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Sunday, July 29, 2018

An Adieu (Until The 60th Anniversary) To The Summer Of Love, 1967    Under The Sign Of The Times When Women Played Rock And Roll For Keeps- The Music Of Bonnie Raitt



By Zack James

[The world of on-line editors and named bloggers is actually rather small when you consider what expansive infinite cyberspace can allow the average ingenious citizen to do. Or collective of citizens in this case, collective of people who in a previous age, maybe twenty years ago would be found writing for hard-copy publications like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and especially American Film Gazette and the Folk Music Review, the latter which actually covered more than folk music in its time, but its name reflected where it had come from. Now they are writing for on-line publications like this one and the on-line American Film Gazette which like a lot of hard copy operations had fallen on revenue hard times and to keep going had to flow with the times and go on-line. What this new technology has allowed me to do which otherwise would have been a good idea thrown in the office waste paper basket by any shrewd hard copy editor is to do a series highlighting some of the conversations between long-time music critic Seth Garth and some of his growing up in North Adamsville (that is in Massachusetts south of Boston) friends as he/they discuss various older CDs which reflect a certain period in their then young lives growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
An important component of the series of sketches is based on information that Seth has provided me has come under the sign of the Summer of Love, 1967 out on the West Coast, especially in the San Francisco and Bay area. Two periods stand out in these conversations as far as the effect of musical trends among guys who came up in the Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville and saw some relief from their “from hunger” lives as Si Lannon, one of the corner boys put it. When hitting their teenage years the explosion best explained by the rise of rock and roll on their radios, and later at school and church dances, when the authorities, school and church, tried to put a cap on their energy and keep them away from hard sexual fantasies unleashed by the new dispensation. Above all the names of the king of kings, Elvis, mad hatter Chuck Berry, wild and wooly Jerry Lee Lewis stand out. The other, which is reflected in the title of this piece, is a second wave of rock and roll, slightly different after the first stage had been exhausted and had been replaced by what Seth called “bubble gum’ music very much connected with the 1967 Summer of Love which hit Seth and his crew like a lightning bolt. Hit so hard that through one means or another, one person or another, one personal intervention or another that it drove the crowd out to the West to “see what was going on.”  A million other kids, mostly high school and college kids, from places like Lima, Ohio, Bath Maine, Boise, Idaho and of course Peoria, Illinois broke loose for a while and did the same thing, looked for something new in “drug, sex, rock and roll” and whatever else anybody could come up with to stem the flush of youth nation alienation and angst. So guys like the Scribe, Seth, Si, Frank Jackman, and my oldest brother, Alex, rode the wave, went out to “edge city” (Alex’s expression picked up from somewhere), went “walking with the king” (an expression culled from Doctor Gonzo the late Hunter S. Thompson) and mostly lived to tell the tale. Their later Vietnam War experiences and returns to the “real world” would not be so gentle.       
      
