Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the legendary Lavern Baker performing her classic, Jim Dandy to set the tone of r this sketch.
I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in my ill-winded old age holding forth (nice, right, much better than pontificating, no question, or worst misty dream memory lane trance muttering ) reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s and early 1960s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also equally inevitable trauma of the last dance. That event, the last dance that is, was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. The last chance to rise (or fall) in the torrid and relentless pecking order of the social scene at school.
And moreover to prove to that certain she that you were made of some sort of heroic stuff, the stuff of dreams, of her dreams, thank you very much. Moreover, to make use of that social capital you invested in by learning to dance (at one Miss Wyatt’s, on the sly, unknown on the other side town, on frosty Saturday mornings, ah love’s youth), or the “shadow” of learning to dance (don’t blame tyrant Miss Wyatt for born two left feet, or close to it).
The following is one such episode in that old time, eternal saga.
There were two phases to the old school days dance scene, the high school one when we had all learned, or should have learned, the ropes enough not to be too foolish or too out of line on that social occasion, not if we expected to get a tussle from that certain she or he and the middle school one (formerly known as junior high school, and rightly so, but we will use the current usage here on the off chance that someone who only knows the term middle school is reading this). One could draw a sharp distinction between the two based on such factors as age, the more convoluted nature of social relationships, physical and sexual growth, changes in musical taste, attitudes toward life and toward the opposite sex (and, nowadays, same sex) all made them perfectly obvious as two distinct affairs. Except the additional ubiquitous teacher chaperones to guard against all manner of murder and mayhem, or more likely, someone sneaking out for butts, booze or a little off-hand nuzzling (or mercy, all three) at high school dances. Then. I will keep strictly to the “hot” middle school dance scene here.
In a sense the middle school scene is just an earlier version of the high school dance. No, stop, what am I talking about, hell, there is no question that the high school dance was a picnic to detail in comparison. We were light years ahead by then. At the middle school dance we were just wet-behind-the- ears (boy and girls alike, although I think the girls were a little ahead of us, or at least we boys liked the idea that they were).
Here though is what I gathered from a fellow middle school-er, Francis J. Murphy, “Frankie,” my best friend in those tormented years, when he heard that the big school dance was coming up in the spring (of, ouch, 1959) .
He merely went into denial, denial that he could care about such a “bourgeois” event (not his word, what would we know of bourgeois, or working class either, although the latter was what we were, stuff then better left to Mister Karl Marx and associates, but the idea was there). Such a “square” event (his word, although he was probably clueless about what was square and hip in those days) and that he planned to be “out of town” that day. Ya, like he was the President on important business of state.
But here is the funny thing, a few weeks before the big event, as most of his classmates started to get lined up for, and behind the spirit of, this thing he started making noises about being free, maybe, or that he might be able to free up time that day to fit the dance into his schedule. Probably just a snafu of some sort with his appointment secretary previously, I assume. See, here is what he, and every not-nerd, non-dweeb, heck, just breathing young male and female knew, this event would permanently solidify, solidify like stone, the social order of the school, in or out, no questions asked, no prisoners taken. So he too “knew” that signing that world peace treaty that he seemed to be on the verge of signing rather than attend the dance was nothing compared to being in the fight, the furious fight, to gain leverage in the upper echelons of the school pecking order.
All fair enough, all true enough, if only a rather short sketch of the preparations leading up to the preparations, the seemingly endless preparations for the ‘big night.’ A night that included getting into some serious grooming workouts, including procedures not usually included in the daily toilet. Plenty of deodorant, hair oil, and breathe fresheners. Moreover, endless energy used getting worked up about wardrobe, mode of transportation, and other factors that I have addressed elsewhere, and, additionally, factors contingent upon whether you were dated up or stag. All that need not be repeated here.
Damn, whatever physical description I could conger up would be just so much eye wash anyway. The thing could have been held in an airplane hangar and we all could have been wearing paper bags for all we really cared. What mattered, and maybe will always matter, is the hes looking at those certain shes, and visa-versa. The endless, small, meaningful looks (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell) except for those wallflowers who were permanently looking down at the ground (and maybe still are). And that is the real struggle that went on in those events, for the stags.
The struggle against wallflower-dom. The struggle for at least some room in the social standing, even if near the bottom, rather than outcaste-dom. That struggle was as fierce as any class struggle old Karl Marx might have projected. The straight, upfront calculation (and not infrequently miscalculation), the maneuvering, the averting of eyes, the not averting of eyes, the reading of silence signals, the comprehended "no," the gratuitous "yes." Need I go on? I don’t think so, except, if you had the energy, or even if you didn’t, then you dragged yourself to that last dance. And hoped, hoped to high heaven, that it was a slow one.
Ah, memory. The last dance this night was a slow one. And that “cured” for the moment any angst suffered the last several days before the big night. And who did that fateful last dance save? Well that’s simple. Anyone who has been wounded in love’s young battles; anyone who has longed for that he or she to come through the door; anyone that has been on a date that did not work out, been stranded on a date that has not worked out; anyone who has had to submit to being pieced off with car hop drive-in food; anyone who has gotten a “Dear John” letter or its equivalent; anyone who has been jilted by that certain he or she; anyone who has been turned down for that last school dance from that certain he or she that you counted on to make your lame evening; anyone who has waited endlessly for the telephone to ring(now iPhone, etc., okay for the two people from the younger set who may read this)to hear that certain voice; and, especially those hes and she who have shed those midnight tears for youth's lost love. In short, everybody except those few “most popular “types who the rest of us will not shed one tear over, or the nerds who didn’t count (or care) anyway. The last dance song this night: The Dubs on the slow classic (and the one you prayed for to be that last dance) Could This Be Magic.
Monday, April 30, 2012
An Uncounted Causality Of War- The Never-Ending Vietnam War Story On The Anniversary Of The Fall Of Ho Chi Minh City 1975 (Then Saigon)
Markin comment:
THERE IS NO WALL IN WASHINGTON-BUT, MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE
This space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. Let me tell the tale.
Recently I returned, while on some unrelated business, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood is one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950's, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. While there I happened upon an old neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until, as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar?
The long and the short of it is that he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny for a number of valid medical reasons was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on that Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately, Kenny’s just begins.
Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Certainly not a happy story. Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. And those who for other reasons could no adjust and found themselves on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by the loss of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest in Peace.
THERE IS NO WALL IN WASHINGTON-BUT, MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE
This space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. Let me tell the tale.
Recently I returned, while on some unrelated business, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood is one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950's, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. While there I happened upon an old neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until, as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar?
The long and the short of it is that he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny for a number of valid medical reasons was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on that Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately, Kenny’s just begins.
Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Certainly not a happy story. Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. And those who for other reasons could no adjust and found themselves on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by the loss of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest in Peace.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Yes, Got Them Born In The Alley, Raised Up In The Slums Blues- Barrelhouse Mamas- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Lucille Bogan performing her barrelhouse blues classic They Ain’t Walking No More.
CD Review
Barrelhouse Mamas: Born in the Alley, Raised Up In The Slums: Classic Piano Rags, Blues and Stomps from the 1920s and 30s, Yazoo Records, 1999
Recently I made a point in another CD review that dealt with some favorite blues torch singers that although it was mainly male blues singers (Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and the like) who were “discovered “during the 1960s folk revival minute back in the day, back in the 1920s and 30s day, the most well-known blues singers were female. One only needs to think of names like Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey and Memphis Minnie, none of who are on this CD under review, Barrelhouse Mamas: Born In The Alley, Raised Up In The Slums: Classic Piano Rags, Blues, and Stomps from the 1920s and 30s, to get the point. Of course the above-mentioned names were the stars, the ones who achieved blues immortality and who drew down some serious dough performing for black audiences (mainly) in concert halls, movie theaters and any hall that was ready to roll, north and south, although mainly south in the then heartland of the American black population.
Naturally like any genre not everybody made it to the top, not even close in some cases. Not for lack of talent, but maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time or maybe just because they liked working the off-beat milieu. With few exceptions the ‘barrelhouse mamas” here came up the hard way, made a small mark and faded back in obscurity once the blues (and jazz) craze died down with the advent of the Great Depression in the 1930s when spare nickels were not to be used for anything but survival.
The top tier performers here include a few songs by Lucille Bogan, a couple by Margaret Thornton including her Jockey Blues, and a couple by Saint Louis Bessie (not the famous Bessie Smith), including He Treats Me Like A Dog. Mainly these are songs that would resonate with their juke joint-style audiences, songs of no good, mean, always leaving, always two-timing, mistreatin’ men, no enough dough, not enough liquor, no way out of the slums and no way out of dire poverty (except maybe turning “tricks” on those mean streets). This is real slice of life down at the base of American society stuff not that far removed from today’s story line. As always with a Yazoo CD compilation there is an extremely informative booklet detailing the known information about these hard-pressed women.
CD Review
Barrelhouse Mamas: Born in the Alley, Raised Up In The Slums: Classic Piano Rags, Blues and Stomps from the 1920s and 30s, Yazoo Records, 1999
Recently I made a point in another CD review that dealt with some favorite blues torch singers that although it was mainly male blues singers (Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and the like) who were “discovered “during the 1960s folk revival minute back in the day, back in the 1920s and 30s day, the most well-known blues singers were female. One only needs to think of names like Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey and Memphis Minnie, none of who are on this CD under review, Barrelhouse Mamas: Born In The Alley, Raised Up In The Slums: Classic Piano Rags, Blues, and Stomps from the 1920s and 30s, to get the point. Of course the above-mentioned names were the stars, the ones who achieved blues immortality and who drew down some serious dough performing for black audiences (mainly) in concert halls, movie theaters and any hall that was ready to roll, north and south, although mainly south in the then heartland of the American black population.
Naturally like any genre not everybody made it to the top, not even close in some cases. Not for lack of talent, but maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time or maybe just because they liked working the off-beat milieu. With few exceptions the ‘barrelhouse mamas” here came up the hard way, made a small mark and faded back in obscurity once the blues (and jazz) craze died down with the advent of the Great Depression in the 1930s when spare nickels were not to be used for anything but survival.
The top tier performers here include a few songs by Lucille Bogan, a couple by Margaret Thornton including her Jockey Blues, and a couple by Saint Louis Bessie (not the famous Bessie Smith), including He Treats Me Like A Dog. Mainly these are songs that would resonate with their juke joint-style audiences, songs of no good, mean, always leaving, always two-timing, mistreatin’ men, no enough dough, not enough liquor, no way out of the slums and no way out of dire poverty (except maybe turning “tricks” on those mean streets). This is real slice of life down at the base of American society stuff not that far removed from today’s story line. As always with a Yazoo CD compilation there is an extremely informative booklet detailing the known information about these hard-pressed women.
Out In The Torch Singer Be-Bop Blues Night- Blues Masters- The Women Hold Forth- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Billie Holiday holding forth, very holding forth on Stormy Blues.
Blues Masters: Classic Blues Women: Volume 11, various artists, Rhino Records, 1993
I swear, I swear on a stack of seven bibles, I am off, finally off film noir femme fatales after watching (or rather , re-watching) Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, mainly Jane Greer, go round and round in the classic crime noir Out Of The Past. How could any rational man not think twice about following such femmes as Jane Greer’s Kathy who just happened to be a little gun happy (and a chronic liar to boot) who put a couple in Robert Mitchum’s Jeff after he did somersaults to try to save her bacon about six times. That’s gratitude for you.
Well, like I said I am off, done, finished with those two-timing dames, and good riddance. Now I have time, plenty of time, and my health to speak of blues in the night wailing female torch singers who, as far as I know, do not carry or do not need to carry guns, to do their business. Of course it was not big deal to change my allegiances because since I was a kid I have been nothing but putty in their hands for any torch singer who could throw away my blues with some sorrow laden tune.
Maybe it was in some back-drop Harvard Square coffeehouse in long mist time 1960s when I first heard such voices, first among them, Billie Holiday, late, early, whatever Billie Holiday singing of some man on her mind, mostly some no good man, some no dough man, who maybe took a couple of whacks at her for no reason, or just took her last dough to bet on that next sure thing…and happiness. Or maybe earlier when some home background 1940s we-won-the-war be-bop music filtered through the air my own childhood house from the local radio station playing Peggy Lee all Benny Goodman’d up, or Helen Whiting, or, or well, you get the drift. Stuff that would stop me in my tracks and ask, ask where did that sorrow come from.
Later, several years later, it blossomed fully when some now half-forgotten (but only half-forgotten) girlfriend gave me a complete Vanguard Record set of all of Bessie Smith’s recordings. Ah heaven, and ah the student neighbors who had to listen for half a day while I played the damn set through. So get it, get it straight I am a long-time aficionado of the genre and commenting on this Blues Masters CD about classic women blues singers is a piece of cake.
Strangely, although the bulk of the “discovered” blues singers of the folk revival minute of the 1960s were male (Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House, Skip James, et. al) back in the serious heyday of the blues in the 1920s and early 1930s women dominated the blues market, the popular music of the day. And the women featured in this compilation were the most well-known of the myriad torch singers that lit up the concert hall, speakeasies and juke joints North and South. Mamie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, the divide Sippie Wallace, of course Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey (later to be one of the first women blues producers and record company owners), and Alberta Hunter are all rightfully and righteously here.
