Out In The Be-Bop, Literally Be-Bop 1960s Night-A Walk Down "Dream Street"- For Jimmy J., Class Of 1966

 

Bart Webber, North Adamsville High School (Ma) Class of 1964, comment:

In a lot of ways Sam Lowell was an odd guy, an odd corner boy back in the day in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor during high school day in the early 1960s. Maybe Sam was not as odd as fellow corner boy Pete Markin who was always harassing the other dozen or so regular attendees on the corner with his sacred two thousand odd-ball facts about the world, about teen alienation, about how our neighborhood had not been given a freaking break in the scheme of things and we should something about the matter, and of course his ranting about the “new day coming” that we all could have given a rat’s ass about but odd in his own less vocal way. Sam was always kind of more dreaming about stuff, about what the “real” (as opposed to Markin’s give a rat’s ass future) would look like, where we would stand in the world when everything shook out.

Look the average conversation, the average topic among those guys on the corner was about getting laid, about girls and what to do about them and their bizarre sense of the world and what you could do for them, about how to get money together to take them somewhere preferably in a car and not on foot, about doing stuff like midnight creeps around the town seeking openings to grab some dough, usually “easy” dough if you know what I mean and planning for future hauls. Sure Sam, and even Markin got into the scheme of things, wanted dough for girl stuff, but that was not what drove him anymore than it drove Markin. See Sam’s family had a little more dough that the rest of the families of the guys who hung on the corner and while he was cool, was as involved straight up in any caper that our leader, Frankie Riley, proposed (the schemes usually presented by Markin who however could barely tie his shoes much less carry out one of plans), he always seemed to be doing it in order to stay cool with the guys who really did have their wanting habits on almost all the time.

Yeah, Sam was as likely to talk about going to law school, or stuff like that, you know, getting himself way out of the old working class neighborhood. I guess it was driving him a little since poverty in the old neighborhood and although his family was only a little ahead of the curve in that way such things were relative and his “wanting habits” reflected that future planned out that we could also have given a rat’s ass about since our own wanting habits were more immediate. So it was not surprising when several years ago somebody from our Class of 1964 at old hallowed North Adamsville High where all of the corner boys of our generation went to high school (except bad boy Pretty James Preston who dropped out in sophomore year in order to lead what would turn out to be a short but stuff of legends career as a bank robber) put up a class Facebook page to gather in the flock.               

I had not seen or heard from most of the guys who were still standing for many years what with one thing and another, family, extended family, making dough and eventually having to take care of parents. But one day Sam via that Facebook page contacted me (and other old-time corner boys) as I had been doing as well once I got notification that the site was up and running from Clare Kelly the gal from our class who did the set up. Sam and I had been fairly close, especially during senior year when I was dating his younger sister, and later when under the influence of Markin the whole tribe took off at various times to check out what was happening on the West Coast, that new day he had been predicting would come since early in high school. But after a few years on the yellow brick road school bus (Markin’s term for the way we travelled up and down the coast) Sam went on to his promise land law school and stayed in town to practice his law in a small two person operation while I headed to Ohio where my wife’s people were from and where she wanted to live. Then, nearing retirement, I have persuaded my wife that fair was fair and that we should move back to the ocean which I had missed like crazy and so we had come back to Riverdale about thirty miles south of North Adamsville and on the coast.        

Once Sam and I reconnected it was not long before we started to get together, usually at the Dublin Grille, in North Adamsville and talk about the old days. Sometimes a couple of other guys still around would join us although they were not corner boys. A lot of times though showing what an odd-ball Sam still was he would keep asking probing questions not about future dreams but about whether or not those youthful dreams had turned out okay, or had turned to ashes in our mouths. That “ashes in our mouths” business a veiled reference to the late Pete Markin who despite his dreams, his two thousand sacred fact that we gave a rat’s ass about and maybe still did, and his correct, or better partially correct call on the new day coming wound had wound up with a bad ending at a young age down in Mexico in the mid-1970s when he got caught in some gone wrong drug scheme that blew up on him and was found face down in a back alley in Sonora.     

Sam’s probing of the few of us he could corral at our watering hole made him get dreamy once again, said that he wanted to test the waters more widely, wanted to pose the question to whatever felt like answering the question on the class Facebook page. Clare had previously asked him to help her set up questions like that and so he was working out of his wheelhouse on this one.

One day a few days after he explained what he was going to do I noticed the question he posed on the page:

When you were in high school did you ever sit on the main entrance steps of North Adamsville High dream of your future?

See the odd-ball way he posed the question. Pure Sam. Like I said Sam originally directed the question to fellow members of the North Adamsville High Class of 1964 but anybody can play this game. As a first run through I only wrote a couple of paragraphs, then I re-wrote the damn thing when Sam said I could do better than that. So I wrote several paragraphs. Still not good enough. So another damn damn re-write. Here is my take, my final take, on the weighty question after he had badgered to write something worthy to get the ball rolling, to get others who might be afraid to be the first to respond to gather some strength to do so:

Ah, literary license. Where would we be without it?  At least those of us who, cursed, try to stand under its umbrella and not abuse the language and the reader’s patience too much. This particular license violation revolves around the rather seedy history of this entry.

