An Encore -Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Time Of Motorcycle Bill-Take Two

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

[My old friend, Sam Lowell, whom I have known since the summer of love days out in Frisco days in the late 1960s when we though all the world could be turned upside down and we were the hail fellows, well met who were going to help do it and all we got for our troubles was tear gas, cops' nightsticks and the bastinado for our efforts, oh yeah, and forty year blow-back from the night-takers, and who hails from Carver down in Massachusetts asked me to fill in a few more details about this relationship between Motorcycle Bill and Lily. He thought I was originally kind of skimpy on why a nice Catholic girl would go all to pieces over a motorcycle guy, would get on his bike like she was some low-rent tart from the wrong side of town the usual type that went for motorcycle guys in his book. Sam didn’t get the idea that when that cycle surge came along just like us with the heroic antics of the summer of love lots of ordinary teens went with the flow. So here is a little extra, a take two for Sam, and maybe for others who missed that big motorcycle moment.]      

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There was a scourge in the land, in the 1950s American land. No, not the one you are thinking of from your youth or from your history book, not the dreaded but fatalistically expected BIG ONE, the mega-bomb that would send old mother earth back to square one, or worst, maybe only the amoebas would survive to start the long train of civilization up the hill once again. Everybody expected that blow to come if it did come and we in America were not vigilant, did not keep our shoulders to the wheel and not ask questions from the nefarious Russkies (of course we that were just coming to age in the rock and roll night would not have had a clue as to what questions to ask if asking questions was acceptable then and it was not and we as young as were knew that it was not from parents to teachers to Grandpa Ike and his cabinet). We, if not vigilant, would take it in the back from a guy named Joe Stalin which one of our teachers said meant “steel” in Russian but it could have been from any Russian guy as we learned later after Stalin died and other atomic bomb-wielding guys took over in Red Square.

Sure that red scare Cold War was in the air and every school boy and girl had their giggling tales of having to hide, hide ass up, under some desk or other useless defense in air raid drill preparations for that eventually. I wasn’t any revolutionary or radical or “red” although one teacher looked at me kind of funny when I mentioned it but I couldn’t get behind the purpose of hiding under some old-timey elementary school wooden desk when every film I ever saw of what an atomic blast looked like said you might as well not have your ass sticking up in the air when Armageddon came. Like I said one teacher looked at me very funny. So sure the air stunk of red scare, military build-up cold war “your mommy is a commie turn her in" (and there were foolish kids who did try to use that ploy when dear mother said no to some perfectly reasonable request and junior thought to get even he would rat her out).

But the red scare, the Cold War ice tamp down on society to go along to get along was not the day to day scare for every self-respecting parent from Portsmouth to the Pacific. That fear was reserved for the deadly dreaded motorcycle scare that had every father telling his son to beware of falling under the Marlon Brando sway once they had seen the man complete with leather jacket, rakish cap and surly snarl playing Johnny Bad in The Wild One at the Strand Theater on Saturday afternoon and deciding contrary to the cautionary tale of the film that these Johnnies were losers spiraling down to a life, a low life of crime and debauchery (of course said son not knowing of the word, the meaning of debauchery, until much later) just shrugged his innocent shoulders.

More importantly, more in need of a five alarm warning, every mother, every blessed mother, self-respecting or not, secretly thinking maybe a toss in the hay with Marlon would bring some spice to her otherwise staid ranch house with breezeway existence warned off their daughters against this madness and perversity in leather. Warned those gleaming-eyed daughters also fresh from the Saturday afternoon matinee Stand Theater to not even think about hanging with such rascals contrary to the lesson that cute waitress in the film gave about blowing Johnny off as so much bad air. (Of course forgetting, as dad had with junior, to bring up the question of sex which is what Sissy had on her mind after one look at that cool attire of Johnny and her dream about how she could get that surly smirk off of his face.)     

Of course that did not stop the wayward sons of millworkers slated for work in the mills when their times came from mooning over every Harley cat that rode his ride down Main Street, Olde Saco (really U.S. Route One but everybody called it Main Street and it was) or the daughters slated for early motherhood under proper marriage or maybe sales clerks in the Monmouth Store from mooning (and maybe more) over the low- riders churning the metal on those bad ass machines when they went with their girlfriends over to Old Orchard Beach on sultry sweaty weekend nights in summer.

This is how bad things were, how the cool cats on the bikes sucked the air out of any other guys who were looking for, well, looking whatever they could get from the bevies of girls watching their every move like hawks. Even prime and proper Lily Dumont, the queen of Saint Brigitte’s Catholic Church rectitude on Sunday and wanna-be “mama” every other waking minute of late. Now this Lily was “hot” no question so hot that my best friend in high school Rene Dubois, the best looking guy around the Acre where we all lived and who already had two girlfriends (and later in life would have four, count them, four wives before he gave the marriage game up and just shacked up with whatever romantic interest he had at the moment), would go to eight o’clock Mass every Sunday and sit a couple of rows in back of her and just watch her ass. (I know because I was sitting beside him watching that same ass).

