Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Sputnik, the first 1950s made-made space satellite.
Billie, William James Bradley, comment:
Ya, I know I haven’t talked to you in too long a while like I told you I would. I was suppose to tell you all about my best friend over at Adamsville Elementary School Markin’s, Peter Paul Markin’s, ill-fated attempts to single-handedly close the space gap they keep talking about ever since the commies put that Sputnik satellite up in orbit last year. Some of you know that I had to put that on hold because I was still kind of broken up about something. Ya, for you that don’t know I got caught up in some, well I might as well just come out with it, woman trouble, alright girl trouble, okay. That’s over now since I discovered Elvis’ real take on the honeys, One Night Of Sin and now have a new girlfriend, well, really an old girlfriend, an old stick girlfriend, Cool Donna O’Toole, that I had, as Markin always kids me about, “discarded” when love Laura came into view. But that isn’t getting us to the Markin space odyssey you’ve been waiting breathlessly to hear about.
And I will get to that in just a second now that I think about it, or the heart of the story, but let me just take a minute to tell you this background story because it also explains part of the time for my delay in telling the story. It seems that Markin had no objection, and shouldn’t, to having his space odyssey story told but he just wanted to tell the story himself. I said no way, no way on this good green earth are you going to tell this one. By the time he got done we would all be weepy, girl weepy, or something about Markin’s tremendous contribution to space science rather than the simple truth- Markin should not be let with fifty miles, no, make that five hundred miles, no, let’s be on the safe side, five thousand miles from anything that could even be remotely used for launching rockets. Ya, it’s that kind of story.
Besides, here is the real reason that Markin shouldn’t tell the story, and I told him so. Markin, no question is a history guy. He is crazy for people like Abigail Adams, and her husband and son, the guys who used to be Presidents, John and John Quincy, back in the Stone Age, and who Adamsville is named after, one of them anyway. He also knows, although I have no clue why, about old times Egypt from going to the Thomas Crane Public Library branch at school and walking, walking can you believe this, over to Boston to the Museum of Fine Arts to check out their mummy stuff, and tombs and how they dressed and all that. Yawn.
Markin is also crazy for reading, not stuff that is required for school reading either, and writing about it, a book guy, no doubt. Get this, he just told me about a book of short stories that he was reading about by a guy, an Irish guy, a chandelier Irish guy, Fitzgerald or something like that, who wrote stories about rich kids, very rich kids, rich guys with names like Basil mooning over rich girls. And rich girls with names like Josephine swooning over guys. Nothing big about that but like I told Markin how is reading that stuff going to do anything for you, for us, trying, trying like crazy to get the hell, excuse my English, of the projects. He’s a cloudy guy see, even if he is my best friend.
But here is something funny, and maybe makes this reading stuff of some use sometimes. Markin read in the Foreword, who the hell, excuse my language again, in this good green earth reads the Foreword, that one of the stories, one of the Basil stories wasn’t published because the publishers didn’t believe back in the early part of this century that ten and eleven year old boys and girls would be into “petting parties.” Jesus, and I make no excuse for saying that, where have those guys been, and what planet. Definitely not down here with us poor project boys and girls. Hey, I might even read that story come to think of it to see if petting parties are the same with rich kids. So history and book reading. Does that sound like a guy who can tell a space story, a nuts and bolts space story. No leave this one to old Billie, he’ll tell it true.
I don’t know about you but I was not all that hopped up about space exploration, space races, or Jules Verne although I will admit that I was a little excited about the idea of those space satellites going up in the sky, those that started with the Soviet Union’s first object in space, Sputnik. But when they started sending robots, monkeys, mice, and small dogs I lost interest. I figured how hard can it be to do the space thing if rodents can make the trip, unmolested. Besides I had my budding career as a rock star of the Elvis sort to worry about so other kinds of stars took a back seat.
No so Markin. The minute he heard, or maybe it was a little later but pretty soon after, that Sputnik had gone up, that it had been the Russkies who were first in space, he was crazy to enlist in the space race. I swear I had to stop talking to him for a few days because all he wanted to talk about, with that certain demented look in his eye that told you that you were in for a lecture like at school, was how it was every red-blooded student’s, make that every red-blooded American student’s duty to get moving in aid of the space front. It was so bad that he would not even heard me talk about the latest rock hit without saying, hey, that’s kid’s stuff I got no time for that. Bad, right.
Now this was not about money, you know going around the neighborhood collecting coins for the space program like we did to restore the U.S.S. Constitution when it was all water-logged or whatever happens to wooden ships when they get too old. And it was not about maybe going to the library to get some books to study up on science and maybe some day become a space engineer and go to Cape Canaveral or someplace like that. No this was about our duty, duty see, to go out in the back yard, go down in the cellar, go out in the garage (if you had a garage, we didn’t in the projects) and start to experiment making rockets that might be able to make it to space. See what I mean. Deep-end stuff, no question.
Now I already told you, but in case you might have forgotten, Markin is nothing but a books and history guy, and maybe a little music. I have never seen him put a hammer to a nail or anything like that, and I am not sure that he has those skills. I do know that when we were making paper mache dinosaurs in class his thing did not look like a dinosaur. Not close. But one day he got me to go with him up to Adamsville Center to the hardware store to get materials for making a rocket. Markin is nothing if not serious in his little projects, at first. At the store we get some balsa wood, nails, aluminum poles, guide wire, a knife built for carving stuff, and about ten CO2 cartridges. The idea is to build a model (or models) and see which ones have the contours to be space-worthy.
Over the next couple of weeks I saw Markin off and on but mainly off because he was spending his after-school time down in the cellar of the apartment where his family lived working on those balsa wood models. Then one day, one Saturday I think, ya, it was Saturday he came over to my house looking for help in setting up his launch pad. The idea was that he would put up two aluminum poles, stretch the guide wire between the two poles and demonstrate what he called the aerodynamic flow of his models by attaching his balsa wood models on the wire with a bent nail. Propulsion was by inserting a CO2 cartridge in a crevice in the rocket and hitting one end of the cartridge by lightly hitting it with a nail. I was to observe at the finish while he covered the start. After about half an hour everything was set to go and Dr. Markin was ready to set the explosion. Except moon man Markin hit the nail into the cartridge at the wrong place and, if it had not been for some quick leg work that I still chuckle over when I think about it (like now) my friend would have lost an eye. Scratch balsa wood models.
Oh, you thought that was the end of it. Christ no. After catching some hell from his mother (and a little from me) he was back on the trail blazing away. This time though he kept it very low. I didn’t even know about it until he asked me to help him get some materials from that same hardware store and the drug store uptown. So here is the brain-storm in a nut shell. He said he saw the error of his ways in the balsa wood fiasco- he had used the wrong fuel and the whole guide wire thing was awry. This time he intended to simulate (ya, I didn’t know what that meant either until he told me it was like practically the same but not the real thing, or something like that) a launching like he had seen on television and in the Bell Laboratories Science films we saw at school. Okay, get this, he built, using his father’s soldering iron, a small rocket out of tin soup cans (Campbell’s, naturally, just kidding) with a tin funnel on top and flattened metal for wings. Hey, it really didn’t look bad. The fuel, I swear I do not know all the ingredients but they all came from either the hardware or drug store so that gives you an idea about something. Apparently he read about it somewhere.
So, again on black Saturday, we are off to the back field to launch the spaceship Billie (named after me, of course) into fame and fortune. We set the rocket on a small launch pad that he made; he put in the fuel from a can, and then closed it off with a fuse device at the end. I, as honoree, was to light the match for take-off. I lit the match alright except a funny thing happened- the rocket quickly, very quickly turned into an inferno, and me along with it, except I too did some fancy leg work. Christ, Markin enough. And the lesson to be learned- you had better be young, quick, and have your insurance paid up if you are going to hang out with maddened rocket scientists. After that experiment I think old Markin lost heart. The other day I saw him reading a book about Abraham Lincoln so I guess the coast is clear now. Oh ya, and at school yesterday he asked me if I had heard Jerry Lee Lewis’ Breathless yet. Welcome back to Earth, Markin.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Those Oldies But Goodies- Folk Branch- Bob Dylan’s Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues- In Honor Of His 70th Birthday
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his classic Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues in 1966.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you.
Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got.
Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon.
Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same.
Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost.
I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.
******
“United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and not longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.
Fritz thought again, this time with easier breathing, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell, except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.
Ya, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell. And maybe, just maybe, it was even earlier than Clintondale high school days, and the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.
But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was every going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about the get to easy street, not only was it to get some tea delight to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every women-loving guy, even honest women-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman. Hard-hearted Irish Catholic Cecilias like he knew, backwards and forwards, from kid time or some other combinations foxed out later but a woman, no question. Although not always about a woman named Juana, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should be a little less forgiving. Ya, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy.
Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance she always wore (and don’t tell her if you run into her, and you will if you are looking for grade A dope for sure, drove him as crazy as a loon), that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, ya, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.
Ya, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the world and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.
See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep herself in style. Fritz never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by Fritz but Juana was also “connected,” connected through some cousin to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Colombian Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night. So Juana was to good tea like Owsley was to the acid scene, the maestro.
Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Ya, it was the Columbia Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got “religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.
To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tea leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tea leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But Fritz had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.
And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the cartelization of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk, and later Fritz and Tommy risk (rest his soul down in some Cuernavaca back alley). And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for christ sakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.
This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. Fritz didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right this minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.
And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And here he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh soap. And as he got off he staggered for a minute, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled”, smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. Fritz said to himself, ya, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you see her tell her Fritz said hello.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you.
Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got.
Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon.
Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same.
Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost.
I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.
******
“United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and not longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.
Fritz thought again, this time with easier breathing, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell, except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.
Ya, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell. And maybe, just maybe, it was even earlier than Clintondale high school days, and the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.
But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was every going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about the get to easy street, not only was it to get some tea delight to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every women-loving guy, even honest women-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman. Hard-hearted Irish Catholic Cecilias like he knew, backwards and forwards, from kid time or some other combinations foxed out later but a woman, no question. Although not always about a woman named Juana, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should be a little less forgiving. Ya, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy.
Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance she always wore (and don’t tell her if you run into her, and you will if you are looking for grade A dope for sure, drove him as crazy as a loon), that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, ya, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.
Ya, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the world and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.
See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep herself in style. Fritz never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by Fritz but Juana was also “connected,” connected through some cousin to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Colombian Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night. So Juana was to good tea like Owsley was to the acid scene, the maestro.
Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Ya, it was the Columbia Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got “religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.
To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tea leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tea leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But Fritz had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.
And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the cartelization of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk, and later Fritz and Tommy risk (rest his soul down in some Cuernavaca back alley). And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for christ sakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.
This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. Fritz didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right this minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.
And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And here he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh soap. And as he got off he staggered for a minute, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled”, smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. Fritz said to himself, ya, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you see her tell her Fritz said hello.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby-Boom Jail Break-Out- “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era- The 1960s: Rave On”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Corvettes
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: The ‘60s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990
I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. This The ‘60s: Rave On is a case of the latter, of the not fitting in. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had at least the feel of our generational breakout), a summer night scene, a lovers’ lane summer’s night scene, non-described as such but clearly “boss” Corvette car scene spells it all out for this car-less teen, no car soon in sight teen, and no gas money, etc., etc. even if I had as much as an old Nash Rambler junk car. But not to speak bitterness today, I do want to talk car dream, Corvette car dream, okay.
I have ranted endlessly about the 1950s as the “golden age of the automobile” and I am not alone. As perceptive a social critic and observer as Tom Wolfe, he of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and many other tribal gathering-type book screeds, did a whole book on the California car culture, the California post World War II teen car culture that drifted east and “infested” plenty of young working class kids in that time, the time of white tee-shirts, jeans, maybe a leather jacket against life’s storms, and of endless grease monkey tune-up to get that engine revved just right. Moreover, nostalgia-driven George Lucas’s American Graffiti of 1973 is nothing but an ode to that good-night teen life, again California-style.
Sure, and as it drifted back east Sammy the local wizard, car wizard, had all the girls, all the good-looking girls hanging around his home garage just waiting to be “selected” for a ride in Sammy’s latest effort, usually some variation off a ’57 Chevy. And Sammy, believe me, was nothing but very average for looks. But get this, old bookish reviewer, old two-thousand facts and don’t stop counting reviewer, got exactly nowhere even with the smart girls in Sammy-ruled land. Ya, get away kid, ‘cause Sammy is the be-bop daddy of the Eastern ocean night. And books and book-knowledge, well you have old age for books but a ’57 Chevy is now. And here is the unkindest cut of all-"go wait for the bus at the bus stop, boy. Sammy rules here."
But a man can dream, can’t he? And even Sammy, greased up, dirty fingernails, blotched tee-shirt, admitted, freely admitted, that he wished, wished to high heaven that he had enough dough for the upkeep on a Corvette the ding-daddy (his word) “boss” (my word) car of the age and nothing but a magnet for even smarter and better looking girls than the neighborhood girls that “harassed” him. ( I found out later that this “harassed” was nothing but a nothing thing because come Friday or Saturday night he had more than his fair share of companions down by the seashore-every thing is alright night.) Still Corvette meant big dough and as the scene in this CD indicates, probably big “new money” California daddy rich kid dough to look out at the Hollywood Hills or Laguna Beach night. Ya, that’s the dream, and that window-fogged night part too.
And whether you were a slave to your car (or not as with this writer), be it ’57 Chevy, Corvette or just that old beat down, beat around Nash Rambler you had that radio glued, maybe literally, to the local rock station to hear the tunes on this CD. Although truth to tell this writer listening to his be-bop little transistor radio would not have gone crazy over the mix presented here. This is a second compilations of ‘60s hits but it seems to have run out of steam so the few stick-outs here include: Let’s Have a Party (a great rockabilly tune by one of the few woman in that genre, Wanda Jackson; Chains (great harmony by this group that also did backups on a ton of other material), The Cookies; and, If You Need Me (his heyday and much under-appreciated as an early soulful singer except, of course, when they played him as last dance and you got the courage to ask that certain she you had been eyeing all night to dance, thanks S.B.), Solomon Burke.
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: The ‘60s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990
I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. This The ‘60s: Rave On is a case of the latter, of the not fitting in. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had at least the feel of our generational breakout), a summer night scene, a lovers’ lane summer’s night scene, non-described as such but clearly “boss” Corvette car scene spells it all out for this car-less teen, no car soon in sight teen, and no gas money, etc., etc. even if I had as much as an old Nash Rambler junk car. But not to speak bitterness today, I do want to talk car dream, Corvette car dream, okay.
I have ranted endlessly about the 1950s as the “golden age of the automobile” and I am not alone. As perceptive a social critic and observer as Tom Wolfe, he of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and many other tribal gathering-type book screeds, did a whole book on the California car culture, the California post World War II teen car culture that drifted east and “infested” plenty of young working class kids in that time, the time of white tee-shirts, jeans, maybe a leather jacket against life’s storms, and of endless grease monkey tune-up to get that engine revved just right. Moreover, nostalgia-driven George Lucas’s American Graffiti of 1973 is nothing but an ode to that good-night teen life, again California-style.
Sure, and as it drifted back east Sammy the local wizard, car wizard, had all the girls, all the good-looking girls hanging around his home garage just waiting to be “selected” for a ride in Sammy’s latest effort, usually some variation off a ’57 Chevy. And Sammy, believe me, was nothing but very average for looks. But get this, old bookish reviewer, old two-thousand facts and don’t stop counting reviewer, got exactly nowhere even with the smart girls in Sammy-ruled land. Ya, get away kid, ‘cause Sammy is the be-bop daddy of the Eastern ocean night. And books and book-knowledge, well you have old age for books but a ’57 Chevy is now. And here is the unkindest cut of all-"go wait for the bus at the bus stop, boy. Sammy rules here."
But a man can dream, can’t he? And even Sammy, greased up, dirty fingernails, blotched tee-shirt, admitted, freely admitted, that he wished, wished to high heaven that he had enough dough for the upkeep on a Corvette the ding-daddy (his word) “boss” (my word) car of the age and nothing but a magnet for even smarter and better looking girls than the neighborhood girls that “harassed” him. ( I found out later that this “harassed” was nothing but a nothing thing because come Friday or Saturday night he had more than his fair share of companions down by the seashore-every thing is alright night.) Still Corvette meant big dough and as the scene in this CD indicates, probably big “new money” California daddy rich kid dough to look out at the Hollywood Hills or Laguna Beach night. Ya, that’s the dream, and that window-fogged night part too.