I am a bit too young by about a decade to have had anything but a nodding acquaintance with the Summer of Love experience. That era’s music did not form the basis for my musical interests although I heard it around the house from older siblings but rather the music of the 1970s which when I get a little bored with book reviews or general cultural pieces I write about for various publications including this one I write some music reviews. Knowing that let me take a step back so that you will understand why I made that statement about the review world is really a small place.
As I said earlier I was a little too young to appreciate the music of the Summer of Love first- hand but my eldest brother Alex was not. Had in fact gone out to the West Coast from our growing up neighborhood the Acre section of North Adamsville that summer along with a bunch of other guys that he had hung around with since highs school. He wound up staying in that area, delving into every imaginable cultural experience from drugs to sex to music, for a couple of years before heading back to his big career expectations-the law, being a lawyer. The original idea to head west that summer was not his but that of his closest friend, the late Peter Paul Markin forever known in town and by me as the Scribe (how he got that is a long story and not germane to the Seth sage). The Scribe had dropped out of college in Boston earlier in 1967 when he sensed that what Alex said he had been yakking about weekly for years that a “new breeze,” his, the Scribe’s term, was going to take youth nation (and maybe the whole nation) by a storm and headed west. A couple of months later he came back and dragged Alex and about six others back west with him. And the rest is history.            
I mean that “rest is history” part literally since earlier this year (2017) Alex, now for many years a big high-priced lawyer after sowing his wild oats and get “smartened up” as he called it once the bloom of the counter-culture they were trying to create faded had gone to a business conference out in San Francisco and while there had seen on a passing bus an advertisement for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. He flipped out, maybe some latent recoil from those long- ago drugs and spend one “hooky” afternoon mesmerized by the exhibit of poster art, hippie clothing, photographs and music. That was not all though. When he got back to Boston he contacted all the old neighborhood guys still standing who had gone out there in 1967 to put a small memoir book together. One night they all agreed to do the project, do the project in honor of the late Scribe who had pushed them out there in some cases kicking and screaming (not Alex at the time). That is when Alex, knowing that I have had plenty of experience doing such projects contacted me to edit and get the thing published. Which I did without too much trouble.   
The publication and distribution of that book while not extensive got around to plenty of people who were involved in the Summer of Love, or who knew the Scribe. And that is where Seth Garth comes in. While he was not an integral part of the Summer of Love experience, having stayed out there only through the summer, he did drift out west after college to break with his Riverdale growing up home in the early 1970s. As a writer he looked for work among the various alternative presses out there and wound up working first as a free-lancer and then as staff as a music critic for the now long defunct The Eye which operated out of Oakland then. Guess who also was working as a free-lancer there as well after he got out of the Army. Yes, the Scribe who was doing a series of articles on guys like him who had come back from Vietnam and couldn’t relate to the “real world” and had established what amounted to alternative communities along the railroad tracks and under the bridges of Southern California. So yeah it is a small world in the writing for money racket. Here is what Seth has to say right now. Zack James]    
A lot of the musical switch-over from what is now termed classic rock and the later, let’s for convenience sake, call it acid rock although that is too narrow a term for what really went on was a shift in the role of women in the latter scene, as lead singers and as instrumentalists in their own right. In the earlier period women’s rock, girl music as it was called then centered on doo wop, do lang harmony of small groups of three or four women, many black but certainly not exclusively so. Somebody from mystical Tin Pan Alley would write the music and lyrics and the doo wop would flow. Mostly girl/teen anguish/alienation and boy trouble stuff. Great now in re-hearing according to Seth and the guys but then iffy. The point Seth made was that latter gals like Alcie Frye, Grace Slick, Harley Devine, Janis Joplin, and many others broke into the hard male world of rock and roll on their own terms-mainly. Led groups, featured, played instruments and made it safer for women to crack that crazy doped-up world.         

The subject of this piece, Bonny Raitt, fit that same mold even if she did not lead any famous bands like Jefferson Airplane or Big Brother and the Holding Company. She honed her craft, learned to play slide guitar under the tutelage of one Mississippi Fred McDowell the max daddy    
of country blues where it counted down in the Jim Crow Delta country. Learned how to keep the crowd interested, how to go through her paces, hang onto the quest for the high white note every musician dreams big dreams at night about. Seth had met her at Jack’s over in Cambridge just after he had gotten back from San Francisco and saw what potential she had, saw how she could work like seven dervishes just like the guys. Sat and watched her, sat and drank hard whiskies with her and saw the rising star up close and personal. A little later he would be backstage on the Boston Common, the year 1968, when she broke through in a concert series the City of Boston was running to keep a lid, or try to keep a lid on, the new age of rock and roll which they totally could not comprehend having stopped their rock around Elvis before the Army time. What more needs to be said fifty years later she still rocks.

(By the way as is the way with these old time North Adamsville corner boys including my brother they still like to tout the “big score,” the sexual conquest really related to this or that event. In the case of the Bonnie Raitt concert he was able to bring his new girlfriend of the time backstage with him and she was so thrilled that later that night she let him have his way with her, no sweat. Whether that was true or not since most corner boys lied like crazy about sexual conquests I don’t know but I am passing this on as information from Seth)      



Saturday, July 28, 2018

The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Paulette Goddard’s “The Unholy Four” (1954)



DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

The Unholy Four, starring Paulette Goddard, Hammer Productions, 1954 (released in England as A Stranger Came Home)

In my long career in the film reviewing racket, a cutthroat where you are only as good as your last review and the vulture competing reviewers are ready with the long knives if you fall down profession. If you will though which is overall pretty subjective one, filled with personal predilections and snarls when you think about it, I have run up against all kind of readerships and readers but my recent escapade with one reader takes the cake as they used to say in the old days. As the headline above indicates I have been doing a serious of reviews of B-grade film noirs by the English Hammer Production Company from the early 1950s. A B-grade film noir is one that is rather thin on plotline and maybe film quality usually made on the cheap although some of the classics with B-film noir queen Gloria Grahame have withstood the test of time despite that quality. I have  contrasted those with the classics like The Maltese Falcon, Out Of The Past, The Big Sleep, and The Last Man Standing to give the knowledgeable reader an idea of the different. In the current series the well-known Hollywood producer Robert Lippert contracted with Hammer for a series of ten films which would star let’s say a well-known if faded Hollywood star like Dane Clark or Richard Conte as a draw and a cheap purchase English supporting cast with a thin storyline.    

