***A Confession, Of Sorts

For Joyce D., Hunter College High School, NYC, Class Of 1965, Out There Somewhere In Cyberspace

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin:
We live in an age, thanks to Internet technology, where one is able to tell-all in an instant pushing the limits of an already previously burgeoning confessional ethos well beyond what the average person needs to know. Needs to know, frankly, even on the high side of the “information super-highway.” Needs to know about anyone else’s personal business, okay. Well, here is my little contribution to the genre with a half-fictional, half-whimsical tale. But only half...

Okay, okay I have a confession to make. I am being forced to do so, kicking and screaming, and not your average kicking and screaming but door-kicking and banshee- screaming so you know, know deep down, that I do not want do this, by my "soul mate." A woman who I have trusted, trust, and will continue to trust until I can trust no more, although this request stretches that trust thing more than a little. Her telling me, moreover, something about coming clean for the good of my soul. I hate that imperative moral tone but I have learned a thing or two over time. One of the things being that you ignore than “tone” of hers at your peril.

In any case one and all should now know that I am on this North Adamsville Class of 1964 classmate site under false pretenses. [Referring to a site set up by do-gooder members of the class to run amok in our sweetly and quietly aging lives, going gentle into that good night, by peppering anyone they could round up via the Internet with endless questions about what we have been doing for the past almost fifty years-jesus, get lives, get lives please, and let me return to writing political stuff-PPM].

Oh, sure, when I originally came on the site I, like everybody else, was just trying to take a little nostalgic trip down memory lane to the good old high school days. However, once here, I started to spew forth about the fates of various sports figures like the fleet-footed long distance runner, Billy Kelly, and the behemoth football player, Thundering Timmy Riley, and his heroic partners in the victorious 1964 football season. And high school dances, corner boy life, boy meets girls dates and stuff, “watching the submarine” races down at old Adamsville Beach, drive-in movies and restaurants, be-bop nights and not be-bop nights. Kids’ stuff ready, harmless kids’ stuff.

Then, seemingly as an act of hubris, I felt compelled to investigate various aspects of our common past using a very handy copy, a copy made handy by one Billy Kelly, of the North Adamsville Magnet, our class yearbook, as a guide. I ran through a whole series of investigations from rather simple ones like the pressing question of the rationale for white socks and white shorts in gym (and white socks elsewhere) to the more urgent one of the rationale for separate boys' and girls' bowling teams and, ultimately, stumbling on to the apparently nefarious doings of Tri-Hi-Y. Well, you get the drift- a guy with a little time on his hands and a decided penchant for mischief.

Well those would all be good and sufficient reasons for being on the site, if those were indeed the reasons. But here is where the confessional part comes in. The REAL reason I am on the site is the generic class homepage. Apparently in order to finance the website those curmudgeonly class do-gooders rented out space for cyber-advertising, helter-skelter advertising. Also, apparently, unconcerned about heart attacks and other medical problems for their fellow male AARP-worthies (and maybe female as well), they “permitted” advertising by online dating services. Thus, I am very, very curious, among other things, about those 833 nubile young women, courtesy of one such online dating service, who live near my town and who are just dying to meet an old geezer. (Fellow women classmates, I am sure, get the same pitch with hulky, beefcake young guys.) The slender, slinky, saucy (and intelligent, of course) Kerry, in particular, has my attention. But enough of talking about such things. That above-mentioned "soul mate" would take a very dim view on this subject since I am here merely to confess not to speak of ogling. However now I know why the expression "dirty old man" and the word "lecher" were created in the English language long ago, long before the Internet reared its ugly head into our lives.

That hardly ends this sordid tale though. Other, admittedly, lesser kinds of information also intrigued me like my credit rating. Hell, apparently, my credit is too good. I can't raise a bank loan for hell nor high water. Seemingly only GM, Goldman Sachs, AIG and that bankrupt-prone crowd gets the nod these days. (Now, let's not get political here Peter Paul. Save that for another day.) More appropriately, if ominously, our brethren at AARP have seen fit to extol the virtues of long-term health care insurance. So you can see how one can get easily sidetracked. So be it. However, here is the good part. I have taken, and I hope others will join me, the PLEDGE. From here on in I will keep my eyes straight forward on my profile page [each member, as in many social networking sites, has his or her own page, for better or worse], the Class Of 1964 home page and only click on the Message Board section. Well, except for one little, little peek at... winsome Kerry.

***White socks.....and white shorts

For James And John C., Clintondale Class Of 1964

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Jimmy Taylor was desperate for a pair of gym-worthy white shorts, gym day worthy whites. Desperate enough to go into the dreaded battered white shorts discard cardboard box now slumped across from the shower stalls and rummage, rummage nose held, for a pair that would pass muster. Pass muster when Coach Dickson (everybody called him Coach, although he hadn’t coached a sport in Clintondale since Roosevelt was president, Teddy Roosevelt, Jimmy thought) passed down the line like some imitation colonel inspecting two things-white shorts and white socks. Clean, unwrinkled, better be pressed, white shorts of the appropriate size.

That last quality mattered, at least this is what Jimmy had heard from his own older brother, Kenny, Class of 1961, ever since one small sophomore, or maybe it was a freshman, whose brother was a behemoth on the Clintondale football team, the 1960 one that went on to win the Class D state championship if you remember that great team and that great season, “inherited” his brother’s perfectly good white shorts. Perfectly good according to this lad’s mother, and with the concurrence of many a Clintondale Irish working-class mother who knew things in that neighborhood were dear just then. They kept falling down, the behemoth's white sail shorts that is, exposing, well, exposing the fact that he did not have a jock strap on, and we will leave it at that, or could. Except Coach Dickson, cold-hearted Coach, merely cuttingly commented that he was glad there were no girls around because there would be nothing to see, wink, wink.