Dreams. But not just any dreams, and not anytime dreams. Those, as I have found out, and you have too, are a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. No, I am talking about fresh dreams, fresh, creamy, minty dreams from youth, from high school, especially from the 1960s high school be-bop night of youth that Sam was pitching his question to, and future prospects. And, more importantly, how they, the dreams that is, if not the prospects, worked out.

In line with that question I also needed to know, and maybe that is really what I was looking for, was how hard anyone thought about the subject, and in what way and where. In short, was I among a small or large number of people who were driven to distraction, no, beyond distraction, no, had their sleep sweaty disturbed by the question. (And by Sam’s prodding.) That simply put, was the little, very little, idea that got the ball rolling. Now this wee idea started life in this space a while back as a couple of paragraphs, a couple of stretched out paragraphs, ginned up, if you really wanted to know. Over time it blossomed into several paragraphs without really any effort, or any added insight into the question. And now it is going to be expanded, don’t ask me how much longer, with that same core question at the center. That tells me (and the reader) two things; someone has a little time on their hands; and, the little ball be-bop high school night dream thing was (is) of far greater import than my original cavalier notion of the theme when I first presented it would have indicated. For those who are experiencing this blockbuster entry for the first time I have left the previously outlined parameters of the question just below so you will be able to follow along, although I am not sure now if it is the original one or some later mongrel son of the original.         

*****

This now seemingly benighted entry, originally simply titled , A Walk Down “Dream” Street, started life as an equally simple question posed to fellow classmates in the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 (although the question is also suitable to be asked of other classes, and other schools, as well) in the year 2014 on some cyberspace class site, a site that finally reconnected me with my old high school friend, Sam Lowell, Samuel Francis Lowell, one of the be-bop kings of the North Adamsville schoolboy night in the early 1960s . I had “discovered” the site that year after having gone through a series of events the details of which need not detain us right now but that drove me back to memories, hard, hard-bitten, hard-aching, hard-longing, mist of time, dream memories, of old North schoolboy days and of the need to search for my old high school friend and running mate (literally, in track and cross country, as well as “running” around town doing boy high school things, doing the best we could, or trying to as well as senior year running around with his sister, Bernice, who was “hot,” sorry Sam, no, not sorry Sam.).

 

Naturally, the question was posed in its particular form, or so it seemed natural at the time for Sam to pose it that way, because those old, “real,” august, imposing, institutionally imposing, grey granite-quarried (from the Granite City, the unofficial, or maybe official for all I know, nickname of the town, reflecting the Italian immigrant labor-sweated quarries that dotted the outer reaches of the town and that was one of its earlier industries) main entrance steps (in those days serious steps, two steps at a time steps, especially if you missed first bell, flanked by globular orbs and, like some medieval church, gargoyle-like columns up to the second floor, hence “real”) is a place where Sam and I spent a lot of our time, time when he wasn’t out on a single date with his ever-loving honey, Joanne, Joanne Marion Murphy, the “queen” of the be-bop night although she was never called that, and would have heaped scorn, big scorn on that idea, that was a Sam-Markin (his best friend and “flak”) secret shake thing, talking of this and that.

Especially summer night time talk (Joanne, lace curtain Irish, lace curtain working class Irish if you will,  Joanne went “summering” with her parents and siblings for several weeks of those summers, the summers that mattered: hot, sultry, sweaty, steam-drained, mostly no money in pockets, no car to explore the great American teenage night; the be-bop, doo-wop, do doo do doo, ding dong daddy, real gone daddy, be my daddy, let it be me, the night time is the right time, car window-fogged, honk if you love jesus (or whatever activity produced those incessant honks in key turned-off cars), love-tinged, or at least sex-tinged, endless sea, Adamsville Beach night. Do I need to draw you a picture, I think not. But we are sitting, Sam and me, sitting hard, granite steps bound, dream fluttering like mad men because such talk would not float in front of the Tonio corner boy crowd we hung around with on weekends even in summer, whoever was around. 

 

And let me give some lesser details of that summer breeze good night night missed for the less sex-crazed. Say, for the faint-hearted, or good, denizens of that great American teenage night how about a Howard Johnson’s ice cream (make mine cherry vanilla, double scoop, no jimmies, please) or a trip to American Graffiti-like fast food drive-in, hamburger, hold the onions (just in case today is the night that that certain she (you now know that was Sam’s younger sister, okay) I had eyed, eyed to perdition, eyed to eyes sore,  in school all spring shows her tight-bloused, Capri-panted form in the door), fries and a frappe, not wimpy milk shake (I refuse to describe that frappe taste treat at this far remove, look it up on Wikipedia, or one of those info-sites) Southern Artery night. Lost, all irretrievably lost, and no thousand, thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge), no, million later, greater experiences can ever replace that. And, add in, too many time non-dated-up, and no possibility of sweet-smelling, soft, rounded, bare shoulder-showing summer sun-dressed (or wintry, bundled up, soft-furred, cashmere-bloused, for that matter), big-haired (hey, do you expect me to remember the name of the hair styles, too?), ruby red-lipped (see, I got the color right), dated-up in sight. So you can see what that “running around town, doing the best we could” mainly consisted in those sweat stairs nights.