What, no Billie Holiday? Well yes she does Stormy Weather here so stay calm. I have singled her out because to me her voice, her phrasing, her half breath between notes is what torch singing was all about and all about whenever I felt (or feel) blue I just turned to Billie and she would sing your blues away (unfortunately not her own). Now if I could just get a torch singer who was also a non-gun- toting femme fatale I would be in very heaven. Ya, I know I said I was off femmes but what are you going to do.
Blues Masters: Classic Blues Women: Volume 11, various artists, Rhino Records, 1993
I swear, I swear on a stack of seven bibles, I am off, finally off film noir femme fatales after watching (or rather , re-watching) Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, mainly Jane Greer, go round and round in the classic crime noir Out Of The Past. How could any rational man not think twice about following such femmes as Jane Greer’s Kathy who just happened to be a little gun happy (and a chronic liar to boot) who put a couple in Robert Mitchum’s Jeff after he did somersaults to try to save her bacon about six times. That’s gratitude for you.
Well, like I said I am off, done, finished with those two-timing dames, and good riddance. Now I have time, plenty of time, and my health to speak of blues in the night wailing female torch singers who, as far as I know, do not carry or do not need to carry guns, to do their business. Of course it was not big deal to change my allegiances because since I was a kid I have been nothing but putty in their hands for any torch singer who could throw away my blues with some sorrow laden tune.
Maybe it was in some back-drop Harvard Square coffeehouse in long mist time 1960s when I first heard such voices, first among them, Billie Holiday, late, early, whatever Billie Holiday singing of some man on her mind, mostly some no good man, some no dough man, who maybe took a couple of whacks at her for no reason, or just took her last dough to bet on that next sure thing…and happiness. Or maybe earlier when some home background 1940s we-won-the-war be-bop music filtered through the air my own childhood house from the local radio station playing Peggy Lee all Benny Goodman’d up, or Helen Whiting, or, or well, you get the drift. Stuff that would stop me in my tracks and ask, ask where did that sorrow come from.
Later, several years later, it blossomed fully when some now half-forgotten (but only half-forgotten) girlfriend gave me a complete Vanguard Record set of all of Bessie Smith’s recordings. Ah heaven, and ah the student neighbors who had to listen for half a day while I played the damn set through. So get it, get it straight I am a long-time aficionado of the genre and commenting on this Blues Masters CD about classic women blues singers is a piece of cake.
Strangely, although the bulk of the “discovered” blues singers of the folk revival minute of the 1960s were male (Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House, Skip James, et. al) back in the serious heyday of the blues in the 1920s and early 1930s women dominated the blues market, the popular music of the day. And the women featured in this compilation were the most well-known of the myriad torch singers that lit up the concert hall, speakeasies and juke joints North and South. Mamie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, the divide Sippie Wallace, of course Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey (later to be one of the first women blues producers and record company owners), and Alberta Hunter are all rightfully and righteously here.
What, no Billie Holiday? Well yes she does Stormy Weather here so stay calm. I have singled her out because to me her voice, her phrasing, her half breath between notes is what torch singing was all about and all about whenever I felt (or feel) blue I just turned to Billie and she would sing your blues away (unfortunately not her own). Now if I could just get a torch singer who was also a non-gun- toting femme fatale I would be in very heaven. Ya, I know I said I was off femmes but what are you going to do.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Thanksgiving Football Rally, 1963
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American football on Thanksgiving. I knew when I Googled this search old Wikipedia would not let me down.
Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1964, comment:
Scene: Around and inside the old high school gym entrance on the Hamilton Street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross town arch-rival, Adamsville High School, in 1963. (Yes, that above-mentioned street for the forgetful is the one that had the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner. The place where every self-respecting be-bop high school guy “filled up,” his “boss” car, or his father’s on Friday or Saturday night, cheaply, so that he had enough dough to “spurge” at the end of that “hot date” night for burgers, fries and tonic, you remember soda, at Adventure Car Hop down on the Southern Artery.)
This ancient 1963 time, for the younger reader, was a time before they built what is apparently an addition, including a newer gym and cafeteria, modeled on the office buildings across the street from the school behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination. But this could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. And I am willing to bet six-two-and-even with cold hard cash gathered from my local ATM against all takers that this story “speaks,” except for the names, to what is up today at Thanksgiving football rally time as well:
Sure the air was cold, you could see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night felt cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. It was also starless, as the weather report had projected rain for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I was worried about, or cared about a little rain. I’ve seen and done many things in a late November New England winter rain, and December and January rains too, for that matter. No, this damn, is for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field would slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as it is a little rain, and a little mud, could prove to be a great equalizer.
This after all was class struggle. No, not the kind that you might have heard old Karl Marx and his boys talk about, although now that I think of it there might be something to that here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but right then I was worried, worried to perdition, about the battle of the titans on the gridiron, rain-soaked granite grey day or not. See, this particular class struggle was Class A Adamsville against Class B North Adamsville and we needed every advantage against this bigger school. (Yes, I know for those younger readers that today’s Massachusetts high schools are gathered in a bewildering number of divisions and sub-divisions for some purpose that escapes me but when football was played for keeps and honor simpler alphabetic designations worked just find.)
Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing was (is) any high school gym, any public high school gym, anywhere. Foldaway bleachers, foldaway divider (to separate boys for girls in gym class back in the day, if you can believe that), waxed and polished floors made of sturdy wood, don’t ask me what kind (oak, I guess) with various sets of lines for its other uses as a basketball or volleyball court. But enough of paid by the word stuff to add color to this sketch. The important thing was that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies were milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who have bled, bleed or want to bleed Raider red and even those oddballs that don't. This one stirs the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town.
This night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition to his heavy dose of school patriotism and wishful wishing that he had been just a little stronger, faster or agile to have made the team, was looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she has come for the festivities. And every unattached red-blooded girl student was searching for that certain he (and maybe wishing that just that moment the one she was interested in has been just a little stronger, faster or agile so she could bask in his reflected glory). Don’t tell me, boy or girl, agile or not, you didn’t take a peek, or at least a stealthy glance.
Among this throng of peekers, half-peekers and wannabe peekers were a couple of fervent not fast enough, strong enough, agile enough quasi-jock male students, one of them is writing this entry, the other the great long distance track man, Josh Breslin, was busy getting in his glances. Both were (are) members of the Class of 1964 who with a vested interest in seeing their football-playing fellow classmates pummel the cross town rival, and also, in the interest of full disclosure, are deeply emerged in the hunt for those elusive shes. I do not see the certain she that I am looking for but, as was my style then, I have taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects. (This led, on more than one occasion, including one “oh, damn” occasion, to have a very special she accuse me of perfidy, although she did not use that word, and dismissed me, words she did use, out of hand).
