Remembrances Of Things Past-With Vietnam Veteran Phil Larkin In Mind  

By Bart Webber

Frank Jackman had been put the finishing touches on a short piece that he was going to present during the Veterans for Peace annual Memorial Day for Peace program down at Boston Harbor near the major hotels that dot the walkways there when a vision of his old elementary school friend Billy Bradley came into his head. The piece Frank had been working on centered on the terrible pressure by his family, especially by an old grandmother whom he loved, that had been put on a Vietnam War veteran, Phil Larkin, to forget his doubts about fighting in Vietnam and go and maintain the family honor. Frank, a Vietnam-era veteran who did not see service in Vietnam despite being like Phil an 11 Bravo, an infantryman, a grunt, cannon fodder once he got wise to what the American government had expected him to do, had chosen Phil’s story to present after all these years because Phil had been from Carver, down in cranberry country in Southeastern Massachusetts not far from his own hometown of North Adamsville. He had me Phil out in Southern California in the mid-1970s when he for non-service related reasons had found himself running into what would later be called “brothers under the bridge,” mostly veterans who had served in Vietnam and who for one reason or another could not, or would not adjust to the “real world”, once they returned from their tours of duty. Phil had told Frank his story one night along a railroad “jungle” camp outside of Westminster while they were sharing a bottle of cheapjack wine. Yeah it was that kind of time.

Rekindling that Phil story somehow set Frank to thinking about how a lot of working class kids like Phil, like Billy, hell like him, if he thought about it always drew the short end of the stick. Always got kicked around when they tried to reach for the brass ring. That was Billy, William James Bradley, to a tee. Frank was thinking about the time that Billy thought he had a shot at being the “next big thing” after Elvis lighted up the night in the mid-1950s and made all the woman sweat, made every guy from six to sixty start moving his hips in just that provocative way, start spending hours in front of the mirror perfecting that sneer that all the girls were sitting up in their rooms just waiting to take off Elvis’ face in the hopes of being the consolation prize.

Of course the most dramatic kick in the teeth for Billy, really the last straw before he decided that if the world was not on the up and up then then he wouldn’t be either and began what would be a short not so sweet life of crime and jail sentences, was when he lost a dance contest held in the gym at the high school, at North Adamsville High,  one winter night where the winning couples, one from the group of twelves and under, the other thirteen to eighteen, were to get an all-expenses paid trip to Albany to compete in the Northeast regionals. Frank had been there that night in order to cheer his best friend on (or the guy whom he thought was his best friend they never did quite figure that out but if pressed both would call the other that designation at least through sixth grade).

The way the dance contest worked in those days was that the sponsors, a big radio station in Boston, WMEX probably, would put all the names of the contestants into a drum from each division, two drums, one for guys, one for girls (no same-sex or transgender stuff in those days, not for public consumption event though one of Frank’s cousins shunned by the family was well-known in Boston as a “transvestite” as cross-dressers were called then). So it was totally arbitrary who your partner would be. Thus Billy had worked like seven banshees to make sure he knew all the dance steps from fox trot to stroll and back so if he got some dippy girl who had two left feet he would not be stuck, would wow the six judges even if he wound up with a klutz.

Now in the world of competitive dancing, 1950s rock and roll competitive dancing, not some old-timey ballroom dancing, modern dance or ballet stuff you could be pretty wild by comparison to those more tutored forms but there were limits. Limits set by sponsors, radio sponsors and advertisers of stuff geared to kids, who were already under heavy pressure from the authorities, read, parents, churchmen, school administrators, and politicians to reign things in a year like 1958, the year of Billy’s demise. To rein in the “devil’s music” which is what Frank’s mother called it and would not allow it to be played on the family radio. (Frank, Billy too, hell a whole generation got around that problem with the ingenious invention of the transistor radio to keep prying parents at bay.) Billy didn’t get the message though, didn’t want to, listened to his own drummer, praise be, maybe heard something that none of the rest of the kids could hear. That is what Frank thought afterward.

So you already know what happened, or can guess. See Billy drew this young bud, this flaming red-headed girl, this Ida McCarthy who every guy had wet dreams about. He had been her partner in a couple of preliminary dance-offs on the way up to this big night. Billy saw Albany tickets or something, something about Ida that set his twelve year old heart in flames. Of course Ida knew who and what Billy was about but she had her own set of dreams and the look she gave Billy when it was announced that they would be a pair night would have killed a smarter guy, a guy not so hung up in his own stardust.

Still they did pretty well, Billy kept himself in relative check until the final pairings were announced, the two couples who would face off to win the division. Billy and Ida were one pair. A couple from Riverdale were the other pair. Maybe if the last song, the decisive song had been a slow one, maybe a Roy Orbison tune, or Elvis being all dreamy things would have worked out okay but as it turned out the last song was Dale Hawkins’ classic Susie Q, nothing but sex wrapped up in a song. Almost from the first beat Billy was wired, was off in his own world. To say that he had been sexually suggestive in his moves, to the extent that any twelve year old guy was aware that some dance moves were nothing but sublimated sex (what did Billy, Frank, the whole universe of the generation of ’68 know about such concepts then)would be an understatement. Along the way Billy took off his tie, took off his jacket, and maybe if he thought about it he might have taken off his pants. But what did him in was when he went in back of Ida and started grinding away to her motions. The kids in the crowd went crazy and even Ida seemed to get into the groove.

Needless to say Billy and Ida stayed home while that Riverdale couple went to Albany. For a few weeks afterward Billy and Ida were an “item,” were considered cool, very cool and then Ida moved away, her father got a promotion to some place in New Hampshire and Billy more and more frequently turned in on himself, began to start doing the “clip,” the five-finger discount in stores up in Adamsville Center which would lead him very far away from the limelight, more like searchlights. 