And whether you were a slave to your car (or not as with this writer), be it ’57 Chevy, Corvette or just that old beat down, beat around Nash Rambler you had that radio glued, maybe literally, to the local rock station to hear the tunes on this CD. Although truth to tell this writer listening to his be-bop little transistor radio would not have gone crazy over the mix presented here. This is a second compilations of ‘60s hits but it seems to have run out of steam so the few stick-outs here include: Let’s Have a Party (a great rockabilly tune by one of the few woman in that genre, Wanda Jackson; Chains (great harmony by this group that also did backups on a ton of other material), The Cookies; and, If You Need Me (his heyday and much under-appreciated as an early soulful singer except, of course, when they played him as last dance and you got the courage to ask that certain she you had been eyeing all night to dance, thanks S.B.), Solomon Burke.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby-Boom Jail Break-Out- “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era- 1963-Still Rocking”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for drive-in movies
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: 1963-Still Rocking, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989
I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. This 1963 CD is a case of the former, of the fitting in. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had at least the feel of our generational break-out) we are at the drive-in, the drive-in movies for those of the Internet/Netflicks/YouTube generations who have not gotten around to checking out this bit of Americana on Wikipedia, with the obligatory 1950s-early 1960s B-movie monster movie (outer space aliens, creatures from the black lagoon, blobs, DNA-damaged dinosaurs, foreign-bred behemoths a specialty) prominent on the screen.
Oh sure, everyone of a certain age, a certain baby-boomer age, a generation of ’68 age, has plenty of stories to tell of being bundled up as kids, maybe pre-set with full set pajamas on to defend against the late sleepy-eyed night, the sleepy-drowsy late movie night, placed in the car backseats and taken by adventurous parents (or so it seemed) to the local open air drive-in for the double feature. That usually also happened on a friendly summer night when school did not interfere with staying up late (hopefully through both films). And to top it all off you got to play in the inevitable jungle jim, see-saw, slide, swing set-ladened playground during intermission between the film while waiting, waiting against all hope, for that skewered, shriveled hot dog, rusty, dusty hamburger, or stale, over the top buttered pop corn that was the real reason that you “consented” to stay out late with the parents. Ya, we all have variations on that basic theme to tell, although I challenge anyone, seriously challenge anyone, to name five films that you saw at the drive-in that you remembered from then-especially those droopy-eyed second films.
In any case, frankly, I don’t give a damn about that kid stuff family adventure drive-in experience. Come on, that was all, well, just kids' stuff. The “real” drive-in, as pictured in the cover art here is what I want to address. The time of our time in that awkward teen alienation, teen angst thing that only got abated by things like a teenage night at the drive-in. Ya, that was not, or at least I hope it was not, you father’s drive-in. That might have been in the next planet over, for all I know. For starters our planet involved girls (girls, ah, women, just reverse the genders here to tell your side of the experience), looking for girls, or want to be looking for girls, preferably a stray car-full to compliment your guy car-full and let god sort it out at intermission.
Wait a minute. I am getting ahead of myself in this story. First you needed that car, because no walkers or bus riders need apply for the drive-in movies like this was some kind of lame, low-rent, downtown matinee last picture show adventure. For this writer that was a problem, a personal problem, as I had no car and my family had cars only sporadically. Fortunately we early baby-boomers lived in the golden age of the automobile and could depend on a friend to either have a car (praise be teenage disposable income/allowances) or could use the family car. Once the car issue was clarified then it was simply a matter of getting a car-full of guys (or sometimes guys and gals) in for the price of two (maybe three) admissions.
What? Okay, I think that I can safely tell the story now because the statute of limitations must have surely passed. See, what you did was put a couple (or three guys) in the trunk of that old car (or in a pinch one guy on the backseat floor) as you entered the drive-thru admissions booth. The driver paid for the two (or three tickets) and took off to your parking spot (complete with ramp speaker just in case you wanted to actually listen to the film shown on that big wide white screen). Neat trick, right?
Now, of course, the purpose of all of this, as mentioned above, was to get that convoy of guys, trunk guys, backseat guys, backseat floor guys, whatever, to mix and moon with that elusive car-full of girls who did the very same thing (except easier because they were smaller) at the intermission stand or maybe just hanging around the unofficially designated teen hang-out area. No family sedans with those pajama-clad kids need apply (nor any sane, responsible parent get within fifty paces of said teens). And occasionally, very occasionally as it turned out, some “boss” car would show up complete with one guy (the driver) and one honey (girl, ah, woman) closely seated beside him for what one and all knew was going to be a very window-fogged night. And that was, secretly thought or not, the guy drive-in dream. As for the movies. Did they show movies there? Enough said.
Oh, except that at said drive-in, before the first show started at dusk, between shows and on the way home, girl-matched or not, you were very liable to hear many of the songs in this CD on the old car radio. The stick outs here include: Heat Wave (not as good as Dancing In The Streets but good), Martha and the Vandellas; Just One Look (make that look my way, please, even if you are munching on pop corn) Doris Troy; Wild Weekend (just in case you wanted to dance during intermission rather than watch the screen clock ticking off the time until that next film began), The Rockin’ Rebels ; and, Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby (ya, you have got that right, sisters), The Cookies.
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: 1963-Still Rocking, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989
I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. This 1963 CD is a case of the former, of the fitting in. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had at least the feel of our generational break-out) we are at the drive-in, the drive-in movies for those of the Internet/Netflicks/YouTube generations who have not gotten around to checking out this bit of Americana on Wikipedia, with the obligatory 1950s-early 1960s B-movie monster movie (outer space aliens, creatures from the black lagoon, blobs, DNA-damaged dinosaurs, foreign-bred behemoths a specialty) prominent on the screen.
Oh sure, everyone of a certain age, a certain baby-boomer age, a generation of ’68 age, has plenty of stories to tell of being bundled up as kids, maybe pre-set with full set pajamas on to defend against the late sleepy-eyed night, the sleepy-drowsy late movie night, placed in the car backseats and taken by adventurous parents (or so it seemed) to the local open air drive-in for the double feature. That usually also happened on a friendly summer night when school did not interfere with staying up late (hopefully through both films). And to top it all off you got to play in the inevitable jungle jim, see-saw, slide, swing set-ladened playground during intermission between the film while waiting, waiting against all hope, for that skewered, shriveled hot dog, rusty, dusty hamburger, or stale, over the top buttered pop corn that was the real reason that you “consented” to stay out late with the parents. Ya, we all have variations on that basic theme to tell, although I challenge anyone, seriously challenge anyone, to name five films that you saw at the drive-in that you remembered from then-especially those droopy-eyed second films.
In any case, frankly, I don’t give a damn about that kid stuff family adventure drive-in experience. Come on, that was all, well, just kids' stuff. The “real” drive-in, as pictured in the cover art here is what I want to address. The time of our time in that awkward teen alienation, teen angst thing that only got abated by things like a teenage night at the drive-in. Ya, that was not, or at least I hope it was not, you father’s drive-in. That might have been in the next planet over, for all I know. For starters our planet involved girls (girls, ah, women, just reverse the genders here to tell your side of the experience), looking for girls, or want to be looking for girls, preferably a stray car-full to compliment your guy car-full and let god sort it out at intermission.
Wait a minute. I am getting ahead of myself in this story. First you needed that car, because no walkers or bus riders need apply for the drive-in movies like this was some kind of lame, low-rent, downtown matinee last picture show adventure. For this writer that was a problem, a personal problem, as I had no car and my family had cars only sporadically. Fortunately we early baby-boomers lived in the golden age of the automobile and could depend on a friend to either have a car (praise be teenage disposable income/allowances) or could use the family car. Once the car issue was clarified then it was simply a matter of getting a car-full of guys (or sometimes guys and gals) in for the price of two (maybe three) admissions.
