On The Occasion Of The Centennial Of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Birthday-Frank Jackman’s Journey-Take Two  

By Political Commentator Frank Jackman

[Recently in what I had assumed would be a one-time short reminiscence on the centennial of John Fitzgerald Kennedys’ birth here in Massachusetts about the effect that the election of the first Irish Catholic President back in 1960 had on the bedraggled psyches of a bunch of Irish Catholic working class (hell working poor and lower if the truth be known) kids, corner boys, whom I hung around with and came of age with in that Camelot time. Apparently in this age of instant social media feedback and quick communications my simple plan has now turned into yet another screed.

The reason? These days there can only be one reason in my universe. One Francis Xavier Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys of our times back in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the Acre section of North Adamsville. Once again like in the old days Frankie has seen to it that I, or anybody else who might venture some idea not cooked up by and authorized by him, that proper homage be paid to the Scribe, to the late fallen comrade Peter Paul Markin, who was our “intellectual” leader. Funny when Frankie was running the show back then he treated the Scribe like a dog-except on those occasions when he wanted the Scribe to write something up about him, to be his “flak.” That was how Makin got his moniker in the first place after he had in order to ingratiate himself with Frankie when he came from across town to live in the Acre  written some bullshit about how Frankie was the “second coming,” something like for the school newspaper and everybody bowed down to Frankie thereafter.                   

Now the bone that Frankie had to pick with me was that in that rather simple remembrance about Jack Kennedy’s hold on us, one of our own running the whole show, I didn’t emphasize enough how Markin, how the Scribe got us off our collective girl hunger asses and out on the stump for Jack around town. Didn’t speak enough of the Scribe’s “vision” that a new day was coming, a “new breeze across the land” as Markin called it which drove a lot of his thoughts then and for several years after before the ebb tide blew him away. Funny again that if I recall correctly Frankie could not have given a rat’s ass about all of that at the time. All he cared about was “doing the do” with Minnie Murphy. But Frankie was not the acknowledged leader of the Acre corner boys of our time for nothing because he was able to twist my tail about how Markin had given us all a grand purpose and why soil his potter’s grave down in dreaded Sonora, Mexico when a few kind words would be as welcome as the morning breeze. So I had to re-write the whole freaking thing over. Jesus, Mary and Joseph why did I ever start this small JFK tribute in the first place. Below is the revised, final sketch. Scribe wherever you are I hope you are satisfied with my few words. I am sure Frankie won’t be. Frank Jackman]          

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Sure now, today, as anybody who is familiar with the American Left History on-line site and The Progressive Journal print site that I write for these days knows, or should be expected to know, I along with many of my political kindred have long raked many of the policies and projects that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States 1961-1963, initiated over the coals. Most notable of those  nefarious exploits for those of us who were inspired, maybe inflamed is a better word once we were actual witnesses on television as the rebels entered Havana by the exploits of the revolutionaries (without being revolutionaries ourselves but proper liberals and social democrats) in Cuba who overthrew the Batista regime was the fumbled Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of 1961 which was our first point of serious differences with a generally positive attitude toward Camelot. 

More troublesome was the deep state escalation of American involvement in Vietnam which led to the slippery slope that tore this society asunder as we can as near to a cold civil war as we had in this country until very recently. (Of course in the “revisionist” histories since JFK has come off as something of a pacifist who would have hightailed it out of Vietnam the minute things got out of hand and let the commies overrun the land. This from a guy deeply enamored of counter-guerilla warfare, in love with Special Forces and of manliness in person and politics). There were other generic differences that came to the fore later when we were seeking, desperately seeking, for what gangster saint brother Robert Kennedy called, “stealing” a page from Alfred Lord Tennyson, “ a newer world.” Looking for more socialist-oriented solutions to what ailed society.        

All that however was later. Today I want to speak of the promise that the election of JFK meant to a bunch of Irish Catholic corner boys from the poverty-stricken Acre section of North Adamsville back in the fall of 1960 when we felt that first fresh breeze coming over the land from the icy depths of the red scare Cold War night that we had come of political age in. That “fresh breeze,” as I have noted many, many times elsewhere an expression that fellow corner boy and our house “intellectual” the late Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe, (the actual Markin, not the moderator of the ALH blog site who uses that moniker in honor of our fallen brother long departed) would endlessly bore us with in those days when all we gave a rat’s ass about (also an expression I have used many, many times concerning our reaction to Markin’s “fresh breeze” statement) was girls, getting dough to deal with girls and cars, “boss” cars not necessarily in that order. (To be fair to Markin he was the king hell king of the midnight creep when we needed dough at the times when his seamier side got ahead of the “better angel of his nature”). 

None of us, me, Jack Callahan, the legendary football player who for some reason liked hanging with the bad boys when he was not being forlornly chased by defensive players or girls after Chrissie McNamara made her feelings known to him, Frankie Riley, our esteemed corner boy leader and a genius organizer, Phil Larkin, Jimmy Murphy, Ralph Kiley, Ricky Russo, Allan Stein, the corner boys although the latter two were not full Irish, but only half Irish got as carried away with Markin’s fresh breeze coming  as he did. Back then when before he “taught” us what it was like to on the cutting edge of the new day we could have, ignorantly to be sure, could have given a rat’s ass about breezes or elections. The routine, the bare necessity routine was girls, cars, and dough and how to get all three or any combination thereof. Markin would continue to spout forth on that subject for another half decade before it did come in the form of the many threads that led up to the Summer of Love, San Francisco, 1967 which Alex James and others have written about in this the 50^th anniversary year of that “youth nation” explosion.  By then though we had all been “converted” to the wisdom of Markin’s ideas after he came back to fetch us in the late summer of 1967. 