I had done a bunch of these reviews (minus a couple which I refused to review since they were so thin I couldn’t justify the time and effort to even give the “skinny” on them) using a kind of standard format discussing the difference between the classics and Bs in some detail and then as has been my wont throughout my career giving a short summary of the film’s storyline and maybe a couple of off-hand comments so that the readership has something to hang its hat on when choosing to see, or not see, the film. All well and good until about my fifth review when a reader wrote in complaining about my use of that standard form to introduce each film. Moreover, and this is the heart of the issue, she mentioned that perhaps I was getting paid per word, a “penny a word” in her own words and so was padding my reviews with plenty that didn’t directly relate to the specific film I was reviewing. Of course other than to cut me to the quick “penny a word” went out with the dime store novel and I had a chuckle over that expression since I have had various contracts for work over the years but not that one.

The long and short of it was that the next review was a stripped- down version of the previous reviews which I assumed would satisfy her complaint. Not so. Using the name Nora Charles, the well-known distaff side of the Dashiell Hammett-inspired film series The Thin Man from the 1930s and early 1940s starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, she still taunted me with that odious expression of hers. (By the way one of the pitfalls of citizen journalism, citizen commentary on-line is that one can use whatever moniker one wants to say the most unsavory things and not flame any blow-back).

Here is the “skinny” in any case and let dear sweet Nora suffer through another review-if she dares. Four guys go fishing, fair enough, but only three came back. The missing one, Phillip, the husband of lure the audience in Paulette Goddard (on the downslope of her career with this nondescript effort), playing Angie the non-grieving wife. No foul play suspected, none that is until about four years later and probably a dozen unacknowledged Angie affairs later Phillip inconveniently shows up, claimed amnesia and maybe he did have it stranger things have occurred. Although being bopped on the head, drugged and left to die are rough things to have happen among friends. Those inconveniences Phillip showed up for were the murder of one of the boys and somebody who was unhappy since they were making a play, a gold-digger play for Angie. Angie playing on her best behavior helps Phillip out while keeping her options open in case her hubby takes the fall, takes the big step-off. Maybe Phillip should have picked better fishing partners or taken up golf because before he is done one of those good old boys, one of John Bull’s finest will actually be taking that big ste-off. Oh, well, enough Nora, right.                  


As The 100th Anniversary Of Armistice Day Approaches A Look At The Ottoman Empire (Which Did Not Survive The War)-“The Ottoman Lieutenant” (2017)-A Film Review-Of Sorts




