*****Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are known social distinctions long recognized among the brethren even if with a touch of envy by those not among the elect although the general population, you know, the honest citizenry who make the rules against vagrancy and pay the enforcers to keep the riffraff out of their towns called the whole heap nothing but bums knows the road is hard, but that is the road they have chosen, or had chosen for them by their whole freaking life choices. Despite the claims of oneness for the whole heap of bummery by those honest citizens of small town America (or these days the world) where the fear exists every really honest person, even every thoughtful amateur sociologist should know that among the wandering tribes the hobos, “the kings and queens of the transient peoples,” are merely migrant or walking through the land rucksack on the back day laborer-type worker, what Oswald Spengler and Jack Kerouac called the fellahin, the outcasts, who has not forgotten the dignity of labor, just not for him (or occasionally her) the nine to five grind and such brethren can be found out back in many a restaurant throughout the land especially at diners and truck shop eateries “diving for pearls, working,” working as dishwashers.

Every hobo has some problem, usually some Phoebe Snow problem, a woman problem, that forced him or her on the road (I don’t know what it would be for the distaff side so call him Jack Snow, any other sexual combination more acceptable today although definitely not unknown in the male-heavy “jungle camps” along the transcontinental railroad lines). That Phoebe Snow designation from some old time railroad advertisement when they finally figured how to keep their respectable passengers from looking like coalminers after alighting from a train by changing the way the engine was maneuvered and to express that new found discovery they had a virginal young woman in white getting on their trains ready for every civilized adventure in some faraway place (or maybe an illicit tryst but we will ask no questions). And so many a campfire night as the trains went westbound, or wherever bound, you would find many a man, maybe in his cups just then, dreaming back to their own Phoebes and wondering damn why they ever left Peoria, Lima, Scranton and that white dress with flowers in her hair standing in the wind. So, make no mistake, fear of work is not what drove the hobo out on to the roads.

See that royalty, the hobo, and his or her ability to work is why the Industrial Worker of the World (IWW, Wobblies, moniker origin unknown so Wobblies) went into the jungle camps (and gin mills too) in order to recruit labor fighters against the bosses when the deal went down, particularly in the West. (Although more famously in the great Lawrence, Massachusetts “Bread and Roses” textile strike of 1912 when they gathered in the nations of immigrants that the textile bosses recruited on the assumption that they could “divide and conquer.” Yid and gentile, Mick and Dago, Hunky and Frog, name your national derogatory moniker but didn’t they get a surprise that first morning when the nations gathered against the Wasp oligarchy.) Of course that transient work habit was also the down side of that organization as the kings of the transient road hit the road west, or somewhere, when it came to defending the unions over the long haul.

As for the other two, the tramp who only worked when forced to like on some thirty day county jailhouse for vagrancy gig or some Salvation Army work program to keep the body and soul together for a few days when whatever con, what grift was played out and the bum, Jesus, the bum wouldn’t work if he was Rockefeller himself, the dregs, winos, jack-rollers, sappers, petty crooks, mother’s purse stealers, the crippled up, sorry, and the dumb, sorry again, to put the matter plainly in the old- fashioned parlance how the hell could you organize them. You might as well try to organize air, might as well go down without a fight since they have probably already sold you out and the boss man will be waiting arms in hand, you can bet on that. There was a very good reason that the beloved heroic Paris Communards in 1871 as desperate as they were for fighters placed the placate “Death to Thieves” above the Hotel de Ville. Yeah, they had that right, don’t give the lumpen a change to breathe or he will steal your breathe just for kicks, or a jug of low-grade wine.          

Now that you are all caught up on the differences, the “class differences,” between each cohort recognized among themselves, oh how recognized, and subject to fierce dispute including some faux fists, if not quite so definitely by rump academic sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day (there is some hope for the amateur versions as long as the avoid the graduate schools of social work the bane of every person on the road, and rightly so). What they do have in common since they are out in the great outdoors more than the rest of us gentile folk is that they to a person have seen starlight on the rails. Yeah, had their fill of train smoke and dreams.

Now all these sullen subtle distinctions among the brethren I probably would have not been able to draw in my youth when I would have lumped the lot together as collective losers and riff-raff, the bums to honest citizens, before I hit the hitchhike road heading west at one time in search of the blue-pink great American West night out there somewhere. Thought I found it for a minute out in Mendocino with a sweet Lorraine all long hair, long granny dress and flowers, garlands really around her neck and in her hair. Go check out a  Botticelli painting if you are near an art museum something or google up the man’s name on the Internet if you can’t wait, my own Phoebe Snow, before the hordes descended.  Thought I had it another time in a hash/opium dream outside of Monterey after the jazz festival and some dark-haired, dark laughing eyes, hot-blooded, Juanita curled my toes for a while until I fought there were seventeen burn down the country club golf course and I had not enough matches and fled. Ah, you know and man’s reach should exceed his grasp like the Jack poet said.

I had, broken dreams aside, broken but not forgotten Botticelli dreams included, on one more than one occasion along with the late Peter Paul Markin who led the way among the North Adamsville corner boys on that trail been forced to stop along a railroad trestle “jungle camp,” under a cardboard city bridge, or out in the arroyos if you got far enough west to live for a few days and rest up for the road further west.

The hobos of the “jungle” were princes among men (there was no room for women then in such a male-dominated society, not along the jungle although at the missions and Sallys, Salvation Army Harbor Lights, that might be a different story) as long as you did not ask too many damn questions. Shared olio stews, cigarettes, cheap rotgut wine, Thunderbird “what’s the word, Thunderbird, what’s the price, forty twice” and that eighty cents tough to gather some days no matter how smooth the pan-handle, or Ripple, ‘save the nipple, cripple” sorry, whichever was cheapest after cadging the day’s collective pennies together. Later, after the big dream American West busted me up when my “wanting habits” (getting many worldly goods off easy street paid for by working the drug trade down south of the border along with Markin before he became the late Markin face down in some dusty Mexican bracero fellahin town when a drug deal he was trying to finagle caught him short, two slugs to the head short by some angry hombre who didn’t like gringos messing with their trade, or their dark-haired, dark laughing-eyed, hot-blooded women) built up from the edges of that sullen youth got the better of me and my addictions placed me out in that same “jungle” for keeps for a while that distinction got re-enforced.  