He never got anywhere with her, she knew about the two girlfriends since they were friends of hers, and neither did I. Lily was a classic French-Canadian beauty long thin legs, petite shape but with nice curves, long black hair and pop-out blue eyes. Nice but like I said but strictly the ice queen as far as we could tell. Especially when she would constantly talk about her friendship with Jesus and the need to say plenty of rosaries and attend many novenas to keep in touch with him.        

In this time of the motorcycle craze though something awoken in her, maybe just the realization that Jesus was okay but guys who thought she was hot maybe needed some tending too. In any case, and I didn’t find this out until several years later after Lily had left town, my sister who was one of Lily’s close friends then and Lily could confide girl talk to her during this motorcycle dust up Lily would find herself restless at night, late at night and contrary to all good Catholic teachings would put her hand in a place where she shouldn’t (this is the way my sister put it you know Lily was just playing  with herself a perfectly natural feeling for teenagers, and older people too) and she was embarrassed about it, didn’t know if she could go to confession and say what sin she committed to old Father Pierre. I don’t know if she ever did confess or things got resolved a different way and that idea was out of play but there you have it.     

And the object of her desire? One “Motorcycle Bill,” the baddest low- rider in all of Olde Saco. Now baddest in Olde Saco (that’s up in ocean edge Maine for the heathens and others not in the know) was not exactly baddest in the whole wide world, nowhere as near as bad as say Sonny Barger and his henchmen outlaws-for- real bikers out in Hell’s Angels Oakland as chronicled by Doctor Gonzo (before he was Gonzo), Hunter S. Thompson in his saga of murder and mayhem sociological- literary study Hell’s Angels. But as much is true in life one must accept the context. And the context here is that in sleepy dying mill town Olde Saco mere ownership, hell maybe mere desire for ownership, of a bike was prima facie evidence of badness. So every precious daughter was specifically warned away from Motorcycle Bill and his Vincent Black Lightning 1952 (although no mother, and maybe no daughter either, could probably tell the difference between that sleek English bike and a big pig Harley). But Madame Dumont felt no need to do so with her sweet sixteen Lily who, maybe, pretty please maybe was going to be one of god’s women, maybe enter the convent over in Cedars Of Lebanon Springs in a couple of years after she graduated from Olde Saco High along with her Class of 1960.

But that was before Motorcycle Bill appeared on the horizon. One afternoon after school walking home to Olde Saco’s French- Canadian (F-C) quarter, the Acre like I said where we all lived, all French-Canadians (on my mother’s side, nee LeBlanc for me) on Atlantic Avenue with classmate and best friend Clara Dubois (my sister was close to Lily but not as close as Clara since they had gone to elementary school together), Lily heard the thunder of Bill’s bike coming up behind them, stopping, Bill giving Lily a bow, and them revving the machine up and doing a couple of circle cuts within a hair’s breathe of the girls. Then just a suddenly he was off, and Lily, well, Lily was hooked, hooked on Motorcycle Bill, although she did not know it, know it for certain until that night in her room when she tossed and turned all night and did not ask god, or any of his associates, to guide her in the matter (the matter of that wayward hand for those who might have forgotten).

One thing about living in a sleepy old town, a sleepy old dying mill town, is that everybody knows everybody’s business at least as far as any person wants that information out on the public square. Two things are important before we go on. One is that everybody in town that counted which meant every junior and senior class high schooler in Olde Saco knew that Bill had made a “play” for Lily. And the buzz got its start from none other than Clara Dubois who had her own hankerings after the motorcycle man (her source of wonder though was more, well lets’ call it crass than Lily’s, Clara wanted to know if Bill was build, build with some sexual power, power like his motorcycle. She had innocently, perhaps, understood the Marlon mystique). The second was that Bill, other than his bike, was not a low life low- rider but just a guy who liked to ride the roads free and easy. See Bill was a freshman over at Bowdoin and he used the bike as much to get back and forth to school from his home in Scarborough as to do wheelies in front of impressionable teenage girls from the Acre.

One day, one afternoon, a few days after their Motorcycle Bill “introduction,” when Lily and Clara were over at Seal Rock at the far end of Olde Saco Beach Bill came up behind them sans his bike. (Not its real name but had been given the name Seal Rock because the place was the local lovers’ lane at night and many things had been sealed there including a fair share of “doing the do,” you know hard and serious sex. During the day it was just a good place to catch a sea breeze and look for interesting clam shells which washed up in the swirling surf there.) Now not on his bike, without a helmet, and carrying books, books of all things, he looked like any student except maybe a little bolder and a little less reserved.

He started talking to Lily and something in his demeanor attracted her to him. (Clara swore, swore on seven bibles, that Lily was kind of stand-offish at first but Lily said no, said she was just blushing  a lot.) They talked for a while and then Bill asked Lily if she wanted a ride home. She hemmed and hawed but there was just something about him that spoke of mystery (who knows what Clara thought about what Lily thought about that idea). She agreed and they walked a couple of blocks to where he was parked. And there Lily saw that Vincent Black Lightning 1952 of her dreams. Without a word, without anything done by her except to tie her hair back and unbutton a couple of buttons from her starched white shirt she climbed on the back of the bike at Bill’s beckon. And that is how one Lily Dumont became William Kelly’s motorcycle “mama” when the high tide of the motorcycle as sex symbol hit our town.