***Brother (Or Sister), Can You Spare A Dime?

For C.M., North Adamsville Class Of 1964

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Banks and country economies are failing left and right, being bought up by bigger banks up the food chain or being bailed out by some multi-national entity enhancing the “too big to fail” or“two small to let everything up the chain fail” syndromes that got us into this economic mess in the first place. Unemployment is still way up, and staying steadily up as jobs worldwide, working people jobs, have been replaced by computer-generated productivity and factory workers in Europe and America have gone the way of the town crier, the hand-loom weaver, and the lamplighter. The plight of international youth is so stressful, hell, let’s call a thing by its right name, desperate, that the long term repercussions are almost frightening. Housing values are down on the floor, and after heading to the basement are now only on a slight uptick, with no real upswing, meaning people buying homes rather than investors going in for the kill, in sight what with overstocked, unfinished housing and foreclosures still glutting the market. A retirement account, the previously much vaunted savings for the “golden years,” are subject to the daily twists and turns of the financial markets sensitive to global economic pressures and so that term retirement may become like some quaint word no longer in use out the middle ages.

And that is the grim news factor on an average day. Other days just ratchet up the doom and gloom from there. And some of those other days just turn off the television, radio, computer, horoscope, tarot cards or however you learn the news of the day. The whys and wherefores of that news, however, is not what this writer wants to comment on though. One of the very few virtues of growing up "dirt poor," 1950s dirt poor in the “golden age” of the post-World War II American economic boom, first in an old jerry-built housing project which were provided in order to ease returning veterans back into civilian life and give them a leg up on that aforementioned dream in old tired working- class Adamsville and then across town in an old shack of a house on the wrong side of the tracks on Maple Street near the North Adamsville High School is that even now I am personally inured to the vicissitudes of the economy. Hell, when I was young hard times were the only times, except maybe harder times around the Jackman household. I did not, except by rumor, know there were any other kinds. That knowledge came with a certain resentment and attitude.

All of the above is by way of making this point. I have been broke more times than I could shake a stick at, both by choice and by the fickleness of fate. The fickleness of fate (and my own stupidity or angst) having a slight edge. I have been flat broke, dead broke, broke six ways to Sunday, and every kind of broke you can think of. At one time I almost make a religion of it, dressing it up in an eloquent moral and philosophical covering. I have been in the clover a few times too, but those have always been very near things and provided by the largesse of other (meaning usually I latched on to some sugar mama whose family had dough and I was able to ride that wave for a while).

Let me put it this way. I have leisurely strolled across the Golden Gate Bridge, some companion in hand to while away the time, taking in the sea salt breezes and the spectacular views. I have also slept huddled, in solemn and fearful aloneness with a tattered newspaper for a pillow, under the Golden Gate Bridge having ill-advisedly burned some other bridges behind and found out about the hardness of that size of existence. I have eaten at restaurants where one does not ask the price, or need to. I have also eaten free-for-all stews and watered-down coffee, gladly, from Salvation Army soup lines. I have sat idly on hopeless park benches in nameless forsaken towns another town’s newspaper for a pillow, too many nameless forsaken towns. I have also sat idly, ice-cubed drink in hand, in a beach chair on some deck watching the surf rise and fall on the rocks at Bar Harbor. I could go on in this vein but you get the idea. Here is my accumulated wisdom though-it is much better to have the dough.

See you don’t have to be some high theory radical or socialist equalizer to figure out that down on the mean streets, down there at the edge of society, down where the jack-rollers and con men meet the fragile working drudges in battle that the struggle for existence, for the daily bread, is too hard and time-consuming to the neglect of other more healthful existences. Some days just getting from point A to nearby point B takes all the effort and pluck of some superhuman angel mad monk. There, frankly, has to be a better way to organize the ways of the world. But until that day and just in case the times get even worse than they are now I am keeping in shape. Keeping my long ago dirt poor wanting habits in check. I will just bone up on the mantra of the hard mean outlaw streets, cup in hand if it comes to it later. Brother (Or Sister), Can You Spare A Dime?

****

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,

When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.

They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,

Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.

Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;

Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,

Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,

Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,

And I was the kid with the drum!

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.

Why don't you remember, I'm your pal?

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,

Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,

Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,

And I was the kid with the drum!

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.

Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal?

Buddy, can you spare a dime?