DVD Review
By Laura Perkins
The Ottoman Lieutenant, starring Hera Hilmar, Micheil Huisman, Josh Garnett, 2017  
I asked to be assigned this review of The Ottoman Lieutenant from Greg Green the site manager who these days hands out the assignments according to his lights. I was somewhat surprised when Greg e-mailed that he had granted my request  and that he would sent the DVD ASAP (as soon as possible, which is used a lot around the office coming not from “Internet speak” but a term they learned in the military which really meant you would want you ass off for an eternity) since I had expected fellow reviewer Leslie Dumont to grab the brass ring. She has known Greg for a long time through her film review work at Women Today when he was at American Film Gazette. I had assumed like my reason for wanting to do the assignment that she wanted to comment on the increase in strong women roles among the younger set of female Hollywood actors.
I will get to that in a minute but please be aware that I did not create the title for the piece but it was written by Greg who wanted to use the opportunity of a film about World War I to push the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day that he has had Seth Garth, Sam Lowell, and Si Lannon, all veterans, writing articles on about the significance of that designation. Frankly, when Greg e-mailed me his idea for a title I did not know what he was talking about, did not know that what the guys are trying to do beside commemorate what they, and history, snidely call “the war to end all wars” is return to the originate intent of the day, November 11, 1918 which was to observe the Armistice negotiated for that day. Somewhere along the line, Sam, who in the seemingly current need to mention in the interest of transparency has been my long-time partner, gave me the date of the switchover in America to Veterans Day when who knows who hijacked the significance of the day but I have forgotten it. While the armistice plays no part in this film since it concentrate on the first year or so of the war I am proud to add my two cents worth to return it to its original commemoration as a day of peace and thanksgiving that the war was over.        
As I noted above I took this assignment when I heard from Greta Smythe at The Film Digest that the lead female role, the role of Lillie an American nurse played by Hera Hilmar, was to highlight a strong, independent, thoughtful woman, which fed into my recent feelings that there has been a shift in the roles younger woman actors are asked to play. Sadly, that does not apply in general to older woman roles. Sam, remember long-time companion Sam, and I discussed this issue after we had seen the film together. Sam, a well-known expert in the film review profession for writing the definitive tome on classic film noir, noted that strong roles for women in those times usually meant they were femme fatales, ready to trap any man who crossed their paths, or shrews, butts of male jokes or some other way to reduce the impact of their performances.  I had to laugh at a few of the observations Sam made about particular female actors in the past, but his point was well-taken as we both agreed unfortunately.
The current review is a good example of what a young woman can portray these days and not be tagged with the above pigeonholes. To the contrary Lillie is a well-brought up, well-mannered fashionable member of the Philadelphia Main Line who has a plan, a mission in life after hearing a lecture about a hospital in nowhere Anatolia, then part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire which was servicing those most desperately in need of medical care out in the rugged mountains. Serving Turks, the mainstay of the empire, and locals, meaning Armenians, their generally hated enemies alike. She came on board bringing with her a very useful car and a load of medical supplies as she left the comforts of the Main Line and headed out to do her share in the wide world. Had, additionally, previously trained as a nurse, which made her valuable if in some danger as the war clouds hovers over the world. She gets there after a few off-hand adventures escorted in-country by the young Ottoman lieutenant of the title, Lt. Veli, a Moslem which matters in the film, played by Micheil Huisman. During the length of the movie Lille more than hold her own assisting a resident doctor, Jude, played by Josh Harnett, tending to the wounded, getting the doctor-founder of the hospital, a laudanum junkie well, and a thousand other things as the Turks, now allied with the Germans ready to face the dreaded Russians. Lillie is somebody who has your back and you don’t have to worry about it a trait much appreciated among men-and women these days. 
         Now for the other part, the love interest part, which drives much of the movie once we agree that Lillie is a strong independent woman. There is no contradiction between Lillie being a strongwoman and having an affair, having as many as she would want if it came to that. The problem is that the love interest parts are rather pedestrian and predictable. For starters that doctor whose work she so admired, Jude, figured to have Lillie as his wife once he entered the picture again when she showed up at his door and they do go on in that direction for a while. But what had Lillie all aflutter was that Ottoman lieutenant who swept her away during their journey to the hospital since he acted as military escort to insure her safety. Jude was bitterly jealous but is left by the wayside as she picks a soldier over a doctor, a Muslim over a Christian, and the knowledge that whatever happens she made her choice despite the odds of anything working out in the mix of those stumbling blocks and the impeding war. And they don’t. The dashing heroic lieutenant got wounded trying to save what were not identified but were a small group of Armenians heading to their deaths by hateful Turkish soldiers during what is not officially acknowledged in the film as the Armenian genocide during 1915. Despite that death she continues on at the hospital. Yes, a strong woman indeed.       
   [Postscript: Sam, dear Sam, who watched the film with me and mentioned at the time during the scene of the Turkish soldiers executing what would if left undisturbed every Armenian in the area that represented the unacknowledged Armenian genocide of 1915, was furious at me for not castigating the film-makers for not making a clear stand on what was happening in that scene since to this day the Turkish governments, avidly and persistently deny the events occurred-and attack those who do believe that the events occurred inside and outside Turkey. I, again frankly as with the Armistice Day significance did not know, or knew only vaguely, about the genocide. That said on the question which has to be drawn from that which is whether to recommend anybody to see the film I have to concede that I have to say no and respect the boycott initiated by an Armenian youth organization.
Look I only grabbed this film to look at the strong female lead and that really is all I can vouch for. And do. Having been burned twice I will shortly, Greg Green willing, do another review featuring a strong female role-and avoid the thickets of the dual controversies here.]   