What? Okay, I think that I can safely tell the story now because the statute of limitations must have surely passed. See, what you did was put a couple (or three guys) in the trunk of that old car (or in a pinch one guy on the backseat floor) as you entered the drive-thru admissions booth. The driver paid for the two (or three tickets) and took off to your parking spot (complete with ramp speaker just in case you wanted to actually listen to the film shown on that big wide white screen). Neat trick, right?
Now, of course, the purpose of all of this, as mentioned above, was to get that convoy of guys, trunk guys, backseat guys, backseat floor guys, whatever, to mix and moon with that elusive car-full of girls who did the very same thing (except easier because they were smaller) at the intermission stand or maybe just hanging around the unofficially designated teen hang-out area. No family sedans with those pajama-clad kids need apply (nor any sane, responsible parent get within fifty paces of said teens). And occasionally, very occasionally as it turned out, some “boss” car would show up complete with one guy (the driver) and one honey (girl, ah, woman) closely seated beside him for what one and all knew was going to be a very window-fogged night. And that was, secretly thought or not, the guy drive-in dream. As for the movies. Did they show movies there? Enough said.
Oh, except that at said drive-in, before the first show started at dusk, between shows and on the way home, girl-matched or not, you were very liable to hear many of the songs in this CD on the old car radio. The stick outs here include: Heat Wave (not as good as Dancing In The Streets but good), Martha and the Vandellas; Just One Look (make that look my way, please, even if you are munching on pop corn) Doris Troy; Wild Weekend (just in case you wanted to dance during intermission rather than watch the screen clock ticking off the time until that next film began), The Rockin’ Rebels ; and, Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby (ya, you have got that right, sisters), The Cookies.
Friday, May 20, 2011
*An Archaeological Dig? Remembrances Of Things Past-The Yearbook-For Carol C., Class Of 1964
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Dead Sea Scrolls a minor discovery compared to the one discussed below.
Markin, Class Of 1964, comment:
Quick, where is your North Adamsville High School yearbook, the Magnet? Ya, I knew I would catch some of you off-guard with that one. For some of you though it is merely a fast jump over from your easy chair to the bookshelf, a little dusting off of that treasure with a conveniently placed rag, and you are ready for duty, nostalgia duty. Or shuffle, creakily shuffle by the way if I am any judge of conditions these days, up to the old cobwebby attic, cursing the day (or night, for that matter) about how hard it is to get around and how it's not like it use to be, wondering, thoughtfully wondering, where in hell the box that you put that valued heirloom in is. Ya, I know that drill. Then, finally, finding the precious cargo under layers of later photo albums, albums showing your life’s work, your family outings, and your other righteous keepsake memories. And, yes, taking out the rag to wipe a half century’s dust off, although not memories. Or trudging out to the garage/storage area/dump the final resting place for all ephemera, exotica and just plain don’t know what to do with items (except, well, of course not, throw the damn stuff away since you have not used those gee-gaws since about 1972). Ya, I know that drill too. In all cases though, ready, as if you were waiting, waiting patiently, for someone, some old reprobate classmate on the Internet in the year 2011 to ask you that very question. Well, okay we all have our little quirks.
Others though will have to answer AWOL (absent without leave, for those who did not do that military service of unblessed memory) and confess that item got tossed out, mistakenly or not, long ago on some vagabond move, or some other now long forgotten excursion. It wasn’t like you didn’t treasure the thing, really, but times moved on, you moved on and maybe the euphoria of high school high pictures, of maybe five hundred plus people that you barely knew, or remembered, clubs you did not belong to, or sports that you did not participate in had passed by. Or, it wasn’t like you did not intent to keep the holy of holies but on those long ago hitchhike roads, those hitchhike roads west to start anew, maybe, just maybe, you had to leave it behind in some desolate motel room, or some godforsaken high mountain campsite. I understand your dilemma, believe me.
Or it was sold to the highest bidder at some flea market yard sale to pay off some untidy debt, some untidy small debt, I assume. The list of possibilities is endless, but at least those irresponsible renegade raider reds that simply lost or left theirs in some undisclosed place had enough spunk to leave the dust of high school traumas, dramas and bad karmas behind in some also now long forgotten way station.
As for myself, for those dying to know, or even those who are not because I have no story to tell otherwise, I know exactly where my previously uncoveted copy is, or at least where I threw it. Soon, very soon after graduation, in a fit of hubris, teen alienation, teen angst, teen rage against the dark I threw it, threw it unceremoniously into the Neponset River not far from the old school, and my family’s house. Beyond that I take no responsible for where it landed, although I hope that it landed in some far off island where they have never heard of yearbooks, photographs, and pictures of people doing strange activities and would be clueless on such questions as why guys are running around in white shorts, why boys and girls are on separate bowling teams, why certain Greek vestigial Tri-Hi-Y girls take the three purities vows, and why guys were wearing non-fashionista white socks when posing for group activities. Things frankly that I wonder at now, wonder at intensely, myself. And maybe, just maybe, that Magnet is now an item of veneration, high holy veneration by some cargo cult-worshipping peoples who had no other use for the thing.
But that is more a fit task for an anthropologist’s analysis. Today I wish to speak of, as the headline indicates, archeology, of the search for ancient treasures, not of their meaning, well, not seriously of their meaning. And along that line I have a question, no, I have 1000 questions. I have just been on a “treasure hunt.” Was it in search of the Dead Sea Scrolls? No, that's kid's stuff. Did I venture to the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, to dig up ancient sculptures? Boring, for my purposes here. Did I go on an Indiana Jones-style adventure in search of the lost Ark of the Covenant? Mere child’s play. No, I bravely went to the wilds of Winchester, Massachusetts to the lovely home of Frankie Riley, Francis Xavier Riley, the king hell king corner boy of the North Adamsville schoolboy be-bop night, from our class. And what treasure did I dig out? A rather pristine copy of the Magnet for the Class of 1964. This, my friends, is the find of the age.
Okay, now I have you exactly where I want you. Forget Botox and Hair Club for Men, from now on, guys and gals, no more trying to pass for fifty-something just because sixty is the new fifty. That include you Chrissie McNamara (maiden name). I have proof of age. In black and white glossies. And I do believe that I could find a good enough lawyer to have it hold up in court. Frankie, though, is already talking about hiring “hit men” to do me in if I so much as harm a hair on any classmate's head. You know Frankie; he was always one for the wild talk.
But enough of that wild noise for now. A couple of comments are in order, after an initial quick run through, before I do a more thorough scientific examination of this artifact. First, in the interest of scientific veracity I must confess an error. At one time or another when talking about “back in the days” I told one and all that Frankie and I spent (or misspent) many a summer evening on the front steps of North Adamsville High discussing our dreams, mainly small dreams and other getting through the day things, not big, cosmic mortality dreams like we would now. In describing the steps I mentioned that there were either stone lions or gargoyles that flanked either side of the steps. Well, in many pictures in the yearbook, especially of group activities, the front steps frame the shot. The items on the side of the steps were actually stone columns and globes. I was close though, right? That error is definitely either a result of the "mist of time" misting up big time or creeping senility. Your choice.
And now for some observations (and a posing of some those 1000 questions) on a first run through of the class pictures, individually and collectively. For most of the guys I would not want to meet you in a dark alley, even now. Unless I was heavily armed, or had the 82nd Airborne at my back. Actually make that the 82nd Airborne and at least one regiment from the 101st Airborne. Especially looking at those football players. I won't even speak of basketball and baseball players because they were mainly football after the season was over anyway. Were they on steroids in those days? Or some less exotic tobacco-like drug down in the locker room after the coaches called it a day? Is that why all the girls gathered round? I thought it was athletic prowess, but now I wonder. And wonder also what they look like now, now after all those years of youthful punishment on those hips, knees, and ankles. Come to think of it I don't think I will need that extra 101st regiment after all.
While we are on the subject of girls, the eternal subject then (and let's face it now too) and who they were and were not hanging around with, it is totally understandable that they would flock to the gridiron goliaths who carried our hopes and dreams on their broad shoulders on those brisk, yellow-leafed, gathering ice grey clouds autumn afternoons. Fair is fair. What is not fair, after looking at the picture of the billiards team, is why all the girls flocked to them. Many an afternoon I would drift (nice word use, right?) over casually to Joe's Billiard Parlor (although everybody knew it was nothing but a glorified pool hall, and Joe was nothing but a "connected", connected meaning you know connected do I have to spell it out) bookie using the place as a front) to check out the girls, the very lively, interesting girls, that seemed to be hanging off the rafters watching the boys (and it was always boys in those days) "shoot pools." Fifty years later and I am still burned up about it. Christ those guys were nothing but rough-hewed corner boys (although that may have been the attraction for those bouncy, tight sweater-wearing frails).