 

Mostly, driven by Sam’s prodding which as I have mentioned in front of Tonio’s one and all would have given rat’s ass about, we spoke of dreams of the future: small, soft, fluttery, airless, flightless, high school kid-sized, working class-sized, North Adamsville-sized, non-world–beater-sized, no weight dreams really, no, that’s not right, they were weighty enough but only until 18 years old , or maybe 21 year old, weighty. Mine anyway. A future driven though, and driven hard, by the need to get out from under, to get away from, to put many miles between us and it, crazy family life (the details of which need not detain us here at all, as I now know, and I have some stories to prove it, that condition was epidemic in the old town then, and probably still is). And also of getting out of one-horse, teen life-stealing, soul-cramping, dream-stealing, small or large take your pick, even breathe-stealing, North Adamsville.  Of getting out into the far reaches, as far as desire and dough would carry, of the great wild, wanderlust, cosmic, American day and night. Hitch-hike if you have too, shoe leather-beating walking if you must, road (or European road, or wherever, Christ, even Revere in a crunch, but mainly putting some miles between).

The question, that simple question that I asked above, moreover, did not stand in isolation. As part of that search for “run around” Sam, king of the sweaty night Sam, for figuring out tangled roots, for hard looking at past, good or evil, for hard longing connectedness to youth, for bleeding raider red days I took advantage of that non-descript North Adamsville Class of 1964 message board to fire off, what now seems like an small atomic bombardment of entries about this and that, some serious, most whimsical. (They are, for the most part, still there if you are interested). Obviously though not every question I intended to answer there, or here, especially not this one, was meant to be as whimsical as the first one that I did about the comparative merits of the Rolling Stones and Beatles. With this long-stemmed introduction the rest of the 2014 original entry is (edited a bit) “preserved” intact  in the interest of keeping with its original purpose of trying to give my answer the question posed, posted below:

 

“Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives; our dreams of glory out in the big old world that we did not make, and were not asked about making; of success whether of the pot of gold or less tangible, but just as valuable, goods, or better, ideas; of things or conditions, of himalayas, conquered, physically or mentally; of discoveries made, of self or the whole wide world, great or small. Or, perhaps, of just getting by, just putting one foot in the front of the other two days in a row; of keeping one’s head above water under the impact of young life’s woes; of not sinking down further into the human sink; of smaller, pinched, very pinched, existential dreams but dreams nevertheless.

I will confess here, as this seemingly is a confessional age, or, maybe just as a vestige of that family history-rooted, hard-crusted, incense-driven, fatalistic Catholic upbringing long abandoned but etched in, no, embedded in, some far recesses of memory that my returning to the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 fold did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of months ago (December 2013) my mother, Arlene Margaret Webber (nee O’Brian), NAHS Class of 1943, passed away. For a good part of her life she lived in locations a mere stone's throw from the school. You could, for example, see the back of the school from my grandparents' house on Young Street. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to North Adamsville. To my, and her, roots. As part of that experience as I walked up John Hancock Street and down Jefferson I passed by the old high school. That triggered some memories, some dream street memories, which motivate today's question.

If my memory is correct, and I am not just dream-addled, I had not been in North Adamsville for at least the pass 25 years and so I was a little surprised to see that the main entrance steps of the high school, and central to the question posed here, were no longer there. You remember the steps, right? They led to the then second floor and were flanked by, I think, a couple of lions or some gargoyles. (I have since then, after viewing a copy of the 1964 Magnet, found out that they were actually flanked by a sphere and a column on each side. I was close though, right?) I can remember spending many a summer night during high school, along with my old pal from the class Sam Lowell, the legendary be-bop, “faux” beatnik king of the night sitting on those steps talking about our futures. Now for this question I am only using the steps as a metaphor, so to speak. You probably have your own 'steps' metaphor for where you thrashed out your dreams. How did they work out?

A lot of what Sam and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons, girls (although Sam, when the deal went down always had his ever-loving Joanne to keep him warm against the hard edges of the teen night), the desperate need to get away from the family trap, girls, no money in pockets for girls, cars, no money for cars, girls. (Remember, please, those were the days when future expectations, and anguishes, were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every runner does. Sam went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, giving myself much the best of it, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.

We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember the content of all of Sam’s but mine went something like this. I had dreams for social justice. For working people to get a fair shake in this sorry old world. That, my friends, has, sad to say, not turned out as expected. But enough from me. I will finish this entry with a line from a Bob Dylan lyric. "I'll let you be in my dream, if I can be in your dream". Fair enough?”