of Ernest Hemingway in his best novels and short stories, the flight of metaphoric language by F. Scott Fitzgerald, all bow down before Jay Gatsby, in describing the ebb and flow of the Jazz Age, the rugged cross adventures portrayed by John Steinbeck in his classic tales of American uprooted-ness The Grapes Of Wrath and down in the depths skid row Cannery Row, and, of course, Thomas Wolfe and his sagas of a nation turning in on itself and which came up short of the promised land once that damn frontier stopped at ocean’s edge.

I grew up not doubting in the least the influence those writers exercised on me including my exercise books filled with little pieces “cribbed” from their handsome books. But I also had an uneasy feeling then that Mr. Jackman must have had when he wanted to extend the life of the beat generation beyond its “sell by” date. I found that it was not accidental, if somewhat mystifying, that he fashioned himself in Todo (through that main and only non-stick character Josh Breslin the other characters being mere foils for his jabs) as he put it in in one of his earlier  short sketches “the last of the beats,” much as I had in my youth fancied myself as the “lasts of the modernist realist school writers” (although unlike Mr. Jackman I never made that declaration in any published work putting such words in the mouth of some character that I created in order for future doctoral students to be able to titter at and to make erudite remarks and endless footnotes about). Such are our vanities, and our debts.

But in the writer’s world there is a need to move on and not keep on re-packaging the same old material which in the end is what Mr. Jackman had left us with, faded beat-ery. Faded beat-ery owning a huge debt to Jack Kerouac’s lightweight alcohol addiction book, Big Sur. I often wondered about the purpose of that incessant sameness, that incessant re-packaging of some small beat ideas while reading this work and had been surprised when I read in Literary Age that Mr. Jackman had said in an interview that to be candid he thought the “beats” had become “old-fashioned” by the time he began to appreciate their virtuous writings. Join the club brother, join the club but why the continual re-hash and the failure to move on if you had enough insight to know that these days nothing but nostalgia publications and workshops lean on the major “beats” works, and less so the other lesser lights. (Although I do not intend this remark to bolster my argument very rarely these days does the writing institute I am associated with and other workshops with which I am familiar accept applicants who claim their muse is say Jack Kerouac or William Burroughs unless they have some stronger credentials, very much stronger credentials, going for them.)  

That tension between the “old-fashioned” beat epiphany and the jail break- out that their writings represented to those who came of age in the post-World War II period is more than evident in this work, this admittedly Mr. Jackman’s most ambitious work to date that pays at least fleeting homage to the beats who enchanted his youth. One can see almost from the first pages that he is satisfied with some vapid post-beat anthologizing, some pallid re-rerun of the Kerouac/Cassady/Ginsberg/Burroughs gas-fueled, pedal- floored, thumb-stuck out bologna sandwich, coffee and bennies run across cultural America in the immediate post-World War II period. Strangely satisfied to my mind for the simple reason that he was not formed by the Great Depression and the sloughing through World War II that formed the pool for their social facts, formed their generation, and the same hard fact that had precluded me from totally understanding what drove those writers two generations before me like Hemingway to prostration and Fitzgerald to the bottle in the aftermath of the glow of the gilded Jazz Age back in the 1920s.

Frankly though I have felt more alienated from the beats, mainly from their manic antics, and from their fudgy flinging of language as the be all and end all of literary life at the expense of coherent narrative, who were in the cohort a generation before mine than the Jazz Age writers since I had worked the more traditional avenues of writerliness in the 1980s being much closer to the “other” 1950s New York writers like Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Jim Jones, and Bill Styron.    