   

Friday, July 27, 2018

“The Set-Up”-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind
By Zack James
Alexander Slater had always been ever since he was a kid, maybe ten or eleven if not before, a big fan of hard-boiled detective novels and films based on those novels by guys like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Rich O’Connor, Sid Stein, and Lanny Drew. Had spent many a Riverdale hometown Saturday afternoon in the late 1950s in the faded run-down, gum-strewn on the floor, cobwebs in the balcony seats, toilet in the men’s room a relic of plumbing around the time of the original Cranes who made their fortunes providing such hard-wear to the growing population in need of indoor plumbing and whose castle overlooked Crane’s Beach up north of Riverdale about seventy-five miles away, old-fashioned popcorn cooker which always, always provided burnt kernels at the bottom of the box Majestic Theater on Mooney Street just off of the downtown shopping area watching re-runs  of the classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Lady In The Lake, The whole Thin Man series, The Last Kiss, Girl Hunt, and The Lost Ones. That downtown area also beginning to fade as the stores, Doc’s Drugstore, the 5&10, Morley’s Clothing store, Sam’s Furniture store and the like that used to cater to the town’s needs moved out to the strip malls or all-purpose malls out on Route One a few miles from downtown.
Of course as a kid all Alexander cared about, along with his regular crew of Saturday matinee double-feature companions, Skip James, Jack Callahan, Johnny Rizzo, Five-Fingers Murphy, Frank Riley and sometimes before his family moved out of town so his father could take a job in the emerging computer industry at Honeywell about forty miles away along Route 128, was that they had enough money to cover the admission (trying as boys universally would then, probably still do, to get the under twelve reduced admission price long after they had entered their teens), were being “grounded” for some silly home or school infraction , and, maybe, just maybe, that for once the popcorn although always with burnt offerings was not stale. So Alexander had through the marvels of cinematic technology and the printed page been able to form a very distinct idea about what a private detective should be like, what he looked like and how he handled himself in the rough spots.       
That ideal was probably epitomized by Sam Slade in The Maltese Falcon on the screen (the 1940s one that made Humphrey Bogart, Bogie, famous not the two earlier ones which he had never seen until a few years ago via Netflix he had ordered the pair online and was seriously disappointed in those efforts, as was his wife Mary who while not nearly as much a fan of the private detective did love the Bogie version of the Falcon) and in some short stories done by Hammett by scrambling through a few libraries and second-hand bookstores looking for compilations. In a word a guy and it was always guys then still were a lot now although he had read a few interesting female detective stories, working class guys, tough, tough enough to by sheer will and pluck to outsmart his well-organized criminal opponents, hard-boiled no question, no sap for anybody even women which every guys knows is easy enough to become when the skirts going swishing by, with a code, a beautiful code of honor that he follows as best he can, maybe not to the letter but as best he can in the spirit, hard-drinking which somehow focused the senses whenever the bottle in the lower desk draw came out, and a rough and ready sense of justice, of tilting after windmills for the good of the cause.
And there that image stayed for a fairly long time until Alexander went out into the world of work after high school. He had taken shop classes in school, printing shop and so immediately after high school he had taken a full-time job with Mister Calder, the best commercial printer in town, whom he worked for after school and on weekends in high school. In due course after a few years in the dreaded Army in Vietnam which took a certain toll on him when he came back to the “real” world, a few years “finding himself” through dope, rock and roll, and following the hitchhike road that many guys of his generation took for a while when Mister Calder retired he took over the shop located in the first floor of the Tappan Building on Lancaster Street right off of downtown (in the opposite direction from the now long gone old Majestic if you were familiar with Riverdale back in the 1970s or earlier).   
At one time, back in the 1940s, early 1950s, the eight story Tappan Building was what they would call today the anchor of the downtown business section. Was the pride of Riverdale what with prosperous small law firms, a few doctors’ offices when doctors had their own private practices more, a couple of dentists, a few reputable insurance companies, nothing big, no Fortune 500 firms but substantial, solid professional. As those firms and professionals drifted out to the strip malls or were eaten up by larger firms elsewhere the once glorious Tappan Building began a long decline into “seen better days.” The owners kind of gave up on the place, not keeping it up with leaking faucets in the restrooms, un-waxed public area floors, unreliable elevators, and the sanctified smell of decay that follows such downward spiraling enterprises. Alexander had taken over for Mister Calder well into the decline of the building but since the leasing arrangements with the owners provided for cheap terms and the fact that his printing business was not one in need of a “good front” he never felt the need to move, probably a wise move once the high-tech moguls made self-printing for most occasions a worthwhile effort.