But long before that breeze came to fruition Markin made us thrill beyond words to be able to say “one of own,” an Irish Catholic had done what Al Smith could not do a few decades before and get elected president in a low-slung Protestant-controlled country. (My grandfather never got over the dirty campaign waged by the “refined” WASPs, the Brahmins, you know the people with the three-name monikers like Wesley Stuart Gardner, names like that who used every Papal Plot lie in the book to down the beleaguered Smith against the heathen Hebert Hoover of Hooverville fame.) Markin made us see that it did not matter that JFK was the scion of “chandelier” Irish unlike our own “shanty” Irish digs. He was ours in all its glory.            

Markin, like in many other such endeavors was the bell-weather for our take on JFK. For getting enthusiastic about the guy, about getting out the vote in our town for our man. I have mentioned above (in the brackets) my belief that even Frankie Riley our leader could have given a rat’s ass about the elections until Markin pulled the plug of our indifference. But once Markin convinced him that the election was important then Frankie got all worked about it. Got things organized. The Scribe was not the guy who would organize the stuff though. Jesus no. He could not organize himself out of a paper bag much less run a political campaign in a large neighborhood. The one time the Scribe did try to organize one of our midnight creeps to get dough when Frankie was out of town was almost a disaster. His plan was great (in fact Frankie would later execute it to perfection) but he “forgot” you needed a few look-outs for the cops when pulling a midnight creep and we almost wound up with a show-down with the cops who were cruising the neighborhood at that hour. So once the Scribe won Frankie over he organized the whole caper.

(By the way many local Acre urban legends have grown up around how the Scribe got his moniker. Here’s the skinny. When he came across town in junior high school to live in the Acre with his family, his mother had grown up in the Acre, he latched onto Frankie the first day somehow. To seal the deal though he wrote something for the school newspaper about a speech that Frankie had given about President Eisenhower in some assembly after he beat Adlai Stevenson the second time. Everybody, teachers especially, agreed that the Scribe’s article was A-one. When I read the article I thought it sounded like Frankie, thieving, scheming, conniving Frankie Riley, had just given the Gettysburg Address or something. Here’s the real reason that Markin got the moniker from that time forward from Frankie (all the way to San Francisco, 1967 when he subsequently “became” the Be-Bop Kid). Markin had written the whole thing. Had written the speech and written the write-up. Pure Frankie conniving).            

Frankie won’t like this but that election of 1960 was also a prime example of the contradictions that would a little over decade later do Markin in and which for many of the rest of us was a close thing between freedom and a dark dungeon. See Markin among his million other thoughts like the fresh breeze and the like was all hopped up about getting rid of nuclear weapons, was all hopped up for the United States to get rid of them unilaterally if necessary. The rest of us, especially Frankie Riley, our esteemed acknowledged leader, thought he was crazy, crazy with the Russian armed to the teeth with similar such weapons. Frankie almost hit the Scribe in Civics class from what I heard when he tried to present the idea in a class discussion. Don’t forget though that we were still seriously hung up on the Cold War stuff we read about and were taught was the real deal in school.

One thing about Markin though was he put his money where his mouth was most of the time. He had heard about a rally, stand-out, vigil or something in Boston, at the Boston Common near the Park Street subway station against nuclear weapons in October of 1960 a few weeks before the election sponsored by a group called SANE, Doctor Spock’s group, some Quakers and other odd-balls. He was determined to go although he expressed some fears that he might be harmed by pro-nuclear weapons people who would see red over the issue. But he did go saying later to us that he had found some kindred spirits who were not afraid unlike a fearful fourteen year old boy and that got him through.

(This is not the place to digress too much about side stuff but Markin’s fear was the subject of a bet between him and Frankie Riley that he would not go. Markin was very proud of winning that bet and would bring it up periodically long after we could have given a rat’s ass about the wager since we were always betting on almost any propositions that struck our fancies. The most infamous bet, a rigged job by Frankie, was when he needed “date” money in high school and he bet the Scribe on how high Tonio at the pizza place we hung out at would fling the pizza after having worked it out with Tonio to fling low. Markin never knew what hit him except he was out about six dollars and Frankie was out with Minnie Murphy doing whatever that night.)

Here’s where the Markin contradiction came in, maybe the human condition contradiction when all is said and done after my own fifty plus years of having gone through my own sets of contradictions. During the television debates between JFK and his Republican opponent, then Vice President Nixon who was later a president in his own right and a common criminal as well Kennedy made a great deal out of some supposed “missile gap” between the United States and Russia that had developed under the Eisenhower-Nixon regime. To our disadvantage. That “gap” was among others things in the number and effectiveness of the American nuclear arsenal. Kennedy’s solution: build more and better such weapons. Totally against what the Scribe had tried do in Boston. Nevertheless the very next weekend after that Boston anti-nuclear weapons rally Markin rounded us up to go up to the North Adamsville Kennedy for President headquarters located in a small shed-like building on the property of the Knights of Columbus and grab a bunch of leaflets to go door to door putting them in mail slots. Of course before the Scribe could take step one Frankie intervened and told the guys to go to the supermarkets, the post office, a couple of banks opened on Saturday in those days before ATMs, the bowling alley and the football fields. That is where they could hand out eye to eye with the receivers their materials. Frankie laughed at Markin and his hokey idea of stuffing leaflets in mail boxes.       

Such were the ups and downs of having “one of our own” getting elected to the White House in sunnier days. And one of our own hipping us to the idea.              

Is this good enough, Frankie?