This was the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, as well so we had brought extra energy to the night’s performance. We were on the prowl and ready to do everything in our power to bring home victory…, well, almost everything except donning a football uniform to face the monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancied ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like those just mentioned stealthy glances, perfidious or not, and the like.
Finally, after much hubbub (and more coy and meaningful looks all around the place than one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally began, at first somewhat subdued due to the then very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd, as well as the president. But everyone, seemingly, had tacitly agreed for this little window of time that the outside world and its horrors would not intrude. A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Principal Kelley, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty stressing good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you play the game drone away.
Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider had (has) anything but thoughts of mayhem and casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying was so much wasted wind. This “bummer,” obligatory or not, was followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types, somebody’s girlfriend or some important alum’s daughter for all I knew. Certainly not in a league with the majorettes, who I will not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I was saving one of my sly, coy and not perfidious glances for one of them right then.
What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, was looking forward to get things moving though was the cheer-leading, led by the senior girls like the vivacious Roxanne Murphy ( who, if you can believe this, dismissed me out of hand, although not for perfidiousness( ouch), the spunky Josie McCarthy, and the plucky Linda Kelly. And when they hit center court they did not fail us with their flips, dips, and rah-rahs. Strangely, the band and its bevy of majorettes when it is their turn, with one noted exception, did not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls can twirl.
But this entire spectacle was so much, too much, introduction. For what was wanted, what was demanded of the situation, up close and personal, was a view of the Goliaths that will run over the cross town arch-rival the next day. A chance to yell ourselves silly. The season had been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team was highly regarded by lukewarm fans and sports nuts alike. Naturally, in the spirit, if not the letter of high school athletic ethos, the back-ups and non-seniors were introduced by Coach Leahy. Then came the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom have been playing for an eternity it seems. Names like Tom Kiley, Walt Simmons, Lee Munson, Paul Duchamp, Joe Zona, Don McNally, Jim Fallon, Charlie McDonald, Stevie Chase, "Woj" (Jesus, don’t forget to include him. I don't need that kind of madness coming down on my face, even now.) and on and on.
Oh, yes and “Bullwinkle”, Bill Curran, a behemoth of a run-over fullback, even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something was missing. A sullen collective pout filled the room. After the intros were over the restless crowd needed an oral reassurance from their warriors that the enemy was done for. And as he ambled up to the microphone and said just a couple of words we get just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. That is all we need. Boys and girls, this one is in the bag. And as we head for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band plays the school fight song to the tune of On Wisconsin. Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, young and old, wise or ignorance bled raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances? I hope so.
Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1964, comment:
Scene: Around and inside the old high school gym entrance on the Hamilton Street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross town arch-rival, Adamsville High School, in 1963. (Yes, that above-mentioned street for the forgetful is the one that had the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner. The place where every self-respecting be-bop high school guy “filled up,” his “boss” car, or his father’s on Friday or Saturday night, cheaply, so that he had enough dough to “spurge” at the end of that “hot date” night for burgers, fries and tonic, you remember soda, at Adventure Car Hop down on the Southern Artery.)
This ancient 1963 time, for the younger reader, was a time before they built what is apparently an addition, including a newer gym and cafeteria, modeled on the office buildings across the street from the school behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination. But this could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. And I am willing to bet six-two-and-even with cold hard cash gathered from my local ATM against all takers that this story “speaks,” except for the names, to what is up today at Thanksgiving football rally time as well:
Sure the air was cold, you could see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night felt cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. It was also starless, as the weather report had projected rain for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I was worried about, or cared about a little rain. I’ve seen and done many things in a late November New England winter rain, and December and January rains too, for that matter. No, this damn, is for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field would slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as it is a little rain, and a little mud, could prove to be a great equalizer.
This after all was class struggle. No, not the kind that you might have heard old Karl Marx and his boys talk about, although now that I think of it there might be something to that here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but right then I was worried, worried to perdition, about the battle of the titans on the gridiron, rain-soaked granite grey day or not. See, this particular class struggle was Class A Adamsville against Class B North Adamsville and we needed every advantage against this bigger school. (Yes, I know for those younger readers that today’s Massachusetts high schools are gathered in a bewildering number of divisions and sub-divisions for some purpose that escapes me but when football was played for keeps and honor simpler alphabetic designations worked just find.)
Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing was (is) any high school gym, any public high school gym, anywhere. Foldaway bleachers, foldaway divider (to separate boys for girls in gym class back in the day, if you can believe that), waxed and polished floors made of sturdy wood, don’t ask me what kind (oak, I guess) with various sets of lines for its other uses as a basketball or volleyball court. But enough of paid by the word stuff to add color to this sketch. The important thing was that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies were milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who have bled, bleed or want to bleed Raider red and even those oddballs that don't. This one stirs the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town.
This night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition to his heavy dose of school patriotism and wishful wishing that he had been just a little stronger, faster or agile to have made the team, was looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she has come for the festivities. And every unattached red-blooded girl student was searching for that certain he (and maybe wishing that just that moment the one she was interested in has been just a little stronger, faster or agile so she could bask in his reflected glory). Don’t tell me, boy or girl, agile or not, you didn’t take a peek, or at least a stealthy glance.
Among this throng of peekers, half-peekers and wannabe peekers were a couple of fervent not fast enough, strong enough, agile enough quasi-jock male students, one of them is writing this entry, the other the great long distance track man, Josh Breslin, was busy getting in his glances. Both were (are) members of the Class of 1964 who with a vested interest in seeing their football-playing fellow classmates pummel the cross town rival, and also, in the interest of full disclosure, are deeply emerged in the hunt for those elusive shes. I do not see the certain she that I am looking for but, as was my style then, I have taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects. (This led, on more than one occasion, including one “oh, damn” occasion, to have a very special she accuse me of perfidy, although she did not use that word, and dismissed me, words she did use, out of hand).
This was the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, as well so we had brought extra energy to the night’s performance. We were on the prowl and ready to do everything in our power to bring home victory…, well, almost everything except donning a football uniform to face the monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancied ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like those just mentioned stealthy glances, perfidious or not, and the like.
Finally, after much hubbub (and more coy and meaningful looks all around the place than one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally began, at first somewhat subdued due to the then very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd, as well as the president. But everyone, seemingly, had tacitly agreed for this little window of time that the outside world and its horrors would not intrude. A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Principal Kelley, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty stressing good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you play the game drone away.
Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider had (has) anything but thoughts of mayhem and casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying was so much wasted wind. This “bummer,” obligatory or not, was followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types, somebody’s girlfriend or some important alum’s daughter for all I knew. Certainly not in a league with the majorettes, who I will not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I was saving one of my sly, coy and not perfidious glances for one of them right then.
What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, was looking forward to get things moving though was the cheer-leading, led by the senior girls like the vivacious Roxanne Murphy ( who, if you can believe this, dismissed me out of hand, although not for perfidiousness( ouch), the spunky Josie McCarthy, and the plucky Linda Kelly. And when they hit center court they did not fail us with their flips, dips, and rah-rahs. Strangely, the band and its bevy of majorettes when it is their turn, with one noted exception, did not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls can twirl.
But this entire spectacle was so much, too much, introduction. For what was wanted, what was demanded of the situation, up close and personal, was a view of the Goliaths that will run over the cross town arch-rival the next day. A chance to yell ourselves silly. The season had been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team was highly regarded by lukewarm fans and sports nuts alike. Naturally, in the spirit, if not the letter of high school athletic ethos, the back-ups and non-seniors were introduced by Coach Leahy. Then came the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom have been playing for an eternity it seems. Names like Tom Kiley, Walt Simmons, Lee Munson, Paul Duchamp, Joe Zona, Don McNally, Jim Fallon, Charlie McDonald, Stevie Chase, "Woj" (Jesus, don’t forget to include him. I don't need that kind of madness coming down on my face, even now.) and on and on.
Oh, yes and “Bullwinkle”, Bill Curran, a behemoth of a run-over fullback, even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something was missing. A sullen collective pout filled the room. After the intros were over the restless crowd needed an oral reassurance from their warriors that the enemy was done for. And as he ambled up to the microphone and said just a couple of words we get just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. That is all we need. Boys and girls, this one is in the bag. And as we head for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band plays the school fight song to the tune of On Wisconsin. Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, young and old, wise or ignorance bled raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances? I hope so.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-Hayes Bickford Breakout 1962
Click on the headline to link to a photograph of a Hayes-Bickford on Huntington Avenue in Boston (no Cambridge one available) to add a little flavor to this entry.
The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.
Scene Two: Got The Urge For Going In Search Of The Blue- Pink Great American West Night- Hayes-Bickford Breakout 1962
Here I am again sitting, 3 o’clock in the morning sitting, bleary-eyed, slightly distracted after mulling over the back and forth of the twelve hundredth run-in (nice way to put it, right?) with Ma that has driven me out into this chilly early October 1962 morning. And where do I find myself sitting at this time of morning? Tired, but excitedly expectant, on an uncomfortable, unpadded bench seat on this rolling old clickity-clack monster of a Red Line subway car as it now waggles its way out past Kendall Station on its way to Central Square and then to the end of the line, Harvard Square. My hangout, my muse home, my night home, at least my weekend night home, my place to make sense of the world in a world that doesn’t make much sense, at least not enough much sense. Sanctuary, Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford sanctuary, misbegotten teenage boy sanctuary, recognized by august international law, recognized by sanctified canon law, or not.
That beef with Ma, that really unnumbered beef, forget about the 1200 I said before, that was just a guess, has driven me to take an “all-nighter” trip away from the travails of the old home town across Boston to the never-closed Hayes-Bickford cafeteria that beckons just as you get up the stairs from the Harvard Square subway tunnel. Damn, let me just get this off my chest and then I can tell the rest of the story. Ma said X, I pleaded for Y (hell this homestead civil war lent itself righteously to a nice algebraic formulation. You can use it too, no charge). Unbeknownst to me Y did not exist in Ma’s universe. Ever. Sound familiar? Sure, but I had to get it off my chest.
After putting on my uniform, my Harvard Square “cool” uniform: over-sized flannel brownish plaid shirt, belt-less black cuff-less chino pants, black Chuck Taylor logo-ed Converse sneakers, a now ratty old windbreaker won in a Fourth of July distance race a few years back when I really was nothing but a wet-behind-the ears kid to ward off the chill, and, and the absolutely required midnight sunglasses to hide those bleary eyes from a peeking world I was ready to go. To face the unlighted night, and fight against the dawn’s rising for another day. Oh ya, I forgot, I had to sneak out of the house stealthily, run like some crazed broken- field football player down the back of the property, and, after catching my breathe, walk a couple of miles over the North Adamsville Bridge and nasty, hostile (hostile if anyone was out, and anyone was sniping for a misbegotten teenage boy, for any purpose good or evil) Dorchester streets to get to the Fields Corner subway stop. The local Eastern Mass. bus had stopped its always erratic service hours ago, and, anyway, I usually would rather walk, in any case, than wait, wait my youth away for those buses to amble along our way with their byzantine schedules.
Right now though I am thinking, as those subway car wheels rattle beneath my feet, who knows, really, how or why it starts, that wanderlust start, that strange feeling in the pit of your stomach that you have to move on, or out, or up or you will explode, except you also know, or you damn well come to know that it eats away at a man, or a woman for that matter, in different ways. Maybe way back, way back in the cradle it was that first sense that there was more to the world that the four corners of that baby world existence and that if you could just, could just get over that little, little side board there might be something better, much better over the horizon. But, frankly that just seems like too much of a literary stretch even for me, moody teenage boy that I am, to swallow so let’s just say that it started once I knew that the ocean was a way to get away, if you needed to get away. But see I didn’t figure than one out for myself even, old Kenny from the old neighborhood in third grade is the one who got me hip to that, and then Johnny James and his brother filled in the rest of the blanks and so then I was sea-worthy, dream sea-worthy anyway.
But, honestly, that sea dream stuff can only be music for the future because right now I am stuck, although I do not always feel stuck about it, trying to figure my way out of high school world, or at least figure out the raging things that I want to do after high school that fill up my daydream time (study hall time, if you really want to know). Of course, as well, that part about the ocean just mentioned, well there was a literal part to the proposition since ocean-at-my-back (sometimes right at my back) New England homestead meant unless I wanted to take an ill-advised turn at piracy or high-seas hijacking or some such thing east that meant I had to head west. Right now west though is Harvard Square, its doings and not doings, it trumpet call to words, and sounds, and actions in the October Friday night all-night storm brewing.
The train now rounds the squeaky-sounding bend out of Central Square and stops at the underground Harvard Square station. So now I leave my pensive seat and stand waiting, waiting for the driver to release the pressure to let the sliding train door open, getting ready to jump off the old subway, two-step-at-a-time my way up the two flights of stairs and head for mecca to see if things jump for me tonight. The doors open at last. Up the two-stepped stairs I go, get to the surface and confront the old double-glassed Hayes door entrance and survey the vast table-filled room that at this hour has a few night owl stranglers spotted randomly throughout the place.