But hobo, bum or tramp each had found him or herself (mainly hims though like I said out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Having let their, our, collective wanting habits get the best of them, us. Maybe penniless, maybe thrown out of some flophouse in arrears and found that nobody bothers, or did bother you out along the steel rails, I won’t vouch for that now with all the weirdness in the world, when the train lost its luster to the fast speed Interstate automobile and one coast in the morning the other in the afternoon plane and rusted and abandoned railroads gone belly up, Union Pacific, SP, Denver, Rio Grande, Baltimore and Ohio, Illinois Central, all train smoke names for lack of use provided safe haven from the vagaries of civilization. So sure I too have seen with the brethren, those nameless hobos, tramps, and bums  (to you they had among themselves monikers like Railroad Shorty, Black River Red, Smokestack, Philly Jack, mine, the Be-Bop Kid although I always had to explain what the be-bop was since these guys were well behind the curve, back in Benny Goodman swing time)     the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed penitent dreams of shelter against life’s storms, had dreamed while living for the moment trying to get washed clean after the failure of the new dispensation to do the job (hell, what did they/Markin/me think just because the drugs or alcohol flowed freely once, just because the fixer man fixed, fixed fine, that that was the Garden of Eden, that was Nirvana, hell, those ancient forebears all after they had been expelled from the earthly paradise saw that same starlight as they/he/we/I did).   

Maybe this will explain it better. An old man, or at least he has the marks of old age, although among the iterant travelling peoples, the hoboes, tramps, and bum, who have weathered many of life’s storms bottle or needle in hand, panhandled a million quarters now lost, old age, or their marks wear a soul down early so a guy who has been on the road enough years if he is say thirty looks about fifty by the time the train smoke and the busted dreams have broken his will, white beard, unkempt, longish hair, also unkempt, a river of lines in his face, deep crow’s feet setting off his vacant eyes, a second-hand soiled hat atop his head, a third-hand miner’s jacket “clipped” off some other lonesome traveler (“clipped”- stolen for clueless or those who led sheltered childhood and did not in order to satisfy some youthful wanting habit stakeout a jewelry store say and grab a few trinkets while the salesperson was looking the other way), shredded at the cuffs chino pants of indeterminate age, and busted up shoes, soles worn, heels at forty-five degree angles from crooked walks on crooked miles and game legs is getting ready to unroll his bedroll, ground cloth a tablecloth stolen from Jimmy Jack’s Diner’s somewhere, a blanket stolen from a Sally [Salvation Army] Harbor Light house in salad days, rolled newspapers now for a mattress for the hundredth, hundredth time against the edge of the railroad trestle just outside Gallup, New Mexico.

Do not ask him, if you have the nerve to approach him, and that is an iffy proposition just ask a guy going under the moniker of Denver Shorty how he got that deep scar across his face, where he is going or where he has come from because just that moment, having scratched a few coins in the town together for a jug of Thunderbird he is ready to sleep his sleep against the cold-hearted steel of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks just ten yards from where he stands.      

And this night, this starlit brown, about eight colors of brown, desert night he hopes that he will not dream, not dream of that Phoebe Snow whom he left behind in Toledo when he had no beard, no longish unkempt hair, and no rivers of lines on his misbegotten face. (Why the brethren called every long gone sweetheart Phoebe Snow, why they would get misty over the dying campfire after some younger traveler stopped by and told his tale of leaving some young thing behind is unknown except, according to some old wizened geezer who might have just made the story up, in the old, old day when the railroads finally figured out how to keep people from being blackened by the train smoke every trip they took they started advertising this the fact with this white-dressed  virginal young woman who went under the name Phoebe Snow. That’s probably as good an explanation as any since whatever the name, or the young woman almost every guy in camp would in his sorrows get weepy about that situation. Hey, didn't I tell that story before, Jesus, the dope or old age is getting to me but what the hell maybe that Phoebe Snow dream is worth a repeat I know it got me through many a restless night thinking about sweet Botticelli Lorraine and Goya Juanita.) Dream as he always did about whatever madness made him run from all the things he had created, all the things that drove him west like a million other guys who needed to put space between himself and civilization.

Dream too about the days when he could ride the rails in the first-class cars (having not only left Phoebe Snow behind but a growing specialty printing business started from scratch before the alcohol, and later the dope although now back to cheapjack alcohol got the better of him), and about the lure of the rails once he got unhinged from civilization. About how the train pace had been chastised by fast cars and faster planes when a the speed of a train fitted a man’s movements, about the days when they first built the transcontinental, this line that he was about to lie his head down beside, about the million Chinks, Hunkies, Russkies, Hibernians, hell, Micks, Dagos who sweated to drive the steel in unforgiving ground, many who laid down their heads down to their final rest along these roads, and later guys he knew on the endless road like Butte Bobby, Silver Jones, Ding-dong Kelly, who did not wake up the next morning and were carried out to the carcass vulture desert having left no way to get a hold of kin. Almost all guys had left no forwarding address, no real one anyway, no back address, for fear of the repo man or some other dunning, an angry wife or about ten thousand other reasons. So the desert was good enough as a potter’s field as any other place.

As he settled in to sleep the wine’s effect settling down too he noticed the bright half- moon out that night reflecting off the trestle, and the arroyos edges, and thought about what a guy, an old wizard like himself told him about the rails one time when he was laid up in Salt Lake City, in the days when he tried to sober up. The guy, a guy who had music in his soul or something said to him that it was the starlight on the rails that had driven him, rumble, stumble, tumble him to keep on the road, to keep moving away from himself, to forget who he was. And here he was on a starlit night listening down the line for the rumble of the freight that would come passing by before the night was over. But as he shut his eyes, he began to dream again of Phoebe Snow, always of Phoebe Snow.         

But not everybody has the ability to sing to those starlit heavens (or to the void if that is what chances to happen as the universe expands quicker than we can think, bang- bang or get smaller into dust if that is the deal once the philosopher-king physicists figure out the new best theory) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song by the same name ripping some wisdom from literary man Thomas Wolfe who knew from whence he spoke, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.         

Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances to wind up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs up in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent.

Worked her way to a big sold out night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago. Sang some nice stuff speaking about the west, about the Brazos, about the great Utah desert which formed Utah Phillips a little too, formed him like his old friend Ammon Hennessey, the old saint Catholic Worker brother who sobered some guys up, made them take some pledges, made them get off the railroad steel road. Sobered me up too, got me off that railroad track too, but damn if I didn’t see that starlight too. So listen up, okay.         

*****In The Twilight Of The Folk Minute- Peter Seeger And Arlo Guthrie In Concert In The Late 1980s

“Jesus, they charged me fourteen dollars each for these tickets to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie and I got them by coming over here to the box office on my lunch hour instead of being gouged by Tick-Pik for three extra bucks apiece for god knows what purpose since it is not like this concert thing was a “hot ticket” like they were the Stones or Springsteen where you expect to be gouged and if you want to see them bad enough you cough up the extra dough, Sam Lowell was telling his companion and their two friends just that moment. After a pause to think through where he wanted togo with his thoughts he continues, “Remember Laura about ten or fifteen years ago when we saw Pete for five bucks each at the Café Nana over in Harvard Square and he put on a hundred dollar show unlike what I hear about him lately that age is catching up with him, he must be in his seventies, and he talks more than plays and sings.” (Laura nodded her head in agreement.) “That was when Hank, Hank Jacobs, the owner, used to bill all the big folk acts for cheap money because the folk minute was decidedly over and most of them were “from hunger” then and didn’t want to work for the “basket” like when they were kids on the way up so would jump at the opportunity to play and I guess he treated them okay from what Dave Von Ronk said one night when he was featured there. Those were the days when just because it was the Square you could still draw a crowd of people like us who used to “cruise” the folk minute scene in the early 1960s to hear those guys play and still carry the torch for such music that went along with our political ambitions and our desire to break out of that mold which was descending on us to come back to earth for a while.” (Laura laughed at that mention of “cruise” since it was a new term, kind of sexually charged,  not used back in the day when it was just “hanging out” they were doing when they went to the coffeehouses or peace marches.)