And continuing on with the sports teams, the track guys, christ, they look like they just came out of the wheat fields of Kansas with those uniforms that were issued in about 1926. And those squinty eyes like this was the first time they had seen a camera. One guy definitely looked like he was posing to be some jut-jawed Old West guy, cowboy guy, that made me think of a poor man's version of the actor/playwright Sam Shepard. Maybe my cargo cult reference above applies here too, except for cameras not yearbooks. Although I don’t know much about what goes on in Kansas, except don’t bury me there. No wonder people honked horns, caroomed their cars close to them, and yelled profanities as they passed when those guys ran in the road, the mad-hatter running road.
The tennis guys and gymnasts looked okay, normal as far as I could see, no dopey look in their eyes, mercifully. I swear though thta I didn't know we had a tennis team but there it is in black and white so we must have. I know this for sure though some of those golf guys have that shifty look, you know, that look like they know the ball moved and they didn't take a penalty in that last match against Adamsville High. That's okay guys, it was only Adamsville. I won’t even speak about the treachery oozing out of the eyes of guys on the boys’ bowling team (or the girls’ for that matter). I thought bowling was a genteel sport. Why does everyone, male or female, look like, maybe, they cheated when adding up their scores. Strange, strange indeed.
And moving away from sports and clubs did we (guys) really wear our hair that way (and wear it that short, with those pseudo-sideburns)? And did we really wear those dweeby sports jackets with those white socks (with loafers it looks like) that seem to be sticking out endlessly of every sports team photograph?
For most of the gals, and call me a "dirty old man" but please, please do not tell my "significant other" I would not mind meeting you in the dark. No armed escorts necessary. Especially those gals on pages 78, 100, 106, 126, and 130. Ya, you know who you are. And I know you haven’t changed a bit since 1964, right?
Here is what I don’t get though. Well, maybe I better start off with what I do get. The cheerleaders did their cheer-leading thing and I swear no football game would have been the same without their rah, rah, rahs on those previously mentioned brisk, granite grey autumn days. The majorettes, well, the majorettes did their twirling, and especially one twirler that caught my eye, knew how to flip that thing. Be still my heart. And the band members played their tubas, trombones, and trumpets to perfection, although I heard some disturbing, if unsubstantiated, information about what went on in the band practice room, or really during the after practice hours. But I do not get this, and am desperately seeking enlightenment. Why did perfectly normal (at least from their photos they appear normal, 1960s beehive hair, cashmere sweater, whimsical smile normal) girls (a.k.a. young women, now) submit to the ridiculous three purities required, no demanded, for entry into Tri-Hi-Y. Something very unsettling was underfoot there, especially as we were on the threshold of the sexual revolution. I will investigate that matter further. Count on it.
Markin, Class Of 1964, comment:
Quick, where is your North Adamsville High School yearbook, the Magnet? Ya, I knew I would catch some of you off-guard with that one. For some of you though it is merely a fast jump over from your easy chair to the bookshelf, a little dusting off of that treasure with a conveniently placed rag, and you are ready for duty, nostalgia duty. Or shuffle, creakily shuffle by the way if I am any judge of conditions these days, up to the old cobwebby attic, cursing the day (or night, for that matter) about how hard it is to get around and how it's not like it use to be, wondering, thoughtfully wondering, where in hell the box that you put that valued heirloom in is. Ya, I know that drill. Then, finally, finding the precious cargo under layers of later photo albums, albums showing your life’s work, your family outings, and your other righteous keepsake memories. And, yes, taking out the rag to wipe a half century’s dust off, although not memories. Or trudging out to the garage/storage area/dump the final resting place for all ephemera, exotica and just plain don’t know what to do with items (except, well, of course not, throw the damn stuff away since you have not used those gee-gaws since about 1972). Ya, I know that drill too. In all cases though, ready, as if you were waiting, waiting patiently, for someone, some old reprobate classmate on the Internet in the year 2011 to ask you that very question. Well, okay we all have our little quirks.
Others though will have to answer AWOL (absent without leave, for those who did not do that military service of unblessed memory) and confess that item got tossed out, mistakenly or not, long ago on some vagabond move, or some other now long forgotten excursion. It wasn’t like you didn’t treasure the thing, really, but times moved on, you moved on and maybe the euphoria of high school high pictures, of maybe five hundred plus people that you barely knew, or remembered, clubs you did not belong to, or sports that you did not participate in had passed by. Or, it wasn’t like you did not intent to keep the holy of holies but on those long ago hitchhike roads, those hitchhike roads west to start anew, maybe, just maybe, you had to leave it behind in some desolate motel room, or some godforsaken high mountain campsite. I understand your dilemma, believe me.
Or it was sold to the highest bidder at some flea market yard sale to pay off some untidy debt, some untidy small debt, I assume. The list of possibilities is endless, but at least those irresponsible renegade raider reds that simply lost or left theirs in some undisclosed place had enough spunk to leave the dust of high school traumas, dramas and bad karmas behind in some also now long forgotten way station.
As for myself, for those dying to know, or even those who are not because I have no story to tell otherwise, I know exactly where my previously uncoveted copy is, or at least where I threw it. Soon, very soon after graduation, in a fit of hubris, teen alienation, teen angst, teen rage against the dark I threw it, threw it unceremoniously into the Neponset River not far from the old school, and my family’s house. Beyond that I take no responsible for where it landed, although I hope that it landed in some far off island where they have never heard of yearbooks, photographs, and pictures of people doing strange activities and would be clueless on such questions as why guys are running around in white shorts, why boys and girls are on separate bowling teams, why certain Greek vestigial Tri-Hi-Y girls take the three purities vows, and why guys were wearing non-fashionista white socks when posing for group activities. Things frankly that I wonder at now, wonder at intensely, myself. And maybe, just maybe, that Magnet is now an item of veneration, high holy veneration by some cargo cult-worshipping peoples who had no other use for the thing.
But that is more a fit task for an anthropologist’s analysis. Today I wish to speak of, as the headline indicates, archeology, of the search for ancient treasures, not of their meaning, well, not seriously of their meaning. And along that line I have a question, no, I have 1000 questions. I have just been on a “treasure hunt.” Was it in search of the Dead Sea Scrolls? No, that's kid's stuff. Did I venture to the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, to dig up ancient sculptures? Boring, for my purposes here. Did I go on an Indiana Jones-style adventure in search of the lost Ark of the Covenant? Mere child’s play. No, I bravely went to the wilds of Winchester, Massachusetts to the lovely home of Frankie Riley, Francis Xavier Riley, the king hell king corner boy of the North Adamsville schoolboy be-bop night, from our class. And what treasure did I dig out? A rather pristine copy of the Magnet for the Class of 1964. This, my friends, is the find of the age.
Okay, now I have you exactly where I want you. Forget Botox and Hair Club for Men, from now on, guys and gals, no more trying to pass for fifty-something just because sixty is the new fifty. That include you Chrissie McNamara (maiden name). I have proof of age. In black and white glossies. And I do believe that I could find a good enough lawyer to have it hold up in court. Frankie, though, is already talking about hiring “hit men” to do me in if I so much as harm a hair on any classmate's head. You know Frankie; he was always one for the wild talk.
But enough of that wild noise for now. A couple of comments are in order, after an initial quick run through, before I do a more thorough scientific examination of this artifact. First, in the interest of scientific veracity I must confess an error. At one time or another when talking about “back in the days” I told one and all that Frankie and I spent (or misspent) many a summer evening on the front steps of North Adamsville High discussing our dreams, mainly small dreams and other getting through the day things, not big, cosmic mortality dreams like we would now. In describing the steps I mentioned that there were either stone lions or gargoyles that flanked either side of the steps. Well, in many pictures in the yearbook, especially of group activities, the front steps frame the shot. The items on the side of the steps were actually stone columns and globes. I was close though, right? That error is definitely either a result of the "mist of time" misting up big time or creeping senility. Your choice.