You know the old Hayes-Bickford, or one of them, if you live in Boston or New York City, or a few other places on the East Coast, don’t you? Put your tray on the metal slider (hey, I don’t know what you call that slider thing, okay) and cruise down the line from item to item behind the glass-enclosed bins of, mostly, steamy food, if you are looking for fast service, for a quick between doing things, pressing things, meal. Steamed and breaded everything from breakfast to lunch to dinner anytime topped off by dishwater quality coffee (refills on demand, if you feel lucky).
This is not the place to bring your date, certainly not your first date, except maybe for a quick cup of that coffee before going to some event, or home. What this is, really, is a place where you can hang out, and hang out with comfort, because nobody, nobody at all, is going to ask you to leave, at least if you act half-way human. And that is what this place is really about, the humans in all their human conditions doing human things, alien to you or not, that you see floating by you, as you take a seat at one of the one-size-fits all wooden tables with those red vinyl seat covered chairs replete with paper place settings, a few off-hand eating utensils and the usual obligatory array of condiments to help get down the food and drink offered here.
Let me describe who is here at this hour on an early Saturday morning in October 1962. I will not vouch for other times, or other days, but I know Friday and Saturday nights a little so I can say something about them. Of course there is the last drink at the last open barroom crowd, said bar already well-closed in blue law Massachusetts, trying to get sober enough by eating a little food to traverse the road home. Good luck. Needless to say eating food in an all-night cafeteria, any all-night cafeteria, means only one thing-the person is so caught up in a booze frenzy that he (mainly) or she (very occasionally) is desperate for anything to hang the name food on to. Frankly, except for the obligatory hard-dollar coffee-steamed to its essence, then through some mystical alchemic process re-beaned, and served in heavy ceramic mugs that keep in the warmth to keep the eyes open the food here is strictly for the, well, the desperate, drunk or sober.
I might mention a little more about the food as I go along but it is strictly to add color to this little story. Maybe, maybe it will add color to the story but this is mainly about the “literary” life at the old Hayes and the quest for the blue-pink night not the cuisine so don’t hold me to it. Here is the kicker though; there are a few, mercifully few this night, old winos, habitual drunks, and street vagabonds (I am being polite here) who are nuzzling their food, for real. This is the way that you can tell the "last drink" boys, the hail fellows well met, who are just out on the town and who probably go to one of the ten zillion colleges in the area and are drawn like moths (and like wayward high schools kids, including this writer) to the magic name, Harvard Square. They just pick at their food. Those other guys (again, mainly, guys) those habituals and professional waywards work at it like it is their last chance for salvation.
Harvard Square, bright lights, dead of nights, see the sights. That vision is nothing but a commercial, a commercial magnet for every young (and old) hustler within fifty miles of the place to come and display their “acumen”. Their hustle. Three card Monte, quick-change artistry, bait and hook, a little jack-rolling, fake dope-plying, lifting an off-hand wallet, the whole gamut of hustler con lore. On any given Harvard Square weekend night there have got to be more young, naïve, starry-eyed kids hanging out trying to be cool, but really, like me, just learning the ropes of life than you could shake a stick at to set a hustler’s heart, if he (mainly) or she (sometimes) had a heart.
I’ll tell you about a quick con that got me easy in a second but right now let me tell you that at this hour I can see a few con artists just now resting up after a hard night’s work around a couple of tables, comparing notes (or, more likely, trying to con each other, there is no honor among thieves in this little night world. Go to it boys). As to the con that got me, hey it was simple, a guy, an older guy, a twenty-five year old or something like that guy, came up to me while I was talking to a friend and said did I (we) want to get some booze. Sober, sixteen years old, and thrill-seeking I said sure (drinking booze is the coin of the realm for thrills these days, among high school kids that I know, maybe the older set, those college guys, are, I hear, experimenting with drugs but if so it is very on the QT).
He said name your poison, I did, and then he “suggested” a little something for himself. Sure, whatever is right. I gave him the money and he returned a few minutes later with a small bag with the top of a liquor bottle hanging out. He split. We went off to a private area around Harvard Yard (Phillips Brook House, I think) and got ready to have our first serious taste of booze, and maybe get rum brave enough to pick up some girls. Naturally, the bottle is a booze bottle alright but it had been opened (how long before is anyone’s guess) and filled with water. Sucker, right. Now the only reason that I am mentioning this story right now is that the guy who pulled this con is sitting, sitting like the King of Siam, just a few tables away from where I am sitting. The lesson learned for the road, for the future road that beckons: don’t accept packages from strangers without inspecting them and watch out for cons, right? No, hell no. The lesson is this: sure don’t fall for wise guy tricks but the big thing is to shake it off, forget about it if you see the con artist again. You are way to cool to let him (or occasionally her) think that they have conned you. Out loud, anyway.
But wait, I am not here at almost four o’clock in the Hayes-Bickford morning, the Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford morning, to talk about the decor, the food if that is what it is, about the clientele, humble, slick, or otherwise. I am here looking for “talent,” literary talent that is. See, I have been here enough, and have heard enough about the ”beats” (or rather pseudo-beats, or “late phase” beats at this time) and the “folkies” (music people breaking out of the Pop 40 music scene and going back to the roots of America music, way back) to know that a bunch of them, about six in all, right this minute are sitting in a far corner with a light drum tapping the beat listening to a guy in black pants(always de rigueur black), sneakers and a flannel shirt just like me reciting his latest poem. That possibility is what drove me here this night, and other nights as well. See the Hayes is known as the place where someone like Norman Mailer has his buttered toast after one of his “last drink” bouts. Or that Bob Dylan sat at that table, that table right over there, writing something on a napkin. Or some parallel poet to the one now wrapping up his seventy-seven verse imitation Allen Ginsberg's Howl master work went out to San Francisco and blew the lid off the town, the City Lights town, the literary town.
But I better, now that the five-ish dawn light is hovering after my dawdlings, trying to break through the night wars, get my droopy body down those subway stairs pretty soon and back across town before anyone at home notices that I am missing. Still I will take the hard-bitten coffee, re-beaned and all, I will take the sleepy eyes that are starting to weigh down my face, I will even take the con artists and feisty drunks just so that I can be here when somebody’s search for the blue-pink great American West night, farther west than Harvard Square night, gets launched.
The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.