“Oh yeah, and the price of an expresso coffee each for two people and I think maybe we shared a piece of carrot cake was maybe another three bucks. You had to have something in front of you to keep your seat or unless it was a slow night Hank would scowl at you and make you think that you had done something criminal by taking the seat of a customer who would buy some wine and maybe a light meal which they served then. Beside the carrot cake was good, I think his wife, Stella, made it from scratch and Laura would eat a fork-full and I would have the rest as you can tell from my slightly expanded form.” (Laura laughed the knowing laugh of too many latter carrot cakes after he stopped jogging a few years back when his knees started giving out from the pounding he took over on the asphalt at Fresh Pond where he used to run.)

“We had been on a cheap date since I was still in law school over at New England, maybe second year so it was probably 1972 (Laura corrected him saying 1973), a cheap date when I didn’t have much cash and at that time, just at the cusp of the women’s liberation movement taking wider hold, a guy was still mostly expected to pay. No “Dutch treat,” no Laura Dutch treat expected anyway especially on a first or second date, and definitely not that one when I had been intrigued by you early on and wanted to continue to see you.” (Laura’s face reddened and then she put on a bright smile).

“Around that same time, that same Spring of 1973, Arlo gave a free concert out on Concord Commons, remember” Sam said to his date Laura Peters and the couple they were standing in line with, Patrick Darling and Julia James, in front of Symphony Hall in Boston waiting for the doors to open for the Pete-Seeger-Arlo Guthrie concert that evening.

Laura once Sam came off his soap-box as she always called it, especially when he was in a “folk minute” frame of mind and wanted to impress everybody within hearing distance of his arcane knowledge of lots of folk history including remembering the wrong dates and usually what they ate, or didn’t eat, but spot on when it came to the acts and their play lists for the evening then rather sheepishly, for her, nodded that she remembered the Café Nana event since she had been entirely willing, knowing that Sam was in law school and broke and she had already gotten a job as a CPA at John Hancock and was making money, to go “Dutch treat” that night but Sam had insisted he pay and she did not press the issue since she too had been intrigued by him.  That sheepish part was because she recalled that back then, back before she got involved with the edges of the women’s liberation movement and tried to change was perfectly willing to let the guy pay, expected him to pay even if he was from hunger. So Sam was not that far off but she never liked to let him play that “from hunger” thing too strongly and so she had her say. Yeah, she thought to herself that was the way her father had done it with her mother and her mother had passed on that wisdom to her.

Laura had failed to mention, failed to mention under the circumstances that they were standing in a public place with friend who did not need to know Sam “forgot” that she had not gone with him to see Arlo on the Commons since Sam had taken his ex-wife, Josie Davis, to that concert at a time when Josie and Sam were trying to reconcile or get divorced but she did not want to bring that up although Julia had looked in her direction when Sam mentioned that Commons concert since she and her date, some guy from Sam’s law school had gone along and had witnessed reason two hundred and twenty-seven why Sam and Josie eventually got divorced when Josie had badgered Sam about buying a house when he got his first job and would not let it go. With another year in school and bar exams in front of him she was thinking about that stuff. Yeah, so long Josie.  That tense moment passed with the men both oblivious.

This in any case would be the first time Pete and Arlo had appeared together since Newport a number of years back. This also the first time this foursome had seen either of them in a good number of years since Pete Seeger had gone to upstate New York and had been spending more time making the rivers and forests up there green again than performing and Arlo was nursing something out in Stockbridge. “Maybe, Alice,” Patrick said and everybody laughed at that inside joke. 

Sam continued along that line of his about “the back in the days” for a while, with the three who were still also something of folk aficionados well after the heyday of that music in what Sam always and endlessly called the “1960s folk minute” nodding their heads in agreement saying “things sure were cheaper then and people, folkies for sure, did their gigs for the love of it as much as for the money, maybe more so. Did it, what did the grizzled folk historian cum folksinger-songwriter Dave Van Ronk call it then, oh yeah, for the “basket,” for “from hunger” walking around money to keep the wolves from the doors. To piece off the landlord or roommate for another week or month.

Begged for a room, a small room, a stage and bunch of mismatched chairs, usually giving the economics of coffeehouse ownership, to play out whatever saga drove them to places like the Village, Harvard Square, North Beach and their itch to make a niche in the booming folk world where everything seemed possible. Everything seemed possible if you had any kind of voice to the left of Dylan’s and Van Ronk’s own, could play three chords on a guitar, or a la Pete work a banjo, a mando, or some other stringed instrument, and write of love, sorrow, some dastardly death deed, or on some pressing issue of the day.

 

After being silent for a moment Sam got a smile on his face and said “On that three chord playing thing I remember Geoff Muldaur from the Kweskin Jug Band, a guy who knew the American folk songbook as well as anybody then, worked at learning it too, as did Kweskin himself, learned even that Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music stuff, all eighty some songs, or the ones customers would listen to, stuff which meant you had to be serious, saying that if you could play three chords you were sure to draw a crowd, a girl crowd around you, if you knew four or five that  meant you were a serious folkie and you could even get a date from among that crowd, and if you knew ten or twelve chord you could have whoever and whatever you wanted. I don’t know if that is true since I never got beyond the three chord thing but no question that was a way to attract women, especially at parties.” Laura, never one to leave something unsaid when Sam left her an opening said in reply “I didn’t even have to play three chords on a guitar, couldn’t then and I can’t now, although as Sam knows I play a mean kazoo, but all I had to do was start singing some Joan Baez or Judie Collins cover and with my long black hair ironing board straight like Joan’s I had all the boys come around and I will leave it to your imaginations about the whatever I wanted part.”

They all laughed although Sam’s face reddened a bit at the thought of her crowded up with guys hanging over her although he had not known her back then in the folk minute since she had lived in Manhattan then and he had grown up and lived Carver about thirty miles south of Boston but had only met her later in the early 1970s when the Josie thing was going bad and she had brought smiles to his face when he needed somebody to do that awesome task.                      

Those reference got Julia thinking back the early 1960s when she and Sam went “Dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. (Sam and Julia were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other but folk music was their bond and despite persistent Julia BU dorm roommate rumors what with Sam hanging around all the time had never been lovers). She mentioned that date to Sam as they waited to see if he remembered and while he thought he remembered he was not sure. He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing like something out of the sea, or like the cry of the banshees.