And I feel that same sensation, that same sense of off-key alienation from the direct heat of the beats in Mr. Jackman’s efforts. For one thing his sketch has more interior dialogue than anything the explosive self-publicizing beats ever tried to do. Of course addiction writing, either under a powerful opiate like that which sustained old Sam Coleridge searching for some modern Xanadu or post-addiction writing which is in favor in this confessional age complete with a happy ending and plenty of cautionary tale which actually withers into the maudlin has a long and cherished history so that Mr. Jackman has tapped into a well-versed literary genre. With this difference that he offers this short sketch from the perspective of some thirty years after the events and sensations described in the narrative so his claim to some studied spontaneity which was a hallmark of the beats runs dry. He, on the facts known to me about his life from his biographical information, was not looking for any particular Xanadu (on the contrary he was just looking for his next eight-ball), and he emphatically was not providing us with some cautionary tale. So while Mr. Jackman owes much to the “beat” rhythm, the “beat” pacing of the drama he has failed to move on past that, tellingly, as he told a reporter for the Boston Globe once in a review of his beat-etched short stories he did not believe that he was breaking new ground, was not doing an exercise in spontaneous writing (which he did not believe was either possible or a good thing since every writer likes to tinker with what he or she has written and if they did not then the damn editors and copyists would when they grabbed  hold of any manuscript).              

But enough of  searching Searching For Todo el Mundo for its niche in the literary pantheon because what is good, what is exquisite if I may use that old-fashioned word, what is essential in the sketch although it cannot save it is that shift of voice and person that floats through the eighty some pages. Use of such literary devices has not been unheard of but they are rarely used now especially in a short piece where it is hard enough to develop a character and a narrative never mind switching up voice and person. Yet the piece would disastrously fall apart if there were no such shifts. Mr. Jackman in an interview with Jerry Gomes of radio station WMEX mentioned that he had originally tried to tell this story strictly from the vantage point of the main character Josh’s experience in the 1980s when he went to Jack K.s cabin in the canyon at Todo el Mundo to dry out from his rather severe addiction to cocaine, nose candy he called it then, although there are a plethora of names out in the junkie world for it that the reader may be more familiar with. He told Mr. Gomes that he was unsuccessful in that effort since he did not have the advantage of writing the sketch under the influence of drugs and that his remembrances of the events back then needed to be fortified by the introduction of Josh’s (his) friend Sam Lowell’s recollections.

At first reading I thought that having Sam introduce the drug problem, put the problem in the distant past only to be dragged up again in later years after they had reconnected with each other would work. When I started reading though, once I got past the first pages where Sam set the story up, basically from the point where Josh in all his desperate struggles to get through from one day to the next takes over the story line there is a sense of incompleteness, a falling off of the power of the sketch to convey that sense of isolation, physical, mental, and social that was driving Josh crazy back then and which made it a very close thing that he would ever survive the experience if Sam had not set us up for what was to  follow. Although I was glad that Josh in the end grabbed that rainy day ride out of the canyon I felt empty of any emotion that he did not get the “cure” on that trip. Or that thirty years later Mr. Jackman thought he would be able to stir us about the experience. Too bad.          

Legendary Rocker Joe Cocker Passes At 70

He’s Got It Bad-With Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight -Take Two

A Sketch From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

…he wondered, truly wondered, whether she missed him just then, missed her walking daddy, her walking daddy when they walked  down the street hand-in-hand and later when high as kites they messed up the pillows at her place, got those satin sheets all sweaty and love moist from their exertions when their fling was fresh and bright. Yes, he wondered for the millionth time that night, that seemingly endless sleepless night when he wondered once again whether  she missed him after all the slow meaningless time that had passed these past few months since their over-heated short love affair had gone down in flames almost as quickly as it had started.

 

That walking daddy moniker was a little term of endearment that she had tagged him with after they had, well, done the “do the do” and she though that she had him reined in, reined him in with kisses and a few little special things that he liked, and that she knew he liked even before he told her that he did. That “do the do” sex stuff was the least of their problems, he knew she liked his kisses and a few little special things that she liked, and that he knew she liked even before she told him that she did, although at the end maybe it was the sex stuff too that did them in when he started asking her to do stuff from the Karma Sutra and she who previously had been the aggressor practically pulling his pants down balked at a few of the kinkier positions described in that manual, it could have been everything jumbled together. But if anybody asked him he missed that part, no question.   