Needless to say every boy, particularly every senior boy, every Class of 1964 boy that is, in the place laughed or at least chuckled at Coach’s lame remark, fearful that "His Vengefulness" might hold up their graduations for failure to pass a state-mandated requirement. And according to local school lore, Clintondale High lore any way, back in those Roosevelt days (Teddy or Franklin, could have been either Jimmy again thought) he had actually done so. And the school committee backed him up, creating a legend that he lived, no, feasted off of for the next few decades. There was another story, or maybe stories, of too tight shorts exploding on the wrestling mat or while the guys were doing some gymnastic exercise. Those were just rumors though, Kenny never mentioned anything about that. In any case Coach Dickson’s Rule Three A ruled. (Rule Three being the part about clean and presentable white shorts.)

The failure to observe the afore-mentioned rule branded you as a felon not fit for civilized company, or it might as well have, for you had exactly one excused non-white short, non-white-sock gym period, per year, per student, as per Coach Dickson’s rule. (Rule Four, for all the rules see the bulletin board in front of Coach’s office. Bring a chair and reading glasses, if you need them, you will be there a while). And Jimmy had already used his up back in the fall when he had “forgotten” his after going down one of the back halls, far down in one of the back halls, with a certain girl, a certain nameless girl, and left his bag with his shorts and socks in it behind. (Really, it’s true, guys, and, oh well, he won’t mention names, although he told me it, but a certain girl, a certain very “hot” girl, could back Jimmy’s claim up. Jimmy claimed that you too would have forgotten your foolish gym bag if you had been around her, and her craze-inducing perfume or soap that made her smell like some flower, a gardenia maybe. I agree about the craze-inducing part too.)

Today he had forgotten, real forgotten, to bring his shorts, and in any case he was probably fated for the death penalty anyway since he had also forgotten to have Martha (dear, sweet mother Taylor, for those not familiar with Clintondale, or with the Taylor clan that has been part of Clintondale society since Hector was a pup, and who do not know that woman) wash his dirty pairs of shorts and socks.

Of course Jimmy's scramble for white shorts much less for white socks, white matching socks, although the now doddering Coach Dickson was not always careful in inspecting socks so there was some wiggle room, was fated to be nothing but a humiliating experience, and was designed by His Vengefulness as such, since this wretched, battered cardboard box was filled with every thrown-away, nasty, off-white, sweat-grinded pair of shorts that Coach Dickson found lying around the locker rooms, or wherever he could find such things. (Although Jimmy, in a fit of gallows humor, chuckled to himself that he bet that Coach had not found those shorts down that dark hall where he had gone with Liz, oops, no names.)

But the white socks were worse, much worse, thrown hither and yon after doing yeoman’s service on some perspiring feet. All dirt-smudged caused by rubbing against the inners of some too tight sneakers while playing volleyball, basketball, or a really athletic endeavor like throwing the medicine ball and then left on some dank floor to walk home by themselves (no kidding either) when Coach’s charges changed into “civilian” socks-brown, black, or blue to go with their penny loafers. (The rest of the “uniform” being a plaid shirt and black chino pants, cuffed, preferred, uncuffed if your mother bought them.)

Today though he also started to notice some stuff that he could have cared less about yesterday. A lot of the guys on gym day wore their white socks with their uniform (plaid shirts and, cuffed or uncuffed, black chinos, remember), with their penny loafers. Egad. Squaresville, squaresville cubed. Also he started to remember that when the Class of 1964 athletic team pictures were being taken along with the jacket, tie, and slacks he noticed that most of the guys, especially the guys who were sitting down had white socks on. Double squaresville cubed. White socks, jesus. Jimmy was dumbfounded and said to himself what, pray tell (although he may have not used that exact term), was the meaning of this sartorial display. Moreover, did it extend beyond athletics? He knew, as a creature of habit at the time and one who desperately wanted to be “in”, that he too wore his "whites," sometimes unthinkingly.

But what kind of fashion statement were they trying to make at the time? “White socks” meant only one thing- dweeb, nerd, outcast and not cool. He distinctly remembered that term in reference to scientific and engineer-types. And they were not cool. As cool as he and his corner boys tried to be were they really all dweebs who did not get the message fast enough out in the 'sticks' of Clintondale?

And that last question got Jimmy to thinking, rebelliously thinking when he started to get up a head of steam about it. Why, if you forgot your white shorts or white socks, couldn’t you just wear your civilian clothes in gym and not have to go through the indignity of the dread battered box discard pile. And while Fritz was organizing this train of revolutionary thought (to Coach and his rules, if to nobody else) in his head he added why if you did have your white shorts but had forgotten your white socks couldn’t you just use your civilian brownblackblue socks. It’s only two-period-a-week gym, right? And on that note Fritz made a momentous decision. He was, come hell or high water, going to find a pair of decent white shorts and just wear them with his brown civilian socks as a protest against the injustice of Coach’s silly rule. He then found a suitable pair, donned them and walked out to face the music.

***Frankie Riley Holds Forth- On The Aches And Pains Of Aging

-With Jim Cullen, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, And All Other AARP-Worthy Brethren In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

"Do not go gentle..

...into that good night." First line of Dylan Thomas' poem of the same name.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT- Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Frankie Riley here. Yah, I know it’s been a while since you have heard from me and I have seen or heard from most of you. Now some of you know, know full well, that back in North Adamsville days I could, well, you know “stretch” the truth. Stretch it pretty far when I was in a fix, or one of my corner boys like my right-hand man Peter Paul Markin up at our old "up the Downs" haunt, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, needed some outlandish excuse to get right. And fellow women classmates and some other women non-classmates as well know I would outright lie, lie like the devil, in church or out, to get, well, “close” to you. Hope you forgive me about the lying, not about the trying to get close to you part. But that is all water of over the dam or under the bridge, take your choice. Today I am a new man, a truth-teller, or trying to be, except of course when I am practicing my profession as a lawyer. Then the truth might just be as elusive as it was when I was making up excuses for my corner boys or, if you were a woman, trying to“feel” you up. But enough of that as I am not here to speak of my repentance or about me at all, as hard as that might be to believe, but of the hard fact of age, yah, that creeping up thing that just kind of snuck up on us. So I am here to say just one thing- “won’t you take my word from me” like the old blues singer Rabbit Brown used to sing when he had the miseries. Listen up.