Alexander thus observed the decline of the Tappan Building first-hand as the type of businesses switched from prosperous professionals to shady characters. A couple of “repo” men, a few failed dentists whom you would not want within fifty feet of your mouth, maybe farther away, a couple of chiropractors, some no-name insurance firms, a notary public, a least a few guys who were running some kinds of scams out of their offices, and a detective agency. Fred Sims’ Detective Agency although all the years that he knew Fred he was the sole detective.      
Fred had been in the building since the mid-1960s but between Alexander’s military service and his wanderlust he did not meet Fred until he took over for Mister Calder. Once they met, met in Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan, a place that is still there although Dolly’s granddaughter runs the place now and has changed it from a smoked-filled ham and eggs, coffee and crullers place to more healthful food and clean atmosphere for those who own the condos that had been created as a result of converting many of the old buildings, schools and churches in the area, they hit it off from the beginning although Fred was a good decade older than Alexander.
Fred, let’s be clear, was not, hear this, was not, and probably never would be Alexander image of a private detective build up from childhood (although in fairness to Fred he was the very first P.I. he had run into in person). Short, bald, with unkempt side hairs sticking out of the baseball cap that he wore indoors and out, and almost never took off, an old Robert Hall’s, if you remember that name in men’s clothing from another age, shaggy sport’s jacket, one of three he owned and alternated, threadbare socks, turned at the heel shoes, black, and many days, many no client days, a fair amount of stubble on his face. His office on the fifth floor reflected that persona, no real “front.”  A hand-printed cardboard sign advertising his name and business on the front door, a small waiting room (which made Alexander laugh for all the years that he knew Fred he never saw anybody in that room), dust in the corners, a well beyond its prime coatrack of uncertain steadiness, a couple of mismatched chairs, a small end table with magazines describing the first Apollo landing in 1969, an office area with a snarled desk, unmatched chair, and a few, too few file cabinets if Fred was prosperous which he was not. Later when they were easier to figure out he did purchase a computer but otherwise over the years the place had, and would continue to have, that beleaguered downward spiral look.    
Alexander one time early on remarked, no, made the mistake and remarked, that Fred was no Bogie while they were sitting at the counter of Dolly’s having their coffee and. Apparently this kind of remark was Fred’s pet peeve because he commenced to rail against the popular notion of what a private detective looks like, what his office looks like, and the real cases that he handles. They are not the murder cases of cinematic and book renown, the public cops, detectives handle that, well or poorly, but in some then twenty years in the business he had never seen any private detective brought in to solve a murder and only once had heard that a very rich guy who had the dough to do so and was frustrated with the public coppers and their inability to solve the kidnapping/murder of his young daughter actually had a private detective savvy enough to solve the crime, after two years on the trail.                   
 No the real work was bullshit stuff. Some barber from Gloversville whose wife ran off with a salesman and he wanted her back her, fast, maybe three days, and not too many expenses. Some “repo” work the average repo guys wouldn’t handle or wouldn’t be allowed by the insurance companies to handle. Back in the day a few Peeping Tom snooping around motels cases looking for adultery when the grounds for a civil divorce were harder to find. A lost dog or other pet once in a while if somebody was attached to the animal, although they usually found their ways home on their own or were never seen again. Looking for long lost relatives, usually fruitless since those relatives wanted to be lost from view. Maybe checking out a scam or two, flimflam stuff. Definitely not looking for lost falcons filled with riches and history with dead bodies and greedy people hovering around. Definitely not taking on some high-powered criminal gang when an old general with wild daughters one of whose husband is missing. Definitely not being employed by some man-mountain to find his long lost and wants to stay lost Velma. Definitely not trying to find some eccentric rich inventor guy whose thin shadow had disappeared in the mist and somebody liked that idea.                                 
 So that day Alexander got his comeuppance, got a first-hand real- world view of what private investigation was all about. Thereafter Fred, when the met for their coffee and at Dolly’s or sometimes when Alexander after work would go up to Fred’s office for a shot of whiskey from that bottle he kept in the bottom drawer of that snarled desk (and one of the few commonalities between real and film detectives) Fred would tell him stories about his previous cases, or cases that he had heard about from other P.I.s around the area when they ran into each other at some meeting or on a spree. Except the one time when Alexander became a moving part in a case that Fred would wind up getting involved in before the coppers stepped in. 