Club Blue had been located in that same Harvard Square that Sam had mentioned earlier and along with the Café Nana, which was something of a hot spot once Dylan, Baez, Tom Rush and the members of the Kweskin band started hanging out there, and about five or six other coffeehouses all within a few blocks of each other (one down on Arrow Street was down in the sub-basement and Sam swore that Dylan must have written Subterranean Homesick Blues there). Coffeehouses then where you could, for a dollar or two, see Bob, Joan, Eric (Von Schmidt), Tom (Rush), Phil (Ochs) and lots of lean and hungry performers working for that “basket” Sam had mentioned earlier passed among the patrons and be glad, at least according to Van Ronk when Julia had asked him about the “take” during one intermission, to get twenty bucks for your efforts that night.

That was the night during that same intermission Dave also told her that while the folk breeze was driving things his way just then and people were hungry to hear anything that was not what he called “bubble gum” music like you heard on AM radio that had not been the case when he started out in the Village in the 1950s when he had worked “sweeping out” clubs for a couple of dollars. That sweeping out was not with a broom, no way, Dave had said with that sardonic wit of his that such work was beneath the “dignity” of a professional musician but the way folk singers were used to empty the house between shows. In the “beat”1950s with Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, and their comrades (Dave’s word reflecting his left-wing attachments then) making everybody crazy for poetry, big be-bop poetry backed up by big be-bop jazz the coffeehouses played to that clientele and on weekends or in the summer people would be waiting in fairly long lines to get in. So what Dave did (and Happy Traum and a couple of other singers that she could not remember he had mentioned) was after the readings were done and people were still lingering over their expressos would be to get up on the makeshift stage and begin singing some old sea chanty, some obscure Child ballad (those ballads later a staple in the folk world because you could cover them as public domain items and frankly because they were usually long and filled up a short playlist if you were not feeling well or were pressed for something to perform), or some slavery day freedom song in that raspy, gravelly voice of his which would sent the customers out the door. And if they didn’t go then he was out the door. Tough times, tough times indeed.             

Coffeehouses too where for the price of a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry, shared, you could wallow in the fluff of the folk minute that swept America, maybe the world, and hear the music that was the leading edge then toward that new breeze that everybody that Julia and Sam knew was bound to come what with all the things going on in the world. Black civil rights, mainly down in the police state South, nuclear disarmament, the Pill to open up sexual possibilities previously too dangerous or forbidden, and music too, not just the folk music that he and she had been addicted to but something coming from England paying tribute to old-time blues with a rock upbeat that was now a standard part of the folk scene ever since they had “discovered” blues guys like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Bukka White, and Skip James. All the mix to turn the world upside down. All of which as well was grist to the mill for the budding folk troubadours to write songs about.

Julie made her companions laugh as they stood there starting to get a little impatient since the doors to the concert hall were supposed to open at seven and here it was almost seven fifteen (Sam had fumed, as he always did when he had to wait for anything, a relic of his Army days during the Vietnam War when everything had been “hurry up and wait”). She had mentioned that back then, back in those college days when guys like Sam did not have a lot of money, if worse came to worse and you had no money like happened one time with a guy, a budding folkie poet, Jack Dawson, she had a date with you could always go to the Hayes-Bickford in the Square (the other H-Bs in other locations around Boston were strictly “no-go” places where people actually just went to eat the steamed to death food and drink the weak-kneed coffee).

As long as you were not rowdy like the whiskey drunks rambling on and on asking for cigarettes and getting testy if you did not have one for the simple reason that you did not smoke (almost everybody did then including Sam although usually not with her and definitely not in the dorm), winos who smelled like piss and vomit and not having bathed in a while, panhandlers (looking you dead in the eye defying you to not give them something, money or a cigarette but something) and hoboes (the quiet ones of that crowd  who somebody had told her were royalty in the misfit, outcast world and thus would not ask for dough or smokes) who drifted through there you could watch the scene for free.

On any given night, maybe around midnight, on weekends later when the bars closed later you could hear some next best thing guy in full flannel shirt, denim jeans, maybe some kind of vest for protection against the cold but with a hungry look on his face or a gal with the de riguer long-ironed hair, some peasant blouse belying her leafy suburban roots, some boots or sandals depending on the weathers singing low some tune they wrote or reciting to their own vocal beat some poem. As Julie finished her thought some dressed in uniform guy who looked like a doorman in some foreign castle opened the concert hall doors and the four aficionados scampered in to find their seats.                 

…as they walked down the step of Symphony Hall having watched Pete work his banjo magic, work the string of his own Woody-inspired songs like Golden Thread and of covers from the big sky American songbook and Arlo wowed with his City of New Orleans and some of his father’s stuff (no Alice’s Restaurant that night he was saving that for Thanksgiving, he said) Sam told his companions, “that fourteen dollars each for tickets was a steal for such performances, especially in that acoustically fantastic hall” and told his three friends that he would stand for coffees at the Blue Parrot over in Harvard Square if they liked. “And maybe share some pastry too.”     

 

A Lunch-Time Conversation-With Prescott Breslin, Junior In Mind   

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

Ben Webster, despite his creeping arthritis which has slowed him down a bit over the past several years and which had bothered him no end, not because he could not accept the aging process although he had tossed and turned more one night when in his forties he started to feel the first surges of kickback in his body and not because he had some notion of defying the death that await us all for he held no deep-seeded secular need to put a fine gloss on such thoughts, had other things on his mind just then. Things to try to reclaim the past a little, try to get some information about past events if for no other reason than to now that he had the time to do to reflect on what had happened along the way. If he could half-figure that out before he passed beyond all understanding he would greet death, the death that he had always, echoing the laconic poet-minister John Donne, claimed should not be proud. Should not have pride of place in the great scheme of things. Ben had always liked the way the Letts took on the matter letting the reindeer king decide the time and place of the passage, to make the sleep the equivalent of sweet amorphous death.  But truth to tell that affliction had make him feel older than he needed to feel, made him something of a cranky old man to his grandchildren at times, made his grumpy since otherwise after a lifetime of trying to keep himself reasonably in shape he could hold his own with his peers, maybe holding  better than his own. That pain had slowed him down even worse a while back when his left knee bones, verified for a candid world to see by progressively gathered doctor x-rays which had started rubbing together about fifteen years ago and he eventually needed to get the badge of the AARP-worthy knee replacement. Done, done and finished but as payment the aches gathered in other locales to take te wind out of his sails. 

Notwithstanding his own maladies Ben just then, waving off the thoughts of afflictions, of mother death was, as had become habit of late, of the past couple of years, committed to once again make the call, the call to his old friend Jason. Over the past several years, maybe closer to decade now, Ben made the monthly call, made it less frequently these days with his teeth grinding, over his cellphone to one Jason Darling to plan for their regular monthly luncheon which recently has been to some place in Walton, the town where they had both grown up, had met in elementary school, had hung around as sweet back corner boys.