I am, once again, on my high horse today like I used to be when I had the bee in my bonnet on some subject in the old days. I have heard enough, in fact more than enough, whining from fellow AARP-worthies that I have been in contact with lately and others of my contemporaries from the "Generation of '68” about the aches and pains of becoming “ a certain age.” If I hear one more story about a knee, hip, heart, or, maybe, brain replacement or other transformative surgery I will go screaming into that good night. The same goes for descriptions of the CVS-worthy litany of the contents of an average graying medicine cabinet. Or the high cost of meds.

If I am not mistaken, and from what that old gossipy Markin has told me, many of you fully imbibed in all the excesses of our generation from crazed-out drug overkill to wacky sexual exploits that need not be mentioned in detail here (although I would not mind hearing of a few exploits strictly in confidence, attorney-client type confidence, of course), and everything else in between. Admit it. So come on now, after a lifetime of booze, dope, and wild times what did you expect? For those of us who have not lived right, lo these many years, the chickens have come home to roost. But I have a cure. Make that THE cure.

No I am not, at this late date, selling the virtues of the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or any of a thousand and one religious cures we are daily bombarded with. You knew, or at least I hope you knew, I wasn't going to go that route. That question, in any case, is each individual's prerogative and I have no need to interfere there. Nor am I going to go on and on about the wonders of liposuction, botox, chin lifts, buttocks tuckers, stomach flatteners and the like. Damn, have we come to that? And I certainly do not want to inflame the air with talk of existentialism or some other secular philosophies that tell you to accept your fate with your head down. You knew that, as well. No, I am here to give the "glad tidings," unadorned. Simply put- two words-graham crackers. No, do not reach for the reading glasses, your eyes do not deceive you- graham crackers is what I said.

Hear me out on this. I am no "snake oil" salesman, nor do I have stock in Nabisco (moreover their products are not "true" graham). So, please do not start jabbering to me about how faddish that diet was- in about 1830. I know that it has been around a while. And please do not start carping about how wasn't this healthful substance "magic elixir," or some such, that Ralph Waldo Emerson and his transcendentalist protégés praised to high heaven back in Brook Farm days. Well, I frankly admit, as with any such movement, some of those guys went over the top, especially that wacky Bronson Alcott. Irresponsible zealots are always with us. Please, please do not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Doctor Graham simply insisted that what our dietary intake consisted of was important and that a generous amount of graham flour in the system was good for us. Moreover, in order to avoid some of the mistakes of the earlier movement, in the age of the Internet we can now Googleto find an almost infinite variety of uses and helpful recipes. Admit it, right now your head is swirling thinking about how nice it would be to have a few crackers and a nice cold glass of milk (fat-free or 1%, of course). Admit also; you loved those graham crumb-crusted pies your grandmother used to make. The old chocolate pudding-filled ones were my favorite. Lime was a close second. Enough said.

Here is the closer, as they say. If people have been mistaking you for your father's brother or mother's sister lately then this is your salvation. So scurry down to your local Whole Foods or other natural food store and begin to fight your way back to health. Let me finish with this personal testimonial. I used to regularly be compared in appearance to George Bush, Sr. Now I am being asked whether Brad Pitts is my twin brother. Or is it Robert Redford? .....Oh well, that too is part of the aging process. Like I say-“won’t you take my word from me.” Get to it.

******

To “jump start” you here is a little recipe I culled from my own Google of the Internet.

Graham Crackers Recipe
November 10, 2004

I'm nostalgic about graham crackers because they remind me of my Grandma Mac. Her full name is Maxine McMurry and she is now 90 years old. She lived just a short drive from our house (when my sister and I were kids) and we would tag along after soccer games when my dad would go by on Saturdays to check up on her, trim hedges, wash cars, or do any handyman work she needed. Heather and I didn't mind at all because she had a huge driveway that was flat as a pancake and smooth as an frozen pond --perfect for roller skating. This was in striking contrast to our house that was on a steep hill which made skating perilous at best.

Grandma Mac always had snacks and treats for us when we arrived. She had a beautiful cookie jar in the shape of a big red apple which was always filled with oatmeal raisin cookies (I admittedly picked out all the raisins). Around the holidays she would fill old See's candy boxes with perfect cubes of chocolate fudge, and if we were really lucky she would have a plate full of sweet, graham cracker sandwich cookies in the refrigerator. It was a pretty simple concept, but I've never had it since. She would take cream cheese frosting and slather it between two graham crackers and then let it set up in the fridge. I couldn't get enough.

So I thought of her when I saw this recipe for homemade graham crackers from Nancy Silverton's pastry book. I've cooked a few other winners from Nancy's books in the past; the Classic Grilled Cheese with Marinated Onions and Whole Grain Mustard, and Spiced Caramel Corn, and have quite a few more tagged for the future.

Most people think graham crackers come from the box. Period. But making homemade versions of traditional store-bought staples is worth the effort if you have some extra time or enthusiasm -- in part because the homemade versions always taste better, but also because people LOVE seeing and tasting homemade versions of foods they have only tasted out of a store-bought bag or box. I've done marshmallows and hamburger buns in the past, as well - both a lot of fun.

As far as Nancy Silverton's take on graham crackers goes - this recipe was flawless. I didn't even have to make a special trip to the store because I had every ingredient in my pantry - flour, brown sugar, honey, butter. The dough was easy to work with, and the best part of the whole thing is that the cookies actually taste exactly like graham crackers. They are delicious. I included a recipe for the cream cheese frosting in case you want to make sandwich cookies out of your homemade crackers.