And now for some observations (and a posing of some those 1000 questions) on a first run through of the class pictures, individually and collectively. For most of the guys I would not want to meet you in a dark alley, even now. Unless I was heavily armed, or had the 82nd Airborne at my back. Actually make that the 82nd Airborne and at least one regiment from the 101st Airborne. Especially looking at those football players. I won't even speak of basketball and baseball players because they were mainly football after the season was over anyway. Were they on steroids in those days? Or some less exotic tobacco-like drug down in the locker room after the coaches called it a day? Is that why all the girls gathered round? I thought it was athletic prowess, but now I wonder. And wonder also what they look like now, now after all those years of youthful punishment on those hips, knees, and ankles. Come to think of it I don't think I will need that extra 101st regiment after all.
While we are on the subject of girls, the eternal subject then (and let's face it now too) and who they were and were not hanging around with, it is totally understandable that they would flock to the gridiron goliaths who carried our hopes and dreams on their broad shoulders on those brisk, yellow-leafed, gathering ice grey clouds autumn afternoons. Fair is fair. What is not fair, after looking at the picture of the billiards team, is why all the girls flocked to them. Many an afternoon I would drift (nice word use, right?) over casually to Joe's Billiard Parlor (although everybody knew it was nothing but a glorified pool hall, and Joe was nothing but a "connected", connected meaning you know connected do I have to spell it out) bookie using the place as a front) to check out the girls, the very lively, interesting girls, that seemed to be hanging off the rafters watching the boys (and it was always boys in those days) "shoot pools." Fifty years later and I am still burned up about it. Christ those guys were nothing but rough-hewed corner boys (although that may have been the attraction for those bouncy, tight sweater-wearing frails).
And continuing on with the sports teams, the track guys, christ, they look like they just came out of the wheat fields of Kansas with those uniforms that were issued in about 1926. And those squinty eyes like this was the first time they had seen a camera. One guy definitely looked like he was posing to be some jut-jawed Old West guy, cowboy guy, that made me think of a poor man's version of the actor/playwright Sam Shepard. Maybe my cargo cult reference above applies here too, except for cameras not yearbooks. Although I don’t know much about what goes on in Kansas, except don’t bury me there. No wonder people honked horns, caroomed their cars close to them, and yelled profanities as they passed when those guys ran in the road, the mad-hatter running road.
The tennis guys and gymnasts looked okay, normal as far as I could see, no dopey look in their eyes, mercifully. I swear though thta I didn't know we had a tennis team but there it is in black and white so we must have. I know this for sure though some of those golf guys have that shifty look, you know, that look like they know the ball moved and they didn't take a penalty in that last match against Adamsville High. That's okay guys, it was only Adamsville. I won’t even speak about the treachery oozing out of the eyes of guys on the boys’ bowling team (or the girls’ for that matter). I thought bowling was a genteel sport. Why does everyone, male or female, look like, maybe, they cheated when adding up their scores. Strange, strange indeed.
And moving away from sports and clubs did we (guys) really wear our hair that way (and wear it that short, with those pseudo-sideburns)? And did we really wear those dweeby sports jackets with those white socks (with loafers it looks like) that seem to be sticking out endlessly of every sports team photograph?
For most of the gals, and call me a "dirty old man" but please, please do not tell my "significant other" I would not mind meeting you in the dark. No armed escorts necessary. Especially those gals on pages 78, 100, 106, 126, and 130. Ya, you know who you are. And I know you haven’t changed a bit since 1964, right?
Here is what I don’t get though. Well, maybe I better start off with what I do get. The cheerleaders did their cheer-leading thing and I swear no football game would have been the same without their rah, rah, rahs on those previously mentioned brisk, granite grey autumn days. The majorettes, well, the majorettes did their twirling, and especially one twirler that caught my eye, knew how to flip that thing. Be still my heart. And the band members played their tubas, trombones, and trumpets to perfection, although I heard some disturbing, if unsubstantiated, information about what went on in the band practice room, or really during the after practice hours. But I do not get this, and am desperately seeking enlightenment. Why did perfectly normal (at least from their photos they appear normal, 1960s beehive hair, cashmere sweater, whimsical smile normal) girls (a.k.a. young women, now) submit to the ridiculous three purities required, no demanded, for entry into Tri-Hi-Y. Something very unsettling was underfoot there, especially as we were on the threshold of the sexual revolution. I will investigate that matter further. Count on it.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys Down In The Street Making All That Noise- Doc’s Drugstore
It wasn’t all be-bop night, rock ‘n’ roll sock hop, midnight drifter, midnight sifter, low-rider, hard-boiled corner boy 1950s life in old down and out working class dregs North Adamsville. Not at all. But a lot of it was, a lot that bespoke of the early phases of American deindustrialization, although we would not have called that then, if we had been aware of it even, with the demise of the local mainstay ship building ad its associated industries, great world war warship shipbuilding and then later gigantic oil tankers and then, then nothing, maybe a sailboat, or a row boat for all I know, I just don’t know more, or why.
All I know, or at least all that I know from what I heard my father, and other fathers say, was that that industry was the life’s blood of getting ahead, ahead in the 1950s life in that beat down, beat up, beat thirteen ways to Sunday town (ya, I know it is only six but it sure did seem like thirteen on some hard father unemployed days). And so low-rider, hard-boiled corner boy, the easy life of pinball wizardry, dime store lurid magazines, slow-drinking Cokes (or Pepsis, but make mine local Robb’s Root Beer), draped around mascara-eyed, heavy form-filled girls, and the occasional armed robbery to break up the day, and bring in some much needed dough held a higher place that it might have, and almost certainly would in some new town West.
But what was a guy to do if to get out of the house, get away from ma’s nagging (and it was almost always ma, every ma house in those days), siblings heckling, and just breathe in some fresh air, some fresh be-bop rock corner boy air, if at all possible.
See, this is way before mall rat-dom came into fashion since the nearest mall was way too far away to drag yourself to, and it also meant traveling through other corner boy, other maybe not friendly corner boy lands. So if you didn’t want to tie yourself down to some heavy felony on some soft misty, foggy better, night by hanging around tough corner boy, Red Hickey-ruled Harry’s Variety, or your tastes did not run to trying to cadge some pinball games from those same toughs, or you were too young, too innocent, too poor, too car-less or too ragamuffiny for those form-filled, Capri-panted girls with their haunting black mascara eyes then you had to hang somewhere else, and Doc’s, ya, Doc’s Drugstore is where you hung out in the more innocent section of that be-bop 1950s night.
Wait a minute I just realized that I had better explain, and do it fast before you get the wrong idea, that I am not talking about some CVS, Rite-Aid, or Osco chain-linked, no soliciting, no trespassing, no loitering, police take notice, run in and run out with your fistful of drugs, legal drugs, places. Or run in for some notions or sundries, whatever they are. No way, no way in hell would you want to hang out where old-timers like your mothers and fathers and grandparents went to help them get well.
No this was Doc’s, Doc-owned (ya, Doc, Doc Adams, I think, or I think somebody told me once that he was part of some branch of that Adams crowd, the presidential Adams crowd that used to be big wheels in the town), Doc-operated, and Doc-ruled. And Doc let, unless it got too crazy, kids, ordinary kids, not hard-boiled white tee-shirted corner boys but plaid-shirted, chino pant-wearing (no I am not going to go on and on about the cuffs, no cuffs controversy, okay, so keep reading), maybe loafers (no, inserted pennies, please, and no, no, no, Thom McAn’s), a windbreaker against some ocean-blown windy night on such nights, put their mark on the side walls, the side brick walls of his establishment. And let the denizens of the Doc night (not too late night either) put as will every self-respecting corner boy, tee-shirted or plaid, make his mark by standing, one loafer-shod foot on the ground, and the other knee-bent against the brick wall holding Doc’s place together. True-corner boydom. Classic pose, classic memory pose.