 

He did not really believe that she did, did miss him, she was not built that way, had kind of a steel-trap mind on the subject (and others too, subjects she was steel-trapped about), he knew from the first, and she made the fact abundantly clear in all their conversations, that once she was done with a man that was that and she moved on, maybe to the next man, maybe just off to lick her wounds. She would illustrate the point  with examples citing, chapter and verse, whenever the subject came up ex-husbands and lovers, one of whom she said had asked if she needed a blackboard once she got on her high horse about the subject. Still he took a ticket, took a chance that he would be, what she called him at the beginning, oh yeah, her “forever” man (and a few short months later her “never” man although she did not say that word exactly he just plucked it out of the air one night, one early on sleepless night when he first thought about whether she missed him).  Yeah, so no question he was as sure as a man could be, a man who no longer was on speaking terms with her to find out, that she did not miss him.

 

He wondered too whether she was lonesome tonight for her walking daddy, a very different proposition than whether she missed him. He was not sure on that score, although he thought in the far recesses of his brain she might. See as she also explained in detail with those same ex-husbands and major lovers example complete with blackboard remark even if she was through with a man, had moved on to another man, or just went off to lick her wounds the way she put the fact in those same conversations mentioned above about her way with men, she was as likely to be licking her wounds as looking for another man. As likely to be filled with solitary sadness as out on the town, out with another man.

 

That is where those two marriages and many love affairs came in, came in and softened rather than hardened her to life’s romantic ups and downs. She mentioned that she had since childhood and a very savagely cruel upbringing had a hard time letting go, letting the past fade, and that it took her a long time to get over a man once they were through. How did he say she put it one night, oh yeah, she was fast to love a man when he got under her skin and slow to forget him. That fast love start had been her way with him in their whirlwind love affair smothering him with all kinds of undeserved accolades based on fairly limited knowledge of who he was, what he had been through, and his own spoken appreciations of his worth which added up to the usual man of clay, nothing more. All of the above not giving him time to breathe before trying to plan their future unto infinity after about a month.

 

Yeah, in the far recesses of her brain might be the right way to put it she might be lonesome that night he spoke of but let me tell you what he told me one night about that night he was wondering and many other nights before and after while we were sipping white wines at a Boston bar, listening to some old time piped-in jazz music as background (could have been Cry Me A River starting out, in fact I think it was), which started him out on what exactly had happened the previous few months. Let me give you some of the story and you try to figure the damn thing out:     

 

He had met her sitting at the bar in Cambridge, a rock and roll bar, an “oldies but goodies” bar that he frequented when he needed to hear Elvis, Chuck, Bo, or some rockabilly beat after some hard case was done or he just needed to blow off steam when some appeals case was slipping away for lack of presentable issues that could win. Some nights, like that night, he wound up just slugging quarters in the juke-box, others, mainly weekend nights he would wind up listening to a live band, The Rockin’ Ramrods, covering the classics. He noticed that from his vantage point a few stools down she looked very familiar in a long ago way. After he slid down the few empty barstools between them to get beside her he had mentioned that fact to her as a come-on and offered and bought her a drink on that basis (a glass of red wine which she loved, loved to perdition as he would find out later) they spent the next several minutes trying to figure where that might have been. Work, no, some godforsaken political conference, no, another long ago bar, no, the Cape, no, College, no, and so on. 