Graham Cracker Recipe

2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons unbleached pastry flour or unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

7 tablespoons (3 1/2 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen

1/3 cup mild-flavored honey, such as clover

5 tablespoons whole milk

2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

For the topping:

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade or in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Pulse or mix on low to incorporate. Add the butter and pulse on and off on and off, or mix on low, until the mixture is the consistency of a coarse meal.

In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, milk, and vanilla extract. Add to the flour mixture and pulse on and off a few times or mix on low until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and pat the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic and chill until firm, about 2 hours or overnight.

To prepare the topping: In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon, and set aside.

Divide the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator. Sift an even layer of flour onto the work surface and roll the dough into a long rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. The dough will be sticky, so flour as necessary. Trim the edges of the rectangle to 4 inches wide. Working with the shorter side of the rectangle parallel to the work surface, cut the strip every 4 1/2 inches to make 4 crackers. Gather the scraps together and set aside. Place the crackers on one or two parchment-lined baking sheets and sprinkle with the topping. Chill until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes. Repeat with the second batch of dough.

Adjust the oven rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Gather the scraps together into a ball, chill until firm, and reroll. Dust the surface with more flour and roll out the dough to get about two or three more crackers.

Mark a vertical line down the middle of each cracker, being careful not to cut through the dough. Using a toothpick or skewer, prick the dough to form two dotted rows about 1/2 inch for each side of the dividing line.

Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the tough, rotating the sheets halfway through to ensure even baking.

Yield: 10 large crackers

From Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery (Villard, 2000)

Cream Cheese Frosting1

8-ounce package of cream cheese

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 cups of powdered sugar, sifted

Beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until creamy. Mix in the cream cheese and beat until light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla extract and when fully incorporated add the powdered sugar. Mix until smooth and creamy. Place in the refrigerator for an hour before using.

from Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery - reprinted with permission

***On Being Kadin- With Orson Welles’ Mr. Arkadin In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sometimes it was hard to know about a guy, about whether he was on the level, whether he was playing straight with you. That thought had crossed Frank Leroy’s mind a few weeks before as he heard the proposition put before him by a guy who had been standing right in front of him in his office, a guy named, let’s just call him Mr. Welles, a name that might just have been his real name and after all hell broke loose in the couple of weeks after that who really knew what his damn name was, or who he really was before the whole thing crashed in on him. That playing it straight part though was important to Frank even though in that Welles case he had made a serious error in judgment, an error that in his business, the private, very private, eye business where a life, his life, might depend on whether the guy was on the square, was on the level, or not.

Funny it all seemed so straight at the time, or maybe the money that Mr. Welles flashed at him was just too green and plentiful for him to not push the envelope of straight a little further than necessary. He needed dough just then, needed it to keep the dunning landlord from putting a For Rent on his crummy Acme Office Building two-bit office in London’s East End and more importantly keep his ex-wife’s attorney from slamming him before some irate domestic relations judge for being way behind on his alimony and child support payments. And so he bit, although he knew, no, sensed Welles’ story was just a little too pat.

Of course everybody, everybody in post-world, post-World War II Europe, if you are asking which war, knew who Simon Welles was, or knew the name, knew that he had his hand in every kind of activity, legal and illegal, and that he as a result was one of the richest men in Europe, and maybe the most ruthless in that eerie black market, Marshall aid, red scare cold war night that was descending on Europe. And Welles had the inside track on every kind of angle, had every connection, especially to the Americans, and had, if it came to that, many angels on his side because he spread dough around, enough dough around to make people, hungry, ravaged people, forget the source of his largesse. So when he stood in front Frank, with some kind of weird wig and false beard disguise that he said he needed to protect himself from some guys trying to find him, find him and put a couple of slugs in his skull, he knew he had hit the gravy train. (Welles’ took that wig and beard get-up and Frank immediately knew he was the legendary, ah, financier. At least that was what the sympathetic press called him. )

And here was Mr. Welles’ simple request. It seems that when he had started out his “career,” his early corner boy gangster career in Germany (Frank later found out, found out the hard way, that Welles had started out that very real career in Croatia under the name Arkady, or something like that) that he had been involved in some rough stuff and now that he was well-known certain parties from back then were searching for him with designs on his head, designs to take it off. The problem was that Mr. Welles claimed he had had an accident, a head injury accident, shortly before the war and could not remember what he had done then, whose wrath he might have drawn, and who had sent the guys who had already taken one pot shot at him in Barcelona. (That turned out to be actually have been Madrid where he was known by the name Arkins and that pot shot turned out to be just short of a full field- fire infantry assault on his home there in Welles- friendly Spain.)

So Mr. Welles wanted Frank, since he was English and unknown on the continent to reconstruct his past. And as he flashed those hundred dollar American bills (the only money worth taking in Europe just then. The money turned out to be real enough just in case you are wondering, although not nearly enough to catch him just short of death, and in the end just plain not enough.) Frank saw that the proposition certainly had it risks but not more so than some of the jobs he had handled before for much less kale. So he played his hunch, his spin-the-wheel guy on the level hunch, and took the job.

That was the last safe moment he had. Welles had given him a few leads, a few names of guys who might be able to steer him in the right direction. Yah, he should have known, should have known who was doing the steering, if not why. He went to the first guy, a guy down at the Thames docks, Wally, and asked if he knew a certain name, Aberdeen, and where he might have known it from. He said he knew a guy by that name, or a name like that, Arkwright, back in the early 1930s, a Russian, he thought who brought dough from the Communist International, maybe from Stalin himself , he wasn’t sure, to support a long strike on the docks. He said ask a guy Bruno who he heard was over in Paris working in a café, The Flower, something like that, the last he had heard. (Wally, real name Orlov, unknown to Frank, was found dead three day later face down fished out from along the Thames two well-placed shots through his eyes.)