That grinding his teeth fiercely had begun a decade or so back and had extended back maybe another decade before that was no turn of phrase but a real reaction every time he had to contact his old friend. As a result for years, the best years when it might have helped Jason, he had made it a practice to avoid seeing Jason except when he could not avoid the issue, could not truthfully back out or plead ignorance.   Like the time twelve or thirteen years before when Jason had had his stroke, had had to have some work done on his flukey poorly treated heart as well after a lifetime of sucking sodas and eating hellish Sally/U/U/Methodist/Roman Catholic/Baptist soup kitchen rotation foods as well. Jason had for years after his divorce from Lydia, Lydia who was from some Podunk town in Tennessee, some place out in the sticks whom he had met one night when she was working as a bar maid in some low-rent gin mill and had spun some tale that got him a three day shack-up and they had gotten married shortly after she thinking he would take care of her since he had shown her a bank roll as she blew him and she would no longer have to do an occasional professional trick or seven to keep body and soul together, who ran out on him with another guy, ran out as fast as she could when that guy after she had given him his blow job said they should pull up stakes and head west and get away from the bummer in Boston, lived in a skid row rooming house.

This is how the path of descent played out if anybody is interested. Jason had about a year before Lydia took that powder, took off with their last five dollars so maybe that new guy was showing a Missouri bankroll too, had stopped working, stopped trying to keep them together when he got into one of his periodic funks about how he had come up the hard way and the world really did owe the guy a living, and sat in their small messy apartment and watched television or read country music fan magazines to which he was addicted to forcing her to go out onto the streets again to keep body and soul and that is where she had met that John somebody who took her west, or wherever five bucks could take them maybe.

At some point later Jason had gotten himself on the dole, he had always been good at the con, had taught Ben a couple of tricks that he was able to use when he himself had had a short period of being out on the streets after he got out of the service when he couldn’t adjust to the “real” after Vietnam times, lived on welfare or social security disability, or both, it was always some combination at various times since Jason had been diagnosed as clinically depressed as a result of some ancient wounds, maybe childhood, more probably from his own checkered military service in Korea and Vietnam. He had been since Lydia fled living alone in that run down rooming house in skid row Boston like some moronic pack rat going out late at night on the day before trash day and grabbing whatever he could to “decorate” his room but like the messy Lydia-managed apartment all it was  pack rat messy and he hated to even go near the place and so they would meet in the street in front of Jason’s quarters,  had had some kind of stroke and had lain almost naked for three days on the floor of his room since he could not move before somebody had heard his cries. Since Ben was the only known contact he had been called to visit Jason in a rehab center after he had been released from the hospital. Another time earlier Ben had been in downtown Boston on some business and Jason had called out to him from across the street and he was stuck having to relate to him that day. Both times and a few more that he had half-forgotten about had been of a kind. They would meet under some flag of friendship truce, Jason would do some godawful thing, borrow money and not pay it back, steal checks from Ben’s house when he was invited over like Ben was some mother’ pocketbook to be hit mercilessly like when they were kids and forged his name, and other assorted tricks which left their relationship shaggy and on a razor’s edge most of the time after high school. Hence the long stretches of statutory neglect as Ben called the situation (and at least two of Ben’s three wives and a couple of live-in girlfriends threatened to leave if Jason came through their doors. See they would be “missing” dough after he left.

 

It had not always been that way, had not always been about Ben having to be niggardly about connecting with his old friend. Back in high school, back in the 1960s when they used to run together, run around town as buddies and literally run around on the track team despite their mutual lack of resources, despite their respective horrible home lives, they were tight, had each other’s backs and could depend on each other. Ben’s father long gone and his mother mentally ill, Jason’s father a drunk and mother running around with every guy in town, called the town pump by a couple of guys in school who had not known who she was tried to pick her up in a bar which they were in illegally but who was counting and she had on some come hither dress and it was only their fear of dealing with an older woman that had stopped the from having whatever they wanted from her. After high school though as Ben moved toward a professional career and Jason drifted into some trouble, small robberies, a jack-roll, stuff like that which got him before a judge who gave him the “choice”-three to five in county or enlist in the Army their relationship fell apart although never to the point where they totally broke off relations, or really Ben broke off his relationship with his longtime friend whom he had known since elementary school. So they had gone through a series of ups and downs for decades, mostly down until one day Ben realizing that they were on the short end of their lives and that the time for grinding his teeth had passed. Hence, through fits and starts, they had arrived at a place where they could meet once a month and rekindle their once virtuous relationship.                

At those lunched old time memories were guaranteed to be a serious part of whatever conversations they might have ever since Ben had decided several years ago to try and reconcile with his old town and with the guys whom he hung around with, his corner boys he called them and they were as much corner boys as any 1950s wacko sociologist could gather in their brains even if they did not exactly fit the wild boy Saturday  “chicken run” guys with grease and oil in their fingertips and nails for the simple reason they had no cars to work on, no money for parts if they had cars and, well you get the drift, and that list had started with Jason who he was not particularly close at the time had the virtue of never having left the area unlike Frankie Riley in big town New York, Jack Callahan up in New Hampshire and the rest in parts unknown, maybe a couple in jail like Red Radley, a genuine monster. So the call was made, the arrangements put in place and Ben would pick up Jason the next day for that lunch again in Walton by common agreement.

The reason that Ben was picking Jason up was that the past serval years had been unkind to Jason what with the stroke that he had suffered and the stint they had placed in his heart he had no capacity to pick Ben up. Moreover he had, in a cruel play on their corner boy days had no car, had no money for the upkeep of a car and, well you get the drift.   Ben arrived at the lobby Jason’s assisted living Senior Citizen Housing building, don’t forget Jason too was reaching four score and ten, at about noon once again prepared to help his friend into his automobile for the ten mile trip to Jimmy Jakes’ Diner a place that still had decent food and still played the old time country music that Jason was still fond of, no, which Jason was monomaniacal about, maybe pathologically so although Ben was a lawyer not a psychologist or mental health worker.

Ben could not could not abide country music, another subject which had and still did set his teeth grinding, had always chided Jason about it as a kid, and in high school too since what the hell did known about country ways, being a mill town boy just like Ben who could at least claim a father who was from Kentucky might have run back there for all anybody knew since when he ran out his mother was not keen on finding out his whereabouts, had said later good riddance before she started get those migraine headaches which broke her mental capacities. But remember all that teeth grinding stuff was kept in the background as he tried to keep up a good front about lots of matters which had caused Ben to forsake his hometown and forsake Jason as well once they had had their final falling out about thirty years before.