 

Strangely they found out once they discussed where they had grown up (she had told him at first she was from New Hampshire and he said that he lived in Cambridge so the subject of home towns did not come up on the first run) that the link had been  that they had gone to the same high school together, she a couple of years after him, North Adamsville High, located on the South Shore of Boston although they had not known each other, had not had any of the same classes back then (but since they had also gone to the same junior high school they agreed later after they were “smitten” with each other, her term, and wanted to make some symbolic “written in the wind” closeness count they must have been in the same space at some point if only the gym, auditorium or cafeteria). That revelation got them cutting up old touches that night for a while, well, a long while since they closed the bar that night. They agreed that they had some common interests and that they should continue the conversation further via e-mail and cellphone. See, since she lived up in New Hampshire in a town outside of Manchester, was a professor at the state university and had been in Cambridge to attend an education conference at Harvard getting together soon in person with her busy start of semester schedule was problematic.

 

So for a while, a few weeks, they carried on an e-mail/cellphone correspondence. Both were however struck by the number of things they had in common, things from childhood like growing up poor, growing up in hostile and dangerous family environments, growing up insecure and with nothing and nobody to guide them left to their own resources. Moreover they found that they had many similar teenage angst and alienation episodes in high school in common as well as current political and academic interests. Both agreed that they should meet again in person since they had already “met” in high school (somehow in the rush of things they discounted that they had really met in Cambridge in a bar, but such are the ways of love in bloom go figure).

 

And so they met again, met many times in neutral territory since they lived so far apart (they called their romance, the Merrimack romance for all the old mill towns they met in for half way convenient, Lowell, Nashua, Manchester, Haverhill, Amesbury and a couple of others I forgot), had many chatty dinners and did other things together like museums and took long walks along the river. He explained to me the powerful first dinner where they talked for hours and when he escorted her to her car in the parking lot for them to go their separate ways home when she got teary-eyed and he caressed her hair to console her. Yeah, it was like that when it was good.   Before long they agreed to meet at a hotel in New Hampshire to see if they had a spark that way. Well you know they did since otherwise there would be no story to tell. You also know, at least you know what he thought about the matter, that they did very well in bed together.  Yes, they, he and she, were both smitten, both felt very comfortable with each other and were heading forward with eyes open.

Along the way she had discussed her two divorce-ended marriages, her serious love affairs and her attitudes toward relationships. Those were the times she would emphasize her take on men, her jealousies, expectations and her limitations. She also early on started her campaign to get him to go to stay with her in New Hampshire and leave Cambridge. He although not as well formed in his take on their relationship as she did likewise explain his two marriages, especially the hard fall of the second marriage which left him very stunned, and major love affairs, although he early on balked when she spoke of leaving the city for the Podunk country up north as he called her place, called the whole state of New Hampshire for that matter. So yes both sets of eyes were open, open wide.

 

She pulled the hammer down, pulled it down early. Within a couple of months she spoke of love, of living together, of sailing out into the sunset together. He, slower on the uptake, slower having been more severely burned in his last marriage than he let on to her or had thought had happened, was a bit bewildered by her speedy emotional attachments to him. They went on a couple of trips away to New York and Washington together, had some good times, had some rocky times interspersed in between too when she tried to rein him in. He wasn’t afraid to commit exactly (well maybe he was as he confessed to me although not to her when it could have helped, maybe had a little “cold feet” problem but he insisted it was a small blip) as much as he wanted the thing to develop naturally, give him time to breathe although I have already said that air to breathe thing before didn’t I, there always seemed to be an air of suffocation every time she got on her high horse, got her wanting habits on, got the best of him sometimes.

 

Then he made his fatal mistake, or rather series of mistakes, starting with strong words one night at one of their Merrimack River trail dinner when they both had had a bit too much to drink, too much wine, and she was going on and on as she did after her second or third glass depending on how tired she had been after a long day’s work. He admitted he got snappy, told her they needed to slow down and enjoy each other. She responded with a blast that shook him up but they were able to kiss and make up that night. The real mistake though was one time after they had not seen each other for a week or so when he sent her an e-mail speaking in sorrow of the drift of their recent relationship and he wanted the spark back that had go them going.