So Frank moved on to Paris, did some simple leg work and, and found Bruno at the Red Rose Café that catered to Americans with some dough. Frank asked about Aberdeen/Arkwright (it turned out to be Arkwright). Bruno thought for a bit and remembered that he had known that name because he was the guy who provided the funds to get him and his buddies some weapons to form a private militia in Austria when the Germans were egging the Austrian fascists on in the early 1930s to overthrow the Socialist government there. (The money actually came from Italy although it might have originated in Germany; Frank was in no position to follow that up.) Bruno said Mann, a guy still in Vienna, who owned a smoke shoppe, The Cigar Factory, might know more since he was in charge of the militia before all hell broke loose in 1938. (Bruno was found a week later in mysterious circumstances hanging from the ceiling light of his small room, ruled an “accident” as suicides were then labeled by the Paris police).

In Vienna Frank hit pay-dirt. Frank arrived at the smoke shoppe as Mann was about to close. Mann knew everything about the man Frank called Arkwright but that he called Arkov. See Arkov was an émigré Russian who hated the Bolsheviks and he had been there in 1923 when Hitler tried to seize power or whatever the hell he was doing to create havoc. This Arkov was something like Hitler’s bodyguard or something, rough stuff, a real gangster but a gangster with politics and he had helped Mann and his boys out with dough and weapons when things were looking good in Germany in the 1930s and they wanted the same in Austria. This Arkov bragged that he had killed a few Reds in the 1923 melee and then fled. The last he had heard was the Russians still wanted a word with him. That was in early 1941. As the pair finished their conversation and Mann headed to the door to go home for the day a deadly fuselage of gun fire cut Mann down. Frank, who was nicked by a passing bullet, ducked behind the counter and worked his way out the back door and got the hell away from that death trap.

And it was a close thing. See Oscar Kadin, a Croat, our Mister Welles, actually had been an agent of Hitler’s, had killed a number of Reds, and those Reds having long memories, long post-war Cold War memories, decided that they needed to have more than a word with Kadin. They had been following Kadin into Vienna. They had caught up with him later that night in the Imperial Hotel and took care of their business with Mr. Kadin. Frank, forgetting his close call for a minute, thought damn he never got paid his rest of his fee, damn that Mister Welles.

***Out In The 1950s Be-Bop Night-Rick’s Flying Saucer Rock Moment

He was glad, glad as hell that angel thing, that guardian angel hovering over you and at your beck and call making sure that you don’t fall off some wagon, don’t do any of the one thousand one hundred and one that Mother had warned you off, and don’t do anything he (or she as the case maybe), the angel wouldn’t do, was over and done with. You know that Sunday school thing they beat you over head with about how your guardian angel was there to keep you on the straight and narrow, or else. Yes, Rick Roberts certainly was glad that was over although now that he thought about further it just kind of passed out of sight as he got older and other things filled his mind. Things like girls, the mystery of girls at first, but no strictly the mystery of his June ("June Bug" was his pet name for her but he had better not hear you call her that, especially one Freddie Jackson, or else). Yes, Rick was now large enough, strong enough, and smart enough strong, not to have to worry about some needlepoint guardian angel looking out for him. He could look out for himself and his June Bug. Although truth to tell he was worried, a little anyway, kind of vaguely like a long of the talk around the subject, about this Cold War red scare Russian bear thing (his father, Rick, Senior, an old World War II warrior and just as patriotic as the next man called them Russkies) over here to take his brain away, or maybe put the big heat on him, the A-bomb heat and creating alien things from outer space to haunt his dreams. But only a little.

What was exercising Rick these days was his June (you know her pet name but don’t say it, please) and causing him no end of sleepless nights was that thing about Freddie Jackson, June’s old flame. At least according to his sister, Celia, a reliable source of North Adamsville High gossip, and not afraid to spread it when it pleased her, was that Freddie was taking his peeks at June, and she was peeking back. So, lately, in order to pass those sleepless fretful nights Rick had begun to sit up in his bedroom at night with his transistor radio on, the one that he had forced his parents to buy him, batteries included, last Christmas, rather than the practical ties in some god awful colors and styles that he would not be caught wearing they had intended to foist on him. And what Rick listened as the hour turned to midnight was The Crazy Lazy Midnight Madness Show on WMEX, the local be-bop, no stop, all rock radio station the that got the sleepless, the half-awake, the lame and the lazy through the 1950s Cold War night, and into the dawn.

Now this Crazy Lazy Show fare was strictly for night owls, stuff that would not appeal to daytime rockers, you know, those listening to guys like Elvis, Carl, Bo, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee, or just stuff that appealed to Lazy’s off-center, off-beat funny bone. One night, one really restless night, as Rick was revving up the transistor around midnight he heard Buchanan and Goodman’s silly The Flying Saucer, parts one and two back to back no less, so you see Crazy was serious about presenting goofy stuff. That was followed by Sheb Wooley’s devouring the Purple People Eater, and then, for a change of pace The Royal Teens be-bop Short, Shorts and that got his to thinking about how good June looked in them, and then back to zaniness when Bobby Pickett’s flattened Monster Mash hit the air, and as he got a little drowsy, The Detergents waved over Leader of the Laundromat.

That last one got to him, got to him good, because, believe it or not the song had sentimental value to him. See he met June at the North Adamsville All-Wash Laundromat one day. His mother’s washing machine had broken down and she needed to bring the Roberts laundry to the All-Wash and Rick drove her over. During that time June had passed by, he had said hi, they had talked and then more seriously talked, and that was that. Freddie Jackson was after that dust, a memory, nothing to June.

All this thinking really got Rick tired this night and as the last chords of Laundromat echoed in his head he fell into a deep sleep. Around four o’clock in the morning though he was awoken with a start, with the high pitched whining sound coming from somewhere outside his window. Next thing he knew a huge disc-like object was hovering over most of Adamsville, and stayed there for maybe a minute before departing just as quickly as it appeared. Rick took this for a sign, a sign that he and June would hang together. And a sign, maybe a sign from some unknown benefactor, that Freddie Jackson probably should have taken a trip on that flying saucer while he could, or else.