And see, Doc, kindly, maybe slightly mad Doc, and now that I think about it slightly girl-crazy himself maybe, let girls, girls even hang against the wall. Old Harry’s Variety Red Hickey would have shot one of his girls in the foot if they ever tried that stunt. Girls were to be draped, preferably draped around Red not around Harry’s wall, brick or not. Now, after what I just described you know that you’re into a new age night because no way Harry, and definitely not Red (Daniel, don’t ever call him that though) Hickey, king hell king of the low-rider night that I told you about before, just a couple minutes ago would let some blond, real or imagined, Capri-panted, cashmere swearing wearing (tight, very tight cashmere sweater-wearing, if you didn’t know), boffed, bimbo (ouch, but that is what we called them, so be it) stand around his corner even. Dames (better, right) were for hot-rod Chevy, hard-driving, low-riding sitting on the seat next to, and other stuff. But plaid-shirted guys (loafer-shod) liked, do you hear me Red and Harry, liked having girls hanging with them to while away the be-bop hard night corner boy lands.
And before you even ask, Doc’s had not pinball machine and no pinball wizards (as far as I remember, although a couple of guys and a girl were crackerjack bowlers). But see, Doc’s had the things that mattered, mattered for plaid-shirted guys with a little dough (their allowances, no snickering please for any hard-boiled readers, or poor ones) in their pockets, and lust chaste lust maybe, in their hearts. Doc’s had a soda fountain, one,
and, two, a juke box. Where the heck do you think we heard a zillion times all those songs from back then that I keep telling you about? Come on now, smarten up.
And, of course if you have corner boys, even nice corner boys, you have to have a king hell king corner boy. Red, Red Hickey understood that instinctively, and acted on it, whip chain in hand. Other boys in other corners acted on it in that same spirit, although not that crudely. And corner boy king, Doc’s Drugstore corner boy king, Brian Pennington, plaid-shirted king of the soft-core corner boy night acted on that same Red premise. How Brian (“Bri” to most of us) came to be king corner boy is a good story, a good story about how a nowhere guy (a my characterization nowhere guy) used a little influence to get ahead in this wicked old world. Red did it by knocking heads around and was the last man standing, accepting his “crown” from his defeated cronies. Brian took a very different route.
Now I don’t know every detail of his conquest because I only touched the edges of his realm, and of his crowd, as I was moving out of the neighborhood thralldom on to other things, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, scribe things. Apparently Doc had a granddaughter, a nice but just then wild granddaughter whom Doc was very fond of as grandfathers will be. And of course he was concerned about the wildness, especially as she was coming of age, and nothing but catnip (and bait) for Red and his corner boys if Doc didn’t step in and bring Brian into the mix. Now, no question, Brian was a sharp dresser of the faux-collegiate type that was just starting to come into its own in that 1960s first minute. This time of the plaid shirts was a wave that spread, and spread quickly, among those kids from working class families that were still pushing forward on the American dream, and maybe encouraging their kids to take college courses at North Adamsville High, and maybe wind up in that burgeoning college scene that everybody kept talking about as the way out.
Brian was no scholar, christ he was no scholar, although he wasn’t a dunce either. At least he had enough sense to see which way things were going, for public consumption anyway and put on this serious schoolboy look. That sold Doc, who had been having conversations with Brian when he came into the drugstore with books in one arm, and a girl on the other. I’ll give you the real low-down sometime about how book-worthy, book-worshipping Brian really was. Let me just relate to you this tidbit for now. One day, one school vacation day, Brian purposefully knocked the books out of my hands that I had borrowed when I was coming out of the Thomas Crane Public Library branch over on Atlantic Avenue (before it moved to Norfolk Downs) and yelled at me, “bookworm.” Like I didn’t know that already. But enough about that because this is about Brian's rise, not mine. Somehow Brian and Lucy, Doc’s granddaughter came together, and without going into all the details that like I said I don’t really know anyway, they hit it off. And see, this is where Brian’s luck really held out, from that point on not only did Brian get to hang his loafer-ed shoe on Doc’s brick wall but he was officially, no questions asked, the king of that corner boy night. That’s how I heard the story and that seems about right because nobody ever challenged him on it, not that I heard.
Now like I mentioned before, Doc’s was a magnet for his juke box-filled soda fountain and that drew a big crowd at times, especially after school when any red-blooded kid, boy or girl, needed to unwind from the pressure-cooker of high school, especially we freshmen who not only had to put up with the carping teachers, but any upper classman who decided, he or she, to prank a frosh. That’s my big connection with Doc’s, that after school minute freshman year, but, and here I am getting my recollections second-hand, Doc’s was also a coming-of-age place for more than music, soft ice cream, and milk shakes. This is also the place where a whole generation of neighborhood boys, and through them, the girls as well had their first taste of alcohol.
How you say? Well, Brian, remember Brian, now no longer with Lucy (she went off to a private finishing school and drifted from the scene) but was still Doc’s boy, Doc’s savior boy, and somehow conned old Doc into giving him his first bottle of booze. Not straight up, after all Brian was underage but Bri said it was, wink, wink, for his grandmother. Now let me explain, in those days in the old neighborhood, and maybe all over, a druggist could, as medicine, sell small bottles of hard liquor out of his shop legally. The standard for getting the prescription wasn’t too high apparently, and it was a neighborhood drugstore and so you could (and this I know from personal experience) tell Doc it was for dear old grandma, and there you have it. Known grandma tee-totalers and their grand kids would be out of the loop on this one but every self-respecting grandma had a “script” with Doc. Now Doc knew, had to know, about this con, no question, because he always had a chuckle on him when this came up. And he had his own Doc standards- no one under sixteen (and he was sharp on that) and no girls. So many a night the corner boys around Doc’s were probably more liquored up that Red and his boys ever were. Nice, right?
All I know, or at least all that I know from what I heard my father, and other fathers say, was that that industry was the life’s blood of getting ahead, ahead in the 1950s life in that beat down, beat up, beat thirteen ways to Sunday town (ya, I know it is only six but it sure did seem like thirteen on some hard father unemployed days). And so low-rider, hard-boiled corner boy, the easy life of pinball wizardry, dime store lurid magazines, slow-drinking Cokes (or Pepsis, but make mine local Robb’s Root Beer), draped around mascara-eyed, heavy form-filled girls, and the occasional armed robbery to break up the day, and bring in some much needed dough held a higher place that it might have, and almost certainly would in some new town West.
But what was a guy to do if to get out of the house, get away from ma’s nagging (and it was almost always ma, every ma house in those days), siblings heckling, and just breathe in some fresh air, some fresh be-bop rock corner boy air, if at all possible.
See, this is way before mall rat-dom came into fashion since the nearest mall was way too far away to drag yourself to, and it also meant traveling through other corner boy, other maybe not friendly corner boy lands. So if you didn’t want to tie yourself down to some heavy felony on some soft misty, foggy better, night by hanging around tough corner boy, Red Hickey-ruled Harry’s Variety, or your tastes did not run to trying to cadge some pinball games from those same toughs, or you were too young, too innocent, too poor, too car-less or too ragamuffiny for those form-filled, Capri-panted girls with their haunting black mascara eyes then you had to hang somewhere else, and Doc’s, ya, Doc’s Drugstore is where you hung out in the more innocent section of that be-bop 1950s night.
Wait a minute I just realized that I had better explain, and do it fast before you get the wrong idea, that I am not talking about some CVS, Rite-Aid, or Osco chain-linked, no soliciting, no trespassing, no loitering, police take notice, run in and run out with your fistful of drugs, legal drugs, places. Or run in for some notions or sundries, whatever they are. No way, no way in hell would you want to hang out where old-timers like your mothers and fathers and grandparents went to help them get well.
No this was Doc’s, Doc-owned (ya, Doc, Doc Adams, I think, or I think somebody told me once that he was part of some branch of that Adams crowd, the presidential Adams crowd that used to be big wheels in the town), Doc-operated, and Doc-ruled. And Doc let, unless it got too crazy, kids, ordinary kids, not hard-boiled white tee-shirted corner boys but plaid-shirted, chino pant-wearing (no I am not going to go on and on about the cuffs, no cuffs controversy, okay, so keep reading), maybe loafers (no, inserted pennies, please, and no, no, no, Thom McAn’s), a windbreaker against some ocean-blown windy night on such nights, put their mark on the side walls, the side brick walls of his establishment. And let the denizens of the Doc night (not too late night either) put as will every self-respecting corner boy, tee-shirted or plaid, make his mark by standing, one loafer-shod foot on the ground, and the other knee-bent against the brick wall holding Doc’s place together. True-corner boydom. Classic pose, classic memory pose.