 

She exploded at that e-mail seeing that as a callous rebuke of her actions rather than as what he thought was a plaintive love letter. What did he say she had called it, oh yeah, a closing argument, a damn lawyer’s closing argument (the “damn” part a result of having been married to a lawyer the first time out and now him). They agreed to meet at a neutral restaurant to discuss the matter (on the Merrimack River of course but I will not give the location since there still may be blood on the water).

 

When he thought about it later he could see where she had prepared herself to be confrontational toward him or at least be prepared to force the issue because the first words out of her mouth were an ultimatum-“come live with me or the affair is over.” The exchange got heated as she drank more wine on this night as well (he did not drink that night having learned a lesson from the last session). She said something that when we talked he could not for the life of him remember but they were fighting words. He exploded saying “I don’t need this,” threw money on the table and stormed out. That was the last he saw of her not even looking back to see how she took the matter.  Oh sure the next day he tried frantically to call several times knowing that a decisive turning point had been reached, no answer. Tried some e-mails-same response. Later that day he got a message on his voicemail from her giving her walking daddy his walking papers. She told him not to call, not to write as she would not respond. He never did. As he explained it to me he never did although he spent many a night thinking about whether he should call, about what he would say and thought too of an e-mail but he knew in his bones she would not answer like with his first attempts so he let it go. Knew her steel-trapped policies toward men, toward him in her walking papers summary. Let it go to spend his time, his free time, fretting about what had happened. Jesus.

  

What he did do seriously in the few weeks after their break-up, what he was doing this night he spoke to me as well as months earlier  when he first fretted over what had gone wrong, was think through how it could have played out differently. Did that blame game in order to curb his own lonesomeness as he replayed their short affair, as he tried to try to figure out something that had bothered him since that fierce parting night. No, not about the specific details of what had caused his downfall, although he was still perplexed about why his concern about the over-heated pace of their relationship and his anger at that last meeting over her ultimatum should have been the irretrievable cause. He would accept that, had to accept that was the way she perceived the situation and that those were the causes of his downfall pure and simple. He didn’t like it but he has come to see where what she said in her voicemail message that she could never see him in the old way, the way she had in the beginning of their affair when their love flamed, precluded any future romantic relationship. 

 

What he thought about mostly though concerned one point-how could two intelligent, worldly people, who individually had many strong and powerful inner resources gathered through surviving stormy childhoods and life’s hard knocks, not be able to figure a way to avoid letting their fragile relationship blow away in the wind, blow away without a trace after many professions of desire, devotion and fidelity. He fretted over how little energy they had devoted to using some of those personal inner resources in order to build the foundations of a strong relationship. He had been willing to take his fair share of the blame for his “cold feet” which had him, more often than not, attempting to walk away from not toward her. That last marriage had damaged him more than he had thought and it had still colored his worldview on intimacy, on commitment, no question. That walking away from her in fear as they got closer, as she started to get under his skin, always seemed strongest as he left her after some bad days when she was pushing him hard. Or when he thought the whole thing was hopeless since they lived too far away from each other to compromise on a living arrangement. Yeah, he would take his fair share of blame on that.

 

She infuriated him though with her interminable future plans while disregarding the present, although he could not speak for her and whether she believed his house of card blown in the wind idea about what had happened. She had plans for them to go to live in California when they retired, deemed it mandatory that he spent a certain number of days up in New Hampshire even while he had pressing business to take care of in Boston, but best, best as an example, was that she had their next Christmas and New Year plans already mapped out in March. All the time not paying attention to the drift of the tempo of their day to day relationship where he was, frankly, unhappy, very unhappy. In the end he was shocked by how little there had been to hold them together in a serious crisis which he conceded, or would have conceded if she had ever decided to talk to him again, was a serious crisis. Now that he thought about it for a while he told me, now that he had talked it through with me, he decided, no, whether she had a new walking daddy or not (or whatever new moniker she would make up for him) she would not be lonesome for him that night.