***Out On The Mean Streets- “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”-Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

“Hey, brother (or sister), can you spare a dime?,” followed by “Got an extra cigarette, pal (or gal)?” Yah, Billy Bailey, used-to-be brash corner boy William James Bailey, certainly had the panhandler lingo down, down pat, after only a few days on the bum. Had his new “profession”down as one might have expected from a Southie corner boy, the corner brick wall in front of Ma’s Variety over on Broadway, circa 1965 who had learned a few things in his time about the youthful clip (grabbing stuff from jewelry and department stores without paying, okay), the jack-roll (taking down a drunk or some poor wandering sap with a sap and leaving him penniless for being at the wrong place at the wrong time) and the midnight grift (a step up from the clip, taking stuff from houses not one’s own and selling it cheap through some shyster fence). This stuff was easy compared to that, and the couple of three month sentences he received courtesy of the county and state when he couldn’t explain why he had somebody’s stuff, somebody who had reported that stuff as stolen. The overhead of the profession he called in those days, those days when the world looked a lot rosier that it did just that moment. Yah , he had never been on the bum then whatever else happened .

Worse though on the bum in his own home town, his ever-loving’ roots, Boston. On the bum this time, this time a as a result of a real fall from grace fall, and not just some a vagrant short money, pick up some spare change, free campsite, Volkswagen bus pick-up sharing stews, brews and dope hitchhike road looking for the great blue-pink American West night with some honey, some Angelica honey, bum like a few years back after he had caught that breeze blowing through his generation’s window. Had given up as nothing but hubris and bad odor those old corner boy habits and had taken up a new age aura, had gotten “religion” about that peace and love stuff. For a while.

In those “for a while” days he practically made a religion, yah a religion out of living “free,” living out of the knapsack, living under a bridge in some makeshift reinforced cardboard hut, or living out in the open, before roaring campfires and hell broth kitchen sink stews, with some interesting railroad jungle camp brothers, no sweat, if need be. But those “golden days” had dried up a few years back and now in 1976 he was facing a real skid row choice. How it happened that he came face to face with such a decision after that new age aura had turned to ashes, had turned in on itself, had turned nasty and greed-headed, if there was such a word, and started looking very much like that hard-edged corner boy night that he had grown up in we will get to along the way. First though let’s set the parameters of what 1976 panhandling, to put an eloquent name on it for “bumming”,shiftless bumming , looked like and how to survive in the new new age of everybody me-ing themselves, even with people who were not on the bum. Christ, lord the times were hard, hard times in old Babylon, no question.

See, a guy, a guy who called himself“Shorty” McGee for obviously physical reasons but who knows what his real name was, maybe he didn’t remember either after all the rum-dum sterno heat years and the endless backsides of skid row haunts, that he had hitched up with for a minute, an overnight minute at the Salvation Harbor Lights Center over in the South End kind of hipped him to the obvious tricks of the new down-at the-heels road. Like putting the two requests together deal when you were panhandling, the request for dough and then for a cigarette or coffee or something, anything to keep you moving, hustling, grabbing. Shorty said it was all a matter of psychology, of working the crowd, the downtown crowd, the bustling Park Street Station crowd, and the Copley Square sunning themselves crowd just right. The idea was that to get you out of their sights and back to whatever sweet thing they were doing that would piece you off with something and if not money then cigarettes or something like that which could be parlayed into something else in trade. So you endlessly put the two requests together, time after time after time, and always. And what happened was that when they turned you down for the dough, or maybe took you literally and pieced you off with just a dime or a quarter, Christ a dime that wouldn’t even buy a cup of joe, they could feel good about themselves, if they smoked, smoked cigarettes anyway, by passing you a butt.

Billy thought, nice, this Shorty really does have it worked out just about right. Of course dimes and drags were not going to get him out from under, not this time.

Well, rather than leaving the reader out in the dark, Billy Bailey that fair 1976 spring was not just on the bum, but on the lam as well, keeping his head very far down, very far down indeed, just in case there were some guys who were looking for him, including a few corner boys who wanted a desperate word with him. Or worse, the cops, in case some irate victim of one of his scams took a notion to “fry his ass.” and yelled for the law. Of course he was counting on them, those victims, being mainly friends and acquaintances, of the new age variety although in the end he tapped down to those corner boy roots, of not putting “the heat” on him since he had already promised through the grapevine that he would make restitution. But we are getting a little ahead of the story, let’s step back.

The early 1970s were not kind to“free spirits” the previous name for what in 1976 were “free-loaders,” strictly drifters, grifters and midnight shifters, and Billy, well, got behind in his expenses, and his bills, his ever expanding bills. You know keeping company with some honeys over on Beacon Street who were getting their kicks from slumming with jailbird corner boys before going off to marry some high-priced corporate lawyer of stockbroker who known the family for years and keeping the lid one a growing jones as result of sharing kicks with those Beacon Street swells. See the transition, the fast transition, from free “s” to free “l” caught him off-guard, moreover he was just then in the throes of a fit of “the world owes me a living,” a serious fit. Why? Well see, he as a pauper son of the desperate working poor, “felt” that since he missed out on the golden age benefits of his youth that he was to make up the difference by putting the “touch” on the richer (not really rich but richer than he knew of, no question) friends that he had acquired through his doing this and that, mainly high-end drug connections. And sampling the merchandise to, well, this is the way he put it, “get him well.”

The long and short it was that he would “borrow” money off Friend A under some scam pretext of putting it to good use (yes, his good use, including several long airplane fight trips to California and other points west-no more hitchhike roads for this moving up the food chain lad once he hipped to the changed scene) and then borrow dough off Friend B to cover some of his debt to Friend A. Something like an unconscious classic Ponzi scheme, as it turned out. And then when he got to Friend X or somewhere around there things got way too complicated and he started “kiting” checks, and on and on as far deep into his white- collar crime mind as he could think. Frankly though Billy was strictly muscle, strictly the hired gun, strictly the gofer and so he got in way over his head. That Ponzi scheme could only go on a for a short while and he calculated that "short while" almost to the day when he would have to go “underground” and that day had sprung up a couple of weeks before.