One day a guy, an ordinary looking guy, about thirty, fairly well-dressed, a sports coat and tie, trimmed hair and short beard, not from around Riverdale but with a New England accent, probably Maine, came in Alexander’s print shop looking for a customized job, a small job but in those days as people were self-printing more extensively the small jobs were drying up (fortunately the big commercial orders were still coming in at their normal pace). He wanted fifty copies of what he called a missing person’s poster, you know with photo of the person and description of last known place, who to contact and so on, done on the press and not the copy machine. No problem. Alexander handled the order while this young guy waited. 
A few weeks later the person who had come in with missing person photograph turned up dead, very dead along the bank of the Waban River. Not only very dead but very murdered from the bullet holes through his mangled soggy shirt. Chief Powers of the Riverdale Police came into Alexander’s print shop to find out what he knew about the situation since in the dead man’s back pocket there was a water-logged copy of the missing person poster that had his print shop mark on the right corner. Alexander told the Chief what he knew, said he wanted to help any way he could but the young guy was just a young guy and his description and demeanor would have fit a million young guys. As had the guy he was looking for. That pretty much ended Alexander’s involvement in the case, probably the case would go into those cold files that most murder cases go into if somebody doesn’t jump up and confess with all hands open.
Or so he thought. A few weeks later a young woman, Lara Barstow was the name she gave him, came into Alexander’s printing shop with a shopworn copy of the poster he had created for the murdered young man, and asked to see the proprietor. Since he was that person he introduced himself and asked how he could help her although he was a little suspicious that an average young good-looking woman like Lara would have any connection with the crime, or crimes associated with the young man for whom he had done the work or the young man on the poster. Lara soon cleared things up, “I have been to the police and they told me what happened to my brother Emmet, how he was found murdered out on the riverbank. They said that as far as they were concerned the case was still open but that they had no further leads to work on so that unless they got something that is probably where the case would stand.” [The police did not mention “cold case” file but Lara said she knew what they meant]. Lara then started to cry a bit and Alexander not knowing what to do offered his handkerchief and asked if he should call his wife to assist her in her time of troubles. Lara stiffened at that and told Alexander that she did not need that kind of help but that she was determined to find out who had killed her brother and asked if he had any ideas. Then Alexander, secretly thrilled at the prospect, told her that on the fifth floor of the building that they were standing in his friend, Fred, a private detective, had his office and that maybe he could look into the matter. Lara said that she did not have any serious resources (her word), meaning money but that if Fred as able to do something to find the murderer and clear up a legal situation then she would be coming into some funds. Alexander thinking to himself that this was starting to be something out of the movies let that statement ride only saying, “Let’s see what Fred says,” and led her to the elevator and the fifth- floor office. (On the way up she did not comment on the urine smell in the foyer, the seedy dilapidated aspect of the elevator and its slowness, or the condition of the outside building windows, broken panes letting the weathers in as they left the elevator that made him a little more wary since her whole demeanor was of some old-fashioned gentile upbringing but he figured she was desperate, concentrated on her task, or indifferent to such matter.
Fred, despite the seedy condition of his office, already commented on by Alexander and nothing had changed since the last time he had been up in the office for a few drinks so no further comment is necessary, was smooth affable charm itself when greeting and listening to Lara’s story. And listen he, they did for the story really did have a Hollywood feel to it.
“Emmet Barstow is, ah, was, my older brother, who had gotten into a lot of trouble when he was in prep school at Exeter Academy several years ago. I don’t know if I should tell you the nature of the trouble since it was a rather delicate matter.” Fred stopped her right there and said he needed to know everything, everything in this weak fact case, or he would not be able to help her. She continued, “Well, ah, see there was this other boy, this Prescott Devine, a pervert, you know, a homosexual, who tricked Emmet into having sex with him, having sex and taking photographs as it turned out.” [Fred and Alexander gave each other knowing eyes about what was to follow.] You know what happened next, Prescott forced my brother to continue with his wicked designs while in school and later asked for money to avoid a public scandal in our household. So Emmett paid, or rather my father paid before he died and after that Mr. Sidney, the lawyer who has handled our estate until we come of age, paid. Then Prescott fade from view for a couple of years until several months ago after my father died he showed up at our door looking for more money. Emmett