As Jason came down to the lobby from the elevator along with a nurse’s assistant Ben noticed that his old friend was stooped over more than the last time he had seen him and thought to himself that the ravishes of arthritis which has sidelined him were increasing taking over and in Jason’s case as well and that this day helping Jason would be more arduous than previously.

Before Ben could greet his old friend though Jason shouted out “What did you do come here to pick up the furniture?” Ben, startled, a not unusual occurrence when dealing with Jason even back in his best days in his youth, thought that not only had the arthritis taken its toll but living by himself all these years since his divorce about thirty years before had begun to weaken his brain but as he responded in a perplexed voice he only said “What are you talking about, old man?” Jason replied, pointing to a ratty heavily dented and scarred café table and a couple of equally ratty chairs which looked like they would fall apart at the touch that were obviously ready for the furnace and which probably belonged to somebody in the place who had “cashed his (or her) check” and the administration was mercifully getting rid of them and said, “That nice table and chairs which I wish I could have in my room but they only allow so much furniture so the residents don’t wind up tripping over themselves and fall.”

Ben thought that moment that once again he would be in for an afternoon of statements from Jason which had no particular connection to each other but that fate too he kept to himself. As the nurse’s aide help put on Jason’s coat against the November weathers Ben noticed that the outfit that Jason had decided to wear had come down a couple of steps from the previous month, baggy dragging stained jogging togs, a big flapping oversized flannel shirt that was in need of washing (too large even for a guy who was five feet seven inches and weighted about two hundred and thirty five pound so it must have been XXXL to start with), a nondescript shapeless jacket which might have come from the Sallys (Salvation Army) although about a year before he had bought the jacket for Jason for Christmas. He also noticed that Jason’s thinning balding white hair was in need of a minimum haircut and that he could use a shave of the stubble that was gathering on his face even if he had been shaved that morning since Ben remembered that dark-haired, black, Jason was a two times a day shave especially when he was going out on a date, a date which unlike Ben probably came to him easily since he had been a good-looking in the Elvis mode. Yeah between his clothes and his appearance almost seventy years of living a number that Ben himself would be facing as well soon had taken their toll on his old corner boy who in those long gone days in the throes of youth would have had had snarly comments for any such old man who came around Harry’s Variety to buy a newspaper or a package of cigarettes.

Not that Ben was himself some paragon of Esquire or some upscale men’ magazine but he had continued to make efforts to keep the weight off by running frequently  (jogging is really closer to what he was doing especially that first mile which was hell unlike the old days when he/they actually did run and had had a sort of successful time doing so and after a few quick warm-up exercises was ready to run quickly), keeping his now very grey and thinning hair and beard professionally trimmed (not as frequently as his long-time companion, Laura, Laura Perkins, would like claiming that when they kissed it scratched her face), and except for a knee replacement (and eyeglasses for reading, a hearing aid and full set of dentures) was physically in not bad shape for a man nearing seventy. That last thought as they exited the building after Jason had painstakingly signed himself out for the afternoon would be tested from the first time they walked to Ben’s car and unlike on previous occasions Jason had to be helped into the car (Ben always had to help with the seat belts so he was not concerned about that when he was asked to help with that task).

Both in the car and buckled up something they had laughed at as kids when the new seat belt law came into effect they headed to the diner when Jason turned to Ben and said “Did you hear that Elaine Ryder had died?” Ben replied that he did not who the woman was, was she from school, from the town or something. Jason said in an astonished tone, “No, she was the stuntwoman for Dale Evans on the Roy Rodger and Dale Evans Show you remember that show back in the fifties.” Ben answered yes but he made that reply in an even tone since it had been a long time now since he had been surprised when Jason mentioned some name from the distant past and it turned out to be not some mutual acquaintance, some fellow “townie” but some figure from out of fifties television night that Jason was addicted to, more so lately since via the marvels of modern Internet technology he could revisit those long lost times and their denizens. Still a reference to an obscure stuntwoman from a long gone television show did not bode well for the afternoon’s conversations. Lots of teeth grinding (okay dentures grinding) and silently raised eyebrows.    

Along Route 3, the route from the assisted living facility to Jimmy Jakes’ Jason talked a mile a minute about this and that but mainly about some old time landmarks since usually the only times he got out to see the old town these days was when Ben came to take him out somewhere. Ben usually drove mute until they arrived at their destination unless Jason forced an answer out of him. As they passed a heavily weeded chain link fence empty lot Jason shouted over the sound of the radio and the traffic noise, “Remember Billy Badger who used to work at Howdy’s Beef Burger when that place was on that weeded lot over there back when we were in high school in the early 1960s.” A quick no came from Ben. “Sure you do remember he used to give us whatever leftovers for free he had when he closed up at night and we stopped by when we had either been drinking all night and were hungry beasts or when we struck out with some hot date who turned out to be directly related to the Blessed Virgin Mary.” Ben laughed at that last reference since he had had plenty of red-headed, his favor color hair for girls then, Irish Catholic girls with great shapes but who keep the bible between their knees and rosary bead and novena books as extra protection to ward off the slightest attempt to go beyond some half-ass French kissing but he had to admit he did not remember Billy although he did remember that they got plenty of free burgers, fries and frappes at Howdy’s. Jason wouldn’t let the subject go, “Sure you do, remember he lived over on Walnut Street by the marshes, over on what did we call it when we lived over there ourselves?” Ben interrupted with a far-away and long gone blush every time he thought about the words even now “on the wrong side of the tracks.” Jason continued, “ you remember then he was friends with Max McGee the star football player of our class  and had a sister, Donna, a couple of years older, who gave guys blow jobs, great blow jobs and liked to swallow the cum, said she had heard it was a good protein source, unlike most girls on a date from what Max said. Said she would give guys “head” so she could stay a virgin, you know that old Catholic girl thing when they wouldn’t go all the way but still wanted guys to take them out for a good time and not stay at home by the midnight phone reading the Bible or something once they got the reputation for not putting out.” Ben laughed again and thought maybe Jason wasn’t failing quite as badly as he thought but still said no to knowing who Billy Badger was and would have certainly been interested in that sister Donna if he had known Billy, probably would have been practically living at his house on the off chance he was hungry for some protein, or wanted to stay a virgin, and Jason finally let it go.

As they passed the high school Ben mentioned to Jason that he was glad that he had not gone to their 50^th high school class reunion even when he had gotten in contact with Dora Kiley, who was the chairperson of the reunion committee as she had been ever since the fifth reunion, and told her he was interested in helping out since this would probably be the last chance to see the old gang that most members of the class would have and in line with his newfound feelings about the town since his mother had died a few years before he wanted to take that trip down  memory lane. As usual though things, old time hometown and family things had once again not worked out since once he got on the class website that Dora and her committee had established he got in contact with an old flame, Larissa Smart, and in the process got too close to her and Laura had read him the riot act forcing him to abandon those plans. Jason remained silent for the few seconds that Ben talked about the class of 1964 since he always did so when Ben spoke about the class or members of it like Denny, Hutchy, Danny, Steve or Boris who Jason used to hang around with for the simple reason that he had never graduated from high school, had dropped out in the eleventh grade to follow some girl from up in New Hampshire first and when that did not pan out  he drifted for a while out toward the prairies of Kansas got into trouble out there involving robbing a gas station, did some time and when he came back felt it was too late to go back to school and so enlisted in the Army after another robbery of a variety store and the judge’s choice can a-calling.