So it took no accountant or smart-ass attorney to know that dimes and drags, whatever the virtues of Shorty’s insights into the human psyche were not going to get him back on his feet. Nor many of the schemes that Shorty had outlined over at Harbor Lights as ways to grab quick cash. These were chicken feed for his needs, even his immediate needs, although some of the scams would fill the bill for a rum-dum or life-long skid row bum. But here was the secret, the deep secret that Billy Bailey held in his heart, after a few nights on bus station benches, cold spring night park benches, a night bout under the Andersen Bridge over by old haunt Harvard Square, and a few nights that he would rather not discuss just in case, he finally figured out, figured out kicking and screaming, that the world did not owe him a living and that if he wanted to survive past thirty he had better get the stardust and grit out of his eyes. But just this minute, just that underground spring 1976 minute, he needed to work the Commons. “Hey, brother, hey sister, can you spare a dime?” “Pal, have you got an extra cigarette?”

Postscript: Not all wisdom found ends happily, no matter how preciously fought for, and not all good intentions grow to fruition. Yes, Billy paid off his debts to his friends, mostly. (Not by that damn Shorty diems and drags strategy but by picking up a working relationship with a street hustler who turned him on to the growing cocaine industry as the way to get well, well with those who wanted to “fry his ass” first and foremost. Of course Billy could not leave well enough alone, couldn’t see that the thing was fixed from the beginning and rather than work his way up the food chain he got the bright idea that he would go independent. Billy Bailey was killed, murdered under suspicious circumstances never really investigated, left face down in some dusty back road while “muling” some product in a drug war shoot-out in Juarez, Mexico in late 1979. That was the official Federales report anyway, not much to hang a life on. Other sources, not narcs, said that Billy tried to skim a little something off the top, maybe a couple of kilos of cocaine, while he was doing that muling and took a couple of facedown slugs for his efforts. Billy Baily’s life was apparently so inconsequential that it was two years before his widowed mother found out what had happened to him through a hired private eyes she sent to Mexico- Jesus, maybe Billy’s should have stuck with dimes and drags-RIP Billy Bailey.

***Out In The 2000s Crime Noir Night-“Sin City”-A Film Review

Sin City, starring Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, based on Frank Miller's graphic novels, co-directed by Frank Miller, 2005

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Of course when I think of noir it is 1940s-50s noir, black and white in film and in the good guys-bad guys constellation with a little murder and mayhem mixed in to keep one’s eyes open just in case there is no femme fatale to muddy the waters. Neo-noir, such as the film under review, Sin City, is another matter, perhaps. Here’s the why of the perhaps.

Central to the old time crime noir was the notion that crime did not pay and as stated above the bad guy(s) learned that lesson the hard way after a little mussing up or a date with a bullet. Kids’ stuff really when compared to the over-the-top action of this three vignettes series on modern day good guys versus bad guys. Three separate male characters, all tough guys and guys you would want to have at your back if real trouble headed your way, are trying, trying within the parameters of common sense or believability, to clean up slices of Sin City. Sin City as the rather obvious name implies, is in the grips of corruption from the top down, including in virtually every civic institution. Our avengers are trying to cut a wedge into that bad karma by individually, one, tracking down a bizarre, politically connected heir whose thing was slice and dice of very young girls, two, avenge the death of a high class call girl who was kind to one tough guy, and, three, keep the pimps and cops at bay in the red light district where the working girls have set up their own Hookers’ Commune.

All of this doing good is, of necessity in today’s movie world, linked up with, frankly, over the top use of violence of all sorts from cannibalism to barbaric death sentences, well beyond what tame old time noir warranted. Apparently the succeeding crime waves since the 1940s have upped the ante and something like total war is required to exterminate the villains. That and some very up-to-date use of cinematography to give a gritty black and white feel to the adventures. And also a not small dose of magical realism, suspension of disbelief, and sparseness of language to go along with the plot and visual action.

But here is the funny thing, funny for an old-time crime noir aficionado, I really liked this film. Why? Well go back to the old time crime noir premise. Good guys (and then it was mostly guys- here some very wicked “dames” join in and I know I would not want to cross them, no way) pushed their weight around or tilted at windmills for cheap dough or maybe a little kiss. They got mussed, up, trussed up, busted up in the cause of some individual justice drive that drove the “better angels of their natures.” Guess what, sixty years later, a thousand years advanced cinematically, a million years advanced socially (maybe) and these guys are still chasing windmills. Nice, right.

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-“The Naked City”-A Film Review

The Naked City, starring Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Universal International, 1946

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a free pass. Some, such as the film under review from 1946, The Naked City, offer neither although the stark New York City cinematography and the voice-over narration place it firmly in the genre. This film is that old noir stand-by from the period, the police procedural with its never-ending cautionary tale about how “crime does not pay.”

A little plot summary is in order. Yes, New York City, well the New York City of the 1940s and 1950s had eight million stories, although maybe really just two, rich and poor, or maybe better getting richer or sliding down poorer, but that is the subject for another day. Of course telling eight million stories, other than as a few seconds relief slice-of-life scenes, would make me very sleepy, very sleepy indeed.

So the plot line reduces the sleepiness to a minimum by telling one story, or rather one murder story that wraps quite a few people in its tentacles, including one major city homicide squad. A squad led by perennial Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald as the foot-sore but worldly-wise detective in charge. The grift (profit motive) that drives the story line is stealing jewelry from those self-same getting richer New York City swells, including an inside society swell finger man. But things turn awry when one drop-dead beautiful model winds up being murdered (maybe I should not have used just that phrase to describe that unseen model, but I will let it stand) by her some of her thieving confederates.