gave him what he could but somehow he got wind of my father dying and remembered that Emmett was to inherit a large sum of money upon his death, something he had told Prescott when he was in the throes of love at the beginning [said bitterly]. The terms of the will were that Emmett would inherit almost everything when he turned twenty-five as long as he was alive, and if he were not then I would inherit. But only inherit if there was no cloud over his death. That part had been added only a few months before my father’s death, so he must have had a premonition of something happening.” She paused, then continued, “Emmett had been trying to find Prescott for a while after he had come to our house in order to tell him that he was no longer afraid of any scandal, that he would take his chances with society, our society which might be able to overlook what could be a youthful indiscretion, and maybe just a bout of loneliness. Somebody whom they went to school with told Emmett that Prescott was in this area living in Gloversville and that was why he had the posters made. He was going to distribute them around and the thousand dollars for information figured to draw somebody out who might know his whereabouts. That’s all I know until the police called to have me come and identify the body. The police have kind of let it go to hell and I need your help.
Fred wise to the ways of the world although not used to dealing with upper middle-class young women, as clients anyway except once he had a girlfriend from the leafy suburbs but the parents practically imprisoned her when they found out he did not have three names in his moniker, you know Ward Stewart Lawrence, stuff like that the Brahmins go for, told Lara he needed a one hundred dollar cash retainer before he could represent her in her time of sorrows. She opened her pocketbook, pulled out five Jacksons and they were in business.   
Fred said later that he sensed something was wrong from that moment, the moment she gave him the cash like she expected him to ask for cash rather than haggle over a check or something but Alexander said that was just Fred’s wishful thinking after the fact when the whole thing blew up in his face and the cops had to pull him out of the line of fire. To leave the reader in no suspense at this point Fred went out and did several days of investigation trying to locate the guy who told her brother that Prescott was in the area. He did locate him finally but the lad, a young man whom Fred using the old- time expression was “light on his feet,” and fearful to say anything at all. Fred pressed the issue though and the kid (Fred did not use that word) folded. It seems the kid, Fred said he would not use his name in order to get the information he wanted, also fell under the spell of Prescott, had his pants down more than once over the “crush” he called it, and had done Prescott’s bidding telling Emmett that Prescott was in Gloversville. A couple of days late Fred traced Prescott to a bed and breakfast place outside Gloversville. He figured that he would just go in and talk to Prescott but before he could enter the door to Prescott’s room there was a volley of gunfire aimed his way through the door. He got on the ground first and worked his way back to the kitchen where he called the cops, called the sheriff’s office because he was not sure Gloversville had its own police department. The sheriff came with a few deputies, and a few sharpshooters from the State Police SWAT team. After a couple of futile attempts at coaxing Prescott out they went in full blazes (Alexander said if anybody wanted to know the details of the firefight check with the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office they would have all the details). After a few minutes the firing from Prescott’s room stopped. The cops went into the room and recovered the body, recovered two bodies really, for the other body belonged to one Lara Barstow.
The way things figured out later piecing together everything found in Prescott’s room and later at Lara’ house what happened is when Prescott came to confront Emmett for dough he somehow caught Lara’s eyes, gave her a tumble or two, maybe more (whether he was bisexual or not who knows maybe the dough gave him some weird sexual energy if he was completely gay). Whether he was just working the scam of a lifetime for a lowlife like him or he had some affection for Lara who knows. What is known from some legal papers found at Lara’s house is they formed a scheme to kill Emmett and have her inherit the family money (when she turned twenty-five as well a lawyer handling the trust before that time). Prescott must have known from that scared  kid that Emmett was on his trail. They probably met somewhere and Prescott put a couple of nasty slugs in him and shipped him off down the Waban River and easy street. What fouled the whole thing up was the part about having to know the cause of Emmett’s death before the trust could even be touched in the future. The whole Lara tall tale story in Fred’s office was to see if they could find a fall guy, maybe some hobo or something. Not every criminal, smart or stupid always figures things out right but that what it looked like. Maybe Lara thought just hiring Fred would satisfy the terms of the trust. Who knows. But when Fred was able to find Prescott he, they panicked. And that was that. So Alexander forever after will be able to say he way part of solving a private detective-type crime. He was just glad, glad as hell that he had not accompanied Fred when he had asked him to go to Prescott’s room. He thought save that part for the movies.