Ben could always tell when he made a faux pas by mentioning the Class of 1964 because not only would Jason not answer any remembrance questions like what had happened to Denny (he had passed away several years before Ben learned from Dora who was something like the class obituary writer as well as permanent chairperson of  every reunion since she had never left town, had married a dentist who practiced in the town although he had grown up in Hingham) but would jump quickly to another subject and he did so here. “Did you remember Marty Callahan?” When Ben answered no Jason as was his habit of late would say “You don’t, sure you do, the big kid who used to hang around the miniature golf course and had that ’59 Chevy who later married some money from up in Boston and grabbed a couple of taxi cabs and made some more money. I ran into him and he didn’t recognize me as much as I did for him back in the day getting him jobs, money, liquor and girls.” (That “running into Marty” upon further discussion turned out to have been thirty years later when he had seen Marty downtown after Lydia had fled and he was living in a broken down two-bit rooming house on Tappan Street and was “in his cups” after he had just finished up a six-month stretch for check-kiting in the county jail, Jesus, what a piece of work.).

Mercifully Jimmy Jakes’ came into view and to cut the conversation he asked Jason if he thought he would need help getting out of the car. He grumpily answered that he probably would need help, not a good sign, and in the case did so needing not only help getting out of the car, but Ben had to brace him up the three steps to the front door and then after being greeted by Helen the hostess and part-owner grabbed a booth close to the front door. Helen, an old flame, a heart-breaker, of Ben, Jason, Frankie and a couple of other corner boys who wouldn’t even come across with that Catholic chastity blow job to keep her virginity, said even thinking about doing that act then was nasty and would slap a guy in the face if he asked or tried to ease her face down to his groin to get her going, but still had guys, Ben, Jason, Frankie and that couple of other corner boys calling for dates and lying about what she did to them on those dates until one night in front of their high school hangout Frankie let the cat out of the bag and admitted she never did him, never did the nasty and everybody laughed and confessed their own failed tales. She thereafter sat by the midnight telephone whether reading her Bible or not nobody knew, or cared about. Whether she subsequently changed her mind, a lot of girls did for reasons other than chastity later, about doing those blow jobs her nobody knows since she got married out of high school had four kids and had been divorced a couple of times before becoming a part-owner after Jimmy Jakes passed away and his widow sold the place to Helen and her boyfriend. All those sex thoughts though about Helen now being beyond the pale since she too had not aged gracefully. )                           

“You know I like to use my Jet Blue American Express card whenever I can so I get points for flights since the points goes for that,” Ben said sitting in seat across the booth from Jason as they waited for the waitress to come and give them menus. Jason remarked “American Express, don’t leave home without it. You know Karl Malden made a fortune in the commercials off of saying that.” Ben tried to explain, fruitlessly tried to explain why he used American Express again, to no avail as Jason went on and on about what a lucky stiff Malden was to get that commercial that everybody would remember and that whoever had thought that long ago slogan up was pretty clever. Ben suffered through this monologue as he knew from previous experiences that saying he did not give a rat’s ass about the slogan, Karl Malden or anything else about American Express would only get him more jabbering talk (and a headache) so it was better to let it go, much better and wait for an opening to change the subject.  

Suddenly Jason switched up the subject out of the blue as happened a lot more at these luncheons and asked Ben whether he had heard that Carly Simon had disclosed who her famous song from the 1970s You’re So Vain was about. Ben answered that he had heard about it, had seen something about it on the Comcast homepage on his computer but did not know who the person was. “Was it James Taylor, Jack Nicholson somebody like that?” he asked out loud. “No, it was Warren Beatty,” chortled Jason adding “Old Warren got around.” “I suppose that is not surprising since he did seem to be a peacock in those days,” Ben said. Jason then mentioned that when he was married to Lydia in the 1970s he used to play the song every chance he got on various jukeboxes at joints Vera and he hung out at. Ben asked whether his ex-wife was vain and that was why they played it. “No, I was the vain one in those days, that’s what she said but we just liked the song really” Jason replied. Ben arched his eyebrows trying to picture the ravaged over-weight balding disheveled old man whom he just had to help slide into the booth seat across from him as some peacock worthy of such homage but failed to see it although like most things these days when the pair got together for an occasional lunch in their old growing up town he kept those thoughts to himself, let the past bury the past.

Then Ben asked if Warren Beatty was still alive and Jason said he thought so and added “He will have to wait until his sister tells him he can die.” Ben looked startled across the table and asked who Beatty’s sister was and why she had any say in the matter. “Oh Shirley McClain, the actress, you know she is into all this zodiac and New Age stuff.” “Oh” said Bart ready to leave the subject since he knew if he pursued the thing further he would get much more about McClain, about the New Age, about Beatty even than he had bargained for. Many conversations these days on both sides wound up like that Ben thought as the waitress came by with menus and asked if the pair wanted anything to drink. “Club Soda, no ice, no lemon and a glass of regular water, no ice, ” said Ben who had recently started drinking the club soda to help his stomach and help digest his food. Of course Jason as Jason had been doing since they first meet down at Johnny Slacks’ bowling alleys back in the early 1960s when Carver, the very town they were sitting in that moment was the cranberry capital of the world and the Finn-town section of town so called after all the Finnish people who worked the bogs , the “boggers” controlled the life, the political life of the town before the big industrial-sized operations took over and left the Finns as desperately poor as any other ethnic minority whose livelihood had been taken away chirped up, “Pepsi, ice please.”

The order taken they perused their respective menus looking for some light meal although  Ben knew once he made his own selection that would also be Jason’s although they had always liked different foods even when they hung out together but these days, the long days since Jason had a sense of what constituted proper meals since he had not been a restaurant regular for a long time before Ben came back on the scene Jason took Ben’s lead. And so it was, Chicken Marsala. Two orders. Easy for the waitress to remember Jason said snidely. Jason then looking away after stating his luncheon preference asked Ben if he remembered Hutchy, “You know Hutchy who caddied with us over at the Old Rochester Country Club, the guy who got me in good with the caddy-master, Kevin Walsh, and the pro, Dan Shea, whatever happened to him. Didn’t he graduate with our class.” Ben gave the obligatory “I don’t know” since he did not want to discuss anything to do with anything about that class reunion business and although he truly did not know the fate of Hutchy he did know that he had not graduated with the Class of 1964 since Jason had asked him that same question several times when he was interested in class reunions and had looked up Hutchy name William Hutchison and it had not been among the names in the yearbook.  