Frank had thought later, once he had been broken from Billy’s spell by a couple of close call “clips” when he decided that reading books was less dangerous to his life than stealing onyx rings and such, that maybe Billy was always destined to be the fall guy, the guy who could be broken on the wheel of life with no sweat. The year before, 1957, Billy had been all hopped up to enter and win, he never was a guy who was beset by doubts unlike Frank who then was basically shy and introverted, particularly around girls unlike Billy who drew them like a magnet, a teen caravan contest. This caravan business was sponsored by record companies mainly, maybe some radio sponsorship on the side as well, usually smaller companies looking for that one “Sam Phillips finding Elvis” moment that would bring in fame and fortune.

The caravan idea was that the record company would go to various locales like North Adamsville, usually at the high school then as now, a central institution in the life of kids, of towns and have open auditions, have the winners from the regions go to Boston for a bigger version of the same thing and the winner there would get a record contract (one record and then whatever happened happened, a “one hit” wonder, or a miss usually just like now). So Billy was all amped up to enter. Between his singing and dancing skills Frank thought honestly that Billy’s singing was way ahead, he really did have a good voice, had been the guy who would lead the doo-wop songs in back of the elementary school on summer nights as the sun went down which would bring the girls around all swoony and flirty before everything was over.

Billy was prepared, super-prepared you could say that about him. Even had his poor mother who had enough to do handling Billy and four brothers make him a sport’s jacket like the one Billy Haley wore. The poor woman had to make the damn thing since they were as poor as church mice and couldn’t afford to go to Robert Hall and get a ready-made one. Billy’s old man sprang for the material and his mother made the jacket. See Billy was going to cover Haley’s Rock Around The Clock so that jacket was important to the effect he would have on the judges.

Well the big night came, Frank was there, so were Frank’s parents to cheer Billy on so you know it was a big deal. Billy was on fifth so he was a little nervous. Frank was nervous too because the third act, a group of three sisters doing doo wop, knocked the place for a home run so Billy was up against some serious competition. Billy came out looking good, starting singing up a storm, got the girls, many from school, going with him and then about half way through as he was swaying away, flailing his arms one of the sleeves of his jacket went flying into the audience. The girls went wild, then the other sleeve came flying off. Pandemonium. See the audience, the girls, thought that was part of the act, thought Billy was doing it for them not that Mrs. Bradley in a rush to get the jacket done hadn’t properly sewn the sleeves on. Needless to say Billy didn’t win, that doo wop group was just too good. Billy took it with what seemed good grace for a while and the girls at school wouldn’t leave him alone, especially the two girls who caught the sleeves. (Frank got Billy’s “cast-offs which helped him a lot in the getting to know girls department.) But after that experience Billy stopped singing, stopped leading that summer doo wop stuff that brought the girls around. 

Maybe it was even before that, if you don’t want to get into the branded at birth theory, buy into the sign, the mark, of Cain and Abel stuff. In 1956 Billy despite his age, his young age, was a wrapped up in the new rock and roll thing, the Elvis flood as anybody at ten years of age. Certainly more than Frank, and most of the guys they hung around with although every guy, young or old, old being then maybe twenty to schoolboy eyes was starting to wear his sideburns just a little longer. Long enough for parents to scowl at. Billy probably had a leg up on the Elvis thing, the rock and roll thing from his older brothers and their girlfriends, especially the girlfriends who would go wild when Elvis was played on the record player down in the family room when those brothers had their teen platter (records) parties. 

Somehow though Billy, maybe through some DNA thing, or maybe just the hard fact of coming up hard in a poor family with few resources, figured that just emulating Elvis was not going to get him out from under the feeling he had that things were stacked against him. Stacked against him except that overweening desire of his to break-out, to make his fame and fortune through his musical talent. Frank had already known as that early stage that Billy had a good voice because at school during recess he would croon out the latest tunes and all the girls would be around him like flies. But Billy wasn’t just depending on luck to get him through. In those days as part of the effort by parents and other authorities like the Church (in their neighborhood, in Frank and Billy’s neighborhood that “Church” was nothing but the Roman Catholic one they you hear about so much these days) to curb and control the rock and roll menace, the “sex” menace if you really wanted to know what bothered them,  groups of adults would put together what today would be called “open mics,” places where kids could win prizes, maybe fifty or one hundred dollars, showing off their singing talents.

Every Friday night Father Lally, the youngest priest at Saint Thomas Roman Catholic Church, presided over the weekly singing contests sponsored by the church. The prize: a fifty dollar United States Savings Bond.  A big deal then, especially to kids who thought fifty cents was a huge sum. At first Billy, like Frank had noticed as well, was as caught up in the Elvis thing as any other kid. But lots of kids were, good singers, girls too, so he figured that he had to make his mark another way. Another sound that appealed to him was the beat of Bo Diddley whose signature song Bo Diddley was a big hit at dances. So Billy decided one night that he would cover that song. What Billy, Frank, none of the younger kids knew was that Bo was black, black as the night as they later found out. See they knew Bo from the radio, the transistor radio so they didn’t know, didn’t think much about it probably what color skin Bo had.

But Billy found out that night, found out what the race question was all about in an all-white Northern working class neighborhood quickly that night. After he finished his song which was pretty well received by the kids, an older guy, a guy already out of high school, came up to Billy and said for all to hear that he did not know that Billy wanted to be a “nigger” singer. Needless to say Billy did not win that night. Needless to say that the next week he went back to covering Elvis stuff but without much heart. Needless to say too that the road ahead for Billy dreams would always be paved with pitfalls.