The twists and turns, such as they are, revolve around a mystery man lover, suitor, whatever it was never really clear, except he was daffy over that drop-dead beautiful model, and finding him since he was the logical guy to have done, or to have ordered the murder, is the order of the day. In New Jack City and elsewhere that is hard to do, one and one half hours hard to do. But in the end Barry and his homicide squad cohorts get their man, a strangely agile bad man for noir who are usually portrayed as just straight thugs. And the city moves on to the next…murder, mayhem or whatever. Not exactly my cup of tea in noir but if I recall this film was the model for a television series of the same name in the late 1950s so somebody must have though well of it beyond the slice-of-New York life scenes interspersed in the story and the great black and white cinematography of the Big Apple just after the end of World War II.

***The Real Scoop Behind “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

“Hey, brother (or sister), can you spare a dime?,” followed by “Got an extra cigarette, pal (or gal)?” Yah, Billy Bailey, used-to-be brash corner boy William James Bailey, certainly had the panhandler lingo down, down pat, after only a few days on the bum. Worst though on the bum in his own home town, his ever-loving’ roots, Boston. On the bum this time, this time a real fall and not just some short money, pick up some spare change, free campsite, Volkswagen bus pick-up sharing stews, brews and dope hitchhike road looking for the great blue-pink American West night with some honey, some Angelica honey, bum like a few years back.

In those days he practically made a religion, yah a religion out of living “free,” living out of the knapsack, living under a bridge, or some railroad jungle camp, no sweat, if need be. But those “golden days” dried up a few years back and now in 1976 he was facing a real skid row choice. How it happened he will get to along the way but first let’s set the parameters of what 1976 panhandling, to put an eloquent name on it for “bumming”, shiftless bumming , looked like and how to survive in the new age of everybody me-ing themselves, even with people who were not on the bum. Christ, lord the times were hard, hard times in old Babylon, no question.

See, a guy, a guy who called himself“Shorty” McGee for obviously physical reasons but who knows what his real name was, maybe he didn’t remember either after all the rum-dum sterno heat years and the endless backsides of skid row haunts, that he had hitched up with for a minute, an overnight minute at the Salvation Harbor Lights Center over in the South End kind of hipped him to the obvious tricks of the new down-at the-heels road. Like putting the two requests together deal when you were panhandling, the request for dough and then for a cigarette or coffee or something, anything to keep you moving, hustling. See, Shorty said it was all a matter of psychology, of working the crowd, the downtown crowd, the bustling Park Street Station crowd, and the Copley Square sunning themselves crowd just right to get you out of their sights and back to whatever sweet thing they were doing. So you endlessly put the two requests together, time after time after time, and always. And what happened was that when they turned you down for the dough, or maybe took you literally and pieced you off with just a dime, Christ a dime that wouldn’t even buy a cup of joe, they could feel good about themselves, if they smoked, smoked cigarettes anyway, by passing you a butt. Billy thought, nice, this Shorty really does have it worked out just about right. Of course dimes and drags were not going to get him out from under, not this time.

Well, rather than leaving the reader out in the dark, Billy Bailey this fair 1976 spring was not just on the bum, but on the lam as well, keeping his head very far down just in case there were some guys who were looking for him, or worst, the cops, in case some irate victim of one of his scams took a notion to “fry his ass.” Of course he was counting on them, those victims, being mainly friends and acquaintances, of not putting “the heat” on him since he had already promised through the grapevine that he would make restitution. But we are getting a little ahead of the story, let’s step back.

The early 1970s were not kind to“free spirits” the previous name for what on this day were “free-loaders” and Billy, well, got behind in his expenses, and his bills, his ever expanding bills. But see the transition from free “s” to free “l” caught him off-guard, moreover he was just then in the throes of a fit of “the world owes me a living,” a serious fit. Why? Well see, he as a pauper son of the desperate working poor, “felt” that since he missed out on the golden age benefits of his youth that he was to make up the difference by putting the “touch” on the richer (not really rich but richer than he knew of, no question) friends that he had acquired through his doing this and that, mainly high-end drug connections.

The long and short it was that he would “borrow” money off Friend A under some scam pretext of putting it to good use (yes, his good use, including several long airplane fight trips to California and other points west-no more hitchhike roads for this moving up the food chain lad) and then borrow dough off Friend B to cover some of his debt to Friend A. Something like an unconscious classic Ponzi scheme, as it turned out. And then when he got to Friend X or somewhere around there things got way too complicated and he started “kiting” checks, and on and on as far deep into his white collar crime mind as he could think. That could only go on a for a short while and he calculated that "short while" almost to the day when he would have to go “underground” and that day had sprung up a couple of weeks before.

So it took no accountant or smart-ass attorney to know that dimes and drags were not going to get him back on his feet. Nor many of the schemes that Shorty had outlined over at Harbor Lights as ways to grab quick cash were. These were chicken feed for his needs, even his immediate needs, although some of the scams would fill the bill for a rum-dum or life-long skid row bum. But here is the secret, the deep secret that Billy Bailey held in his heart, after a few nights on bus station benches, cold spring night park benches, a night bout under the Andersen Bridge over by old haunt Harvard Square, and a few nights that he would rather not discuss just in case, he finally figured out, figured out kicking and screaming, that the world did not owe him a living and that if he wanted to survive past thirty he had better get the stardust and grit out of his eyes. But just this minute, just this underground spring 1976 minute, he needed to work the Commons. “Hey, brother, hey sister, can you spare a dime?” “Pal, have you got an extra cigarette?”

Postscript: Not all wisdom ends happily, and not all good intentions grow to fruition. Yes, Billy paid off his debts to his friends, mostly. However, Billy Bailey was killed, left face down in some dusty back road, while “muling” some product in a drug war shoot-out in Juarez, Mexico in late 1979. That was the official Federales report anyway. Other sources said that Billy tried to skim a little something off the top, maybe a couple of kilos of cocaine, while he was doing that muling and took a couple of facedown slugs for his efforts-RIP Billy Bailey.