Scene Two: Got The Urge For Going In Search Of The Blue- Pink Great American West Night- Hayes-Bickford Breakout 1962
Here I am again sitting, 3 o’clock in the morning sitting, bleary-eyed, slightly distracted after mulling over the back and forth of the twelve hundredth run-in (nice way to put it, right?) with Ma that has driven me out into this chilly early October 1962 morning. And where do I find myself sitting at this time of morning? Tired, but excitedly expectant, on an uncomfortable, unpadded bench seat on this rolling old clickity-clack monster of a Red Line subway car as it now waggles its way out past Kendall Station on its way to Central Square and then to the end of the line, Harvard Square. My hangout, my muse home, my night home, at least my weekend night home, my place to make sense of the world in a world that doesn’t make much sense, at least not enough much sense. Sanctuary, Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford sanctuary, misbegotten teenage boy sanctuary, recognized by august international law, recognized by sanctified canon law, or not.
That beef with Ma, that really unnumbered beef, forget about the 1200 I said before, that was just a guess, has driven me to take an “all-nighter” trip away from the travails of the old home town across Boston to the never-closed Hayes-Bickford cafeteria that beckons just as you get up the stairs from the Harvard Square subway tunnel. Damn, let me just get this off my chest and then I can tell the rest of the story. Ma said X, I pleaded for Y (hell this homestead civil war lent itself righteously to a nice algebraic formulation. You can use it too, no charge). Unbeknownst to me Y did not exist in Ma’s universe. Ever. Sound familiar? Sure, but I had to get it off my chest.
After putting on my uniform, my Harvard Square “cool” uniform: over-sized flannel brownish plaid shirt, belt-less black cuff-less chino pants, black Chuck Taylor logo-ed Converse sneakers, a now ratty old windbreaker won in a Fourth of July distance race a few years back when I really was nothing but a wet-behind-the ears kid to ward off the chill, and, and the absolutely required midnight sunglasses to hide those bleary eyes from a peeking world I was ready to go. To face the unlighted night, and fight against the dawn’s rising for another day. Oh ya, I forgot, I had to sneak out of the house stealthily, run like some crazed broken- field football player down the back of the property, and, after catching my breathe, walk a couple of miles over the North Adamsville Bridge and nasty, hostile (hostile if anyone was out, and anyone was sniping for a misbegotten teenage boy, for any purpose good or evil) Dorchester streets to get to the Fields Corner subway stop. The local Eastern Mass. bus had stopped its always erratic service hours ago, and, anyway, I usually would rather walk, in any case, than wait, wait my youth away for those buses to amble along our way with their byzantine schedules.
Right now though I am thinking, as those subway car wheels rattle beneath my feet, who knows, really, how or why it starts, that wanderlust start, that strange feeling in the pit of your stomach that you have to move on, or out, or up or you will explode, except you also know, or you damn well come to know that it eats away at a man, or a woman for that matter, in different ways. Maybe way back, way back in the cradle it was that first sense that there was more to the world that the four corners of that baby world existence and that if you could just, could just get over that little, little side board there might be something better, much better over the horizon. But, frankly that just seems like too much of a literary stretch even for me, moody teenage boy that I am, to swallow so let’s just say that it started once I knew that the ocean was a way to get away, if you needed to get away. But see I didn’t figure than one out for myself even, old Kenny from the old neighborhood in third grade is the one who got me hip to that, and then Johnny James and his brother filled in the rest of the blanks and so then I was sea-worthy, dream sea-worthy anyway.
But, honestly, that sea dream stuff can only be music for the future because right now I am stuck, although I do not always feel stuck about it, trying to figure my way out of high school world, or at least figure out the raging things that I want to do after high school that fill up my daydream time (study hall time, if you really want to know). Of course, as well, that part about the ocean just mentioned, well there was a literal part to the proposition since ocean-at-my-back (sometimes right at my back) New England homestead meant unless I wanted to take an ill-advised turn at piracy or high-seas hijacking or some such thing east that meant I had to head west. Right now west though is Harvard Square, its doings and not doings, it trumpet call to words, and sounds, and actions in the October Friday night all-night storm brewing.
The train now rounds the squeaky-sounding bend out of Central Square and stops at the underground Harvard Square station. So now I leave my pensive seat and stand waiting, waiting for the driver to release the pressure to let the sliding train door open, getting ready to jump off the old subway, two-step-at-a-time my way up the two flights of stairs and head for mecca to see if things jump for me tonight. The doors open at last. Up the two-stepped stairs I go, get to the surface and confront the old double-glassed Hayes door entrance and survey the vast table-filled room that at this hour has a few night owl stranglers spotted randomly throughout the place.
You know the old Hayes-Bickford, or one of them, if you live in Boston or New York City, or a few other places on the East Coast, don’t you? Put your tray on the metal slider (hey, I don’t know what you call that slider thing, okay) and cruise down the line from item to item behind the glass-enclosed bins of, mostly, steamy food, if you are looking for fast service, for a quick between doing things, pressing things, meal. Steamed and breaded everything from breakfast to lunch to dinner anytime topped off by dishwater quality coffee (refills on demand, if you feel lucky).
This is not the place to bring your date, certainly not your first date, except maybe for a quick cup of that coffee before going to some event, or home. What this is, really, is a place where you can hang out, and hang out with comfort, because nobody, nobody at all, is going to ask you to leave, at least if you act half-way human. And that is what this place is really about, the humans in all their human conditions doing human things, alien to you or not, that you see floating by you, as you take a seat at one of the one-size-fits all wooden tables with those red vinyl seat covered chairs replete with paper place settings, a few off-hand eating utensils and the usual obligatory array of condiments to help get down the food and drink offered here.
Let me describe who is here at this hour on an early Saturday morning in October 1962. I will not vouch for other times, or other days, but I know Friday and Saturday nights a little so I can say something about them. Of course there is the last drink at the last open barroom crowd, said bar already well-closed in blue law Massachusetts, trying to get sober enough by eating a little food to traverse the road home. Good luck. Needless to say eating food in an all-night cafeteria, any all-night cafeteria, means only one thing-the person is so caught up in a booze frenzy that he (mainly) or she (very occasionally) is desperate for anything to hang the name food on to. Frankly, except for the obligatory hard-dollar coffee-steamed to its essence, then through some mystical alchemic process re-beaned, and served in heavy ceramic mugs that keep in the warmth to keep the eyes open the food here is strictly for the, well, the desperate, drunk or sober.
I might mention a little more about the food as I go along but it is strictly to add color to this little story. Maybe, maybe it will add color to the story but this is mainly about the “literary” life at the old Hayes and the quest for the blue-pink night not the cuisine so don’t hold me to it. Here is the kicker though; there are a few, mercifully few this night, old winos, habitual drunks, and street vagabonds (I am being polite here) who are nuzzling their food, for real. This is the way that you can tell the "last drink" boys, the hail fellows well met, who are just out on the town and who probably go to one of the ten zillion colleges in the area and are drawn like moths (and like wayward high schools kids, including this writer) to the magic name, Harvard Square. They just pick at their food. Those other guys (again, mainly, guys) those habituals and professional waywards work at it like it is their last chance for salvation.