And see, Doc, kindly, maybe slightly mad Doc, and now that I think about it slightly girl-crazy himself maybe, let girls, girls even hang against the wall. Old Harry’s Variety Red Hickey would have shot one of his girls in the foot if they ever tried that stunt. Girls were to be draped, preferably draped around Red not around Harry’s wall, brick or not. Now, after what I just described you know that you’re into a new age night because no way Harry, and definitely not Red (Daniel, don’t ever call him that though) Hickey, king hell king of the low-rider night that I told you about before, just a couple minutes ago would let some blond, real or imagined, Capri-panted, cashmere swearing wearing (tight, very tight cashmere sweater-wearing, if you didn’t know), boffed, bimbo (ouch, but that is what we called them, so be it) stand around his corner even. Dames (better, right) were for hot-rod Chevy, hard-driving, low-riding sitting on the seat next to, and other stuff. But plaid-shirted guys (loafer-shod) liked, do you hear me Red and Harry, liked having girls hanging with them to while away the be-bop hard night corner boy lands.
And before you even ask, Doc’s had not pinball machine and no pinball wizards (as far as I remember, although a couple of guys and a girl were crackerjack bowlers). But see, Doc’s had the things that mattered, mattered for plaid-shirted guys with a little dough (their allowances, no snickering please for any hard-boiled readers, or poor ones) in their pockets, and lust chaste lust maybe, in their hearts. Doc’s had a soda fountain, one,
and, two, a juke box. Where the heck do you think we heard a zillion times all those songs from back then that I keep telling you about? Come on now, smarten up.
And, of course if you have corner boys, even nice corner boys, you have to have a king hell king corner boy. Red, Red Hickey understood that instinctively, and acted on it, whip chain in hand. Other boys in other corners acted on it in that same spirit, although not that crudely. And corner boy king, Doc’s Drugstore corner boy king, Brian Pennington, plaid-shirted king of the soft-core corner boy night acted on that same Red premise. How Brian (“Bri” to most of us) came to be king corner boy is a good story, a good story about how a nowhere guy (a my characterization nowhere guy) used a little influence to get ahead in this wicked old world. Red did it by knocking heads around and was the last man standing, accepting his “crown” from his defeated cronies. Brian took a very different route.
Now I don’t know every detail of his conquest because I only touched the edges of his realm, and of his crowd, as I was moving out of the neighborhood thralldom on to other things, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, scribe things. Apparently Doc had a granddaughter, a nice but just then wild granddaughter whom Doc was very fond of as grandfathers will be. And of course he was concerned about the wildness, especially as she was coming of age, and nothing but catnip (and bait) for Red and his corner boys if Doc didn’t step in and bring Brian into the mix. Now, no question, Brian was a sharp dresser of the faux-collegiate type that was just starting to come into its own in that 1960s first minute. This time of the plaid shirts was a wave that spread, and spread quickly, among those kids from working class families that were still pushing forward on the American dream, and maybe encouraging their kids to take college courses at North Adamsville High, and maybe wind up in that burgeoning college scene that everybody kept talking about as the way out.
Brian was no scholar, christ he was no scholar, although he wasn’t a dunce either. At least he had enough sense to see which way things were going, for public consumption anyway and put on this serious schoolboy look. That sold Doc, who had been having conversations with Brian when he came into the drugstore with books in one arm, and a girl on the other. I’ll give you the real low-down sometime about how book-worthy, book-worshipping Brian really was. Let me just relate to you this tidbit for now. One day, one school vacation day, Brian purposefully knocked the books out of my hands that I had borrowed when I was coming out of the Thomas Crane Public Library branch over on Atlantic Avenue (before it moved to Norfolk Downs) and yelled at me, “bookworm.” Like I didn’t know that already. But enough about that because this is about Brian's rise, not mine. Somehow Brian and Lucy, Doc’s granddaughter came together, and without going into all the details that like I said I don’t really know anyway, they hit it off. And see, this is where Brian’s luck really held out, from that point on not only did Brian get to hang his loafer-ed shoe on Doc’s brick wall but he was officially, no questions asked, the king of that corner boy night. That’s how I heard the story and that seems about right because nobody ever challenged him on it, not that I heard.
Now like I mentioned before, Doc’s was a magnet for his juke box-filled soda fountain and that drew a big crowd at times, especially after school when any red-blooded kid, boy or girl, needed to unwind from the pressure-cooker of high school, especially we freshmen who not only had to put up with the carping teachers, but any upper classman who decided, he or she, to prank a frosh. That’s my big connection with Doc’s, that after school minute freshman year, but, and here I am getting my recollections second-hand, Doc’s was also a coming-of-age place for more than music, soft ice cream, and milk shakes. This is also the place where a whole generation of neighborhood boys, and through them, the girls as well had their first taste of alcohol.
How you say? Well, Brian, remember Brian, now no longer with Lucy (she went off to a private finishing school and drifted from the scene) but was still Doc’s boy, Doc’s savior boy, and somehow conned old Doc into giving him his first bottle of booze. Not straight up, after all Brian was underage but Bri said it was, wink, wink, for his grandmother. Now let me explain, in those days in the old neighborhood, and maybe all over, a druggist could, as medicine, sell small bottles of hard liquor out of his shop legally. The standard for getting the prescription wasn’t too high apparently, and it was a neighborhood drugstore and so you could (and this I know from personal experience) tell Doc it was for dear old grandma, and there you have it. Known grandma tee-totalers and their grand kids would be out of the loop on this one but every self-respecting grandma had a “script” with Doc. Now Doc knew, had to know, about this con, no question, because he always had a chuckle on him when this came up. And he had his own Doc standards- no one under sixteen (and he was sharp on that) and no girls. So many a night the corner boys around Doc’s were probably more liquored up that Red and his boys ever were. Nice, right?
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
And Yet Again, When Doo-Wop Be-Bopped The 1950s Night- “The Coed Records Story”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Crests performing Sixteen Candles.
CD Review
The Coed Records Story, various artists, Ace Records, 2000
Sometimes looking back at the genesis of the 1950s rock explosion that produced some of the classic music that defined my generation, the generation of “68, it was individual performers like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, who drove the music, other times it was the lyrics, the Tin Pan Alley-etched lyrics, and, as here, sometimes it was the sound, the sound associated with a particular label. One thinks of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records with the early rockabilly and blues explosion. Or Verve, Or Decca, or later the Motown sound. One place where the doo-wop, or doo-wop oriented sub-genre got a full workout was with Coed Records who story is told here in informative booklet form, and more importantly, by something like a greatest hits CD of the best work from that label’s heyday.
Now, like every musical genre, some of this material is strictly of the moment, that doo-wop moment, and some of it was performed by one-hit Johnnies and Janies, but a few, and that is all that one can expect, are classics. Here those classics include 16 Candles and Step By Step (songs you prayed, prayed out loud that they would play, and play at the end of the school dance night), The Crests; You Belong To Me (ditto), The Duprees; and, The Last Dance (ditto again) , The Harptones.
CD Review
The Coed Records Story, various artists, Ace Records, 2000
Sometimes looking back at the genesis of the 1950s rock explosion that produced some of the classic music that defined my generation, the generation of “68, it was individual performers like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, who drove the music, other times it was the lyrics, the Tin Pan Alley-etched lyrics, and, as here, sometimes it was the sound, the sound associated with a particular label. One thinks of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records with the early rockabilly and blues explosion. Or Verve, Or Decca, or later the Motown sound. One place where the doo-wop, or doo-wop oriented sub-genre got a full workout was with Coed Records who story is told here in informative booklet form, and more importantly, by something like a greatest hits CD of the best work from that label’s heyday.
Now, like every musical genre, some of this material is strictly of the moment, that doo-wop moment, and some of it was performed by one-hit Johnnies and Janies, but a few, and that is all that one can expect, are classics. Here those classics include 16 Candles and Step By Step (songs you prayed, prayed out loud that they would play, and play at the end of the school dance night), The Crests; You Belong To Me (ditto), The Duprees; and, The Last Dance (ditto again) , The Harptones.
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