The food came, well prepared and savory as was, and is now. the case with Jimmy Jakes’ Dinner which is why fads may come and go but good solid if sometimes stolid food is why the Jimmy’s Dinner had survived through thick and thin. Then while eating Jason blurted out, “Remember Rick Phelan who lived over on Kendall Street who I used to hang with when I worked at Dunkin Donuts nights. He killed a guy, a big guy too, one night in a brawl and did some serious time for it.” Ben, getting slightly perturbed, but holding his tongue knowing this was going to be a tough day in the memory department just nodded and said that Phelan definitely had been a badass and let it go at that. Several more references to long gone don’t know where ghost riders from the past came Ben’s way, mainly those whom he did not know since these guys while they lived in the town were part of Jason’s subsequent career as a petty criminal and short end felon.        

After agreeing to have no dessert although Jimmy Jakes’ always had great pies a la mode and Ben grabbing the check, slipping the waitress his credit card and leaving a cash tip Ben once again although in reverse helped Jason out of the booth, out the Dinner door and into the car. As they rode the now long road back to Jason’s Jason suddenly asked Ben if he remembered Gabby Hayes, the old cowboy actor who played with Tom Mix in the old days. Ben suddenly realized after saying that he thought he remembered the old actor that Jason was adrift in the past even more he suspected, apparently nothing past about 1965. After handing off Jason to the nurse’s aide at the door of the assisted living home though Ben chirped out, “I’ll call you in a couple of weeks about next month’s dinner. Remember it will be your turn to pay.”                            

Jesus, A Man Of Her Own- With Barbara Stanwyck’s “No Man Of Her Own” In Mind

DVD Review

No Man Of Her Own, starring Barbara Stanwyck, 1951  

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

“Boy some of the plot lines in these old black and white film noir type movies that I was addicted to as a kid in the late 1950s, early 1960s when I would go to the Strand Theater over on Lipton Street in back of Levitt’s Department Store either by myself or with Larry Jeffers who was also addicted although he was not a guy that I hung around with otherwise defy belief,” Sam Eaton mentioned to Ralph Morris one night at Jimmy’s Grille in Boston. Ralph was in one of his periodic trips to town to see Sam and a few other guys from their old political days now that they all were more or less retired and so finally had time to reminisce about the old days, or anything that popped into their heads.  

Lately Sam, aside from some blistering commentary about the endless wars of the American government which was the cement that glued this group together since they all were members in good standing of Veterans for Peace which as the name indicates stand forthwith against the last decade or so of catastrophic American foreign policy beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq, regaled one and all with his new “hobby,” or really an old one that he now had time to put some time into watching old time black and white films, mostly film noir, via his subscription to Netflix. The film that Sam was referring to in his conversation directed at Ralph was Barbara Stanwyck’s No Man Of Her Own which sounds innocuous enough but which turned on a very funny dime as the plot unfolded. Ralph, not particularly a movie buff but expressing interest in what Sam had to say since he usually made the old gang laugh, asked Sam why he was so worked up about this one when usually he would just comment on the film and let it go. That was all that Sam needed to egg him on.    

“Okay, now this Barbara Stanwyck who was a dish in her time and did some great work in films like Double Indemnity where the plot really had you going and where she really was a femme fatale  from the word “go” and had this insurance guy like putty in her hands is supposed to be this woman scorned. Scorned by this bad ass guy, Morley, a guy who was nothing but a grifter, a two-bit guy who always had an edge on, was always looking for the main chance. See Barbara, her name was Helen in the film, though had two problems, one she was in love with this slug and second she had given into him in a moment of passion and was as the film opened about eight months pregnant, very pregnant, very pregnant without a wedding ring in 1950s America. But our boy Morley had already tired of Helen, who seemed like some kind of out of her depths farm girl, and had moved onto faster company, a blonde who looked like she wouldn’t take any guff from our boy, not without some cost. All that part seemed probable, guys giving the girl they just seduced the air happens all the time, kid’s stuff.                       

Here’s where the thing starts to fall apart plot-wise though. This Morley springs for a train ticket for Helen to go to Frisco town and work out her troubles there. Other than the ticket she has no dough for anything to eat and so on the train she looks like something out of displaced person camp, strictly from hunger. Then this couple, this couple where the wife is also pregnant but with a wedding ring in 1950s America which also happens all the time, takes pity on her, feeds her and some kind of bond grew between the two women. The wife gives Helen her wedding ring to hold for a minute while she is freshening up in the Ladies’ room. Then with the ring safely on her finger the train slides over a cliff, or runs off the track anyway. Runs off the track and kills the couple but leaves Helen while severely injured still alive and the baby she is carrying too. A boy as it turned out.  

Of course now that the screenwriter and director have gone to the effort of putting that ring on her finger everybody from the hospital staff, and this is key, to the guy in that dead couple’s wealthy parents think that she is that dead wife. Want to bring her home with the baby as a lasting remembrance of their dead son. Helen balks a little but with no dough, no husband (no man of her own of the title), and no respectable ring on her finger if she takes the one she has off she decides to take the ticket, take the ride. The family embraces her like one of their own. 

Problem is every time somebody mentions something about her and their son, something that she should know, she is clueless although nobody seems bothered by that. Nobody except Bill, the dead husband’s brother who looks at her askance every time she makes a faux pas. Still he gives her a pass, even letting her into the family will just like she was family. See this Bill is in love with Helen if you can feature that. Now Barbara Stanwyck was definitely a looker in something like Double Indemnity but in this role she is well motherly if you want to know and why a good looking guy would flip for her seemed odd. But there you have it the guy is going to be tested on that love in any case.   

Morley, or guys like Morley are always looking for the main chance and he was not different here than when he gave her the walking papers. Now that she is on easy street he wants in on the dough and is not particular how he gets it, is even willing to wait as long as he gets his long large. She balks or tries to when he forces her to marry him to protect her child’s future and the family’s. But in the end she knows that the only way to get rid of this snake is to Dial M for murder. And she goes to his office and puts a bullet right where it hurts. In the meantime Bill is frantic about her whereabouts and finally winds up at that Morley office right after she wastes Morley. Here’s where Bill proved his colors though he helped get rid of Morley’s body, threw it off a train trestle, nice touch. Of course a guy doing a good deed and a gal who is just protecting her child can’t go under, not in a 1950s movie, no matter how much they try and so in the end they are exonerated. Seems Helen didn’t kill Morley. He had already been killed by that blonde who meant business and who got miffed when Morley tossed her over for Helen’s riches. Figures that there would be a blonde involved somewhere. But you see what I mean about how it doesn’t hold together?

Everybody nodded in agreement and then Ralph chirped up-“What don’t you look those odd-ball plot lines on Wikipedia before you order them from Netflix.” Yeah, Ralph good idea.