Harvard Square, bright lights, dead of nights, see the sights. That vision is nothing but a commercial, a commercial magnet for every young (and old) hustler within fifty miles of the place to come and display their “acumen”. Their hustle. Three card Monte, quick-change artistry, bait and hook, a little jack-rolling, fake dope-plying, lifting an off-hand wallet, the whole gamut of hustler con lore. On any given Harvard Square weekend night there have got to be more young, naïve, starry-eyed kids hanging out trying to be cool, but really, like me, just learning the ropes of life than you could shake a stick at to set a hustler’s heart, if he (mainly) or she (sometimes) had a heart.
I’ll tell you about a quick con that got me easy in a second but right now let me tell you that at this hour I can see a few con artists just now resting up after a hard night’s work around a couple of tables, comparing notes (or, more likely, trying to con each other, there is no honor among thieves in this little night world. Go to it boys). As to the con that got me, hey it was simple, a guy, an older guy, a twenty-five year old or something like that guy, came up to me while I was talking to a friend and said did I (we) want to get some booze. Sober, sixteen years old, and thrill-seeking I said sure (drinking booze is the coin of the realm for thrills these days, among high school kids that I know, maybe the older set, those college guys, are, I hear, experimenting with drugs but if so it is very on the QT).
He said name your poison, I did, and then he “suggested” a little something for himself. Sure, whatever is right. I gave him the money and he returned a few minutes later with a small bag with the top of a liquor bottle hanging out. He split. We went off to a private area around Harvard Yard (Phillips Brook House, I think) and got ready to have our first serious taste of booze, and maybe get rum brave enough to pick up some girls. Naturally, the bottle is a booze bottle alright but it had been opened (how long before is anyone’s guess) and filled with water. Sucker, right. Now the only reason that I am mentioning this story right now is that the guy who pulled this con is sitting, sitting like the King of Siam, just a few tables away from where I am sitting. The lesson learned for the road, for the future road that beckons: don’t accept packages from strangers without inspecting them and watch out for cons, right? No, hell no. The lesson is this: sure don’t fall for wise guy tricks but the big thing is to shake it off, forget about it if you see the con artist again. You are way to cool to let him (or occasionally her) think that they have conned you. Out loud, anyway.
But wait, I am not here at almost four o’clock in the Hayes-Bickford morning, the Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford morning, to talk about the decor, the food if that is what it is, about the clientele, humble, slick, or otherwise. I am here looking for “talent,” literary talent that is. See, I have been here enough, and have heard enough about the ”beats” (or rather pseudo-beats, or “late phase” beats at this time) and the “folkies” (music people breaking out of the Pop 40 music scene and going back to the roots of America music, way back) to know that a bunch of them, about six in all, right this minute are sitting in a far corner with a light drum tapping the beat listening to a guy in black pants(always de rigueur black), sneakers and a flannel shirt just like me reciting his latest poem. That possibility is what drove me here this night, and other nights as well. See the Hayes is known as the place where someone like Norman Mailer has his buttered toast after one of his “last drink” bouts. Or that Bob Dylan sat at that table, that table right over there, writing something on a napkin. Or some parallel poet to the one now wrapping up his seventy-seven verse imitation Allen Ginsberg's Howl master work went out to San Francisco and blew the lid off the town, the City Lights town, the literary town.
But I better, now that the five-ish dawn light is hovering after my dawdlings, trying to break through the night wars, get my droopy body down those subway stairs pretty soon and back across town before anyone at home notices that I am missing. Still I will take the hard-bitten coffee, re-beaned and all, I will take the sleepy eyes that are starting to weigh down my face, I will even take the con artists and feisty drunks just so that I can be here when somebody’s search for the blue-pink great American West night, farther west than Harvard Square night, gets launched.
An Encore –Singing The Blues For His Lord- The Reverend Gary Davis Is On Stage
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Reverend Gary Davis Performing On Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest".
CD Review
Reverend Gary Davis: At Home:1964-1966, Shanachie Records, 2000
I have mentioned many of the old time black male country blues singers in this space, for example, Son House, Bukka White and Skip James. I have also mentioned the close connection between this rural music, the routine of life on the farm (mainly the Mississippi Delta plantations or sharecropping) and simple religious expression in their works. The blues singer under review meets all of those criteria and more. The Reverend Gary Davis, although not as well known in the country blues pantheon, has had many of his songs covered by the denizens of the folk revival of the 1960's and some rock groups, like The Grateful Dead, looking for a connection with their roots. Thus, by one of the ironies of fate his tradition lives on in popular music. I would also mention here that his work was prominently displayed in one of Stefan Grossman’s Masters Of The Blues documentaries that I have reviewed in this space. That placement is insurance that that the Reverend's musical virtuosity is of the highest order. As an instrumentalist he steals the show in that film. Enough said.
Stick out songs here which have a decidedly more religious bent than a previously reviewed “Twelve Keys To The City” CD are “I Am The True Vine", "Soon My Work Will Be Done" , "I Want To Be Saved,” the gospelly "Blow Gabriel" and “Tired, My Soul Needs Resting”
Some Biographical Information From the Back Cover
Durham, North Carolina in the 1930's was a moderate sized town whose economy was driven by tobacco farming. The tobacco crop acted somewhat as a buffer against the worst ravages of the Depression. During the fall harvest, with its attendant tobacco auctions, there was a bit more money around, and that, naturally, attracted musicians. Performers would drift in from the countryside and frequently took up residence and stayed on. Two master musicians who made Durham their home, whose careers extended decades until they become literally world famous, were Reverend Gary Davis and Sonny Terry.
REV. GARY DAVIS
Reverend Gary Davis was one of the greatest traditional guitarists of the century. He could play fluently in all major keys and improvise continually without repetition. His finger picking style was remarkably free, executing a rapid treble run with his thumb as easily as with his index finger and he had great command of many different styles, representing most aspects of black music he heard as a young man at the beginning of the century. Beyond his blues-gospel guitar, Davis was equally adept at ragtime, marches, breakdowns, vaudeville songs, and much more. Born in Lawrence County, South Carolina in 1895, Davis was raised by his grandmother, who made his first guitar for him. Learning from relatives and itinerant musicians, he also took up banjo and harmonica. His blindness was probably due to a congenital condition. By the time he was a young man he was considered among the elite musicians in his area of South Carolina where, as in most Southern coastal states, clean and fancy finger picking with emphasis on the melody was the favored style. Sometime in the early 1950's, Davis started a ministry and repudiated blues. In 1935, he recorded twelve gospel songs that rank among the masterpieces of the genre. In 1944, he moved to New York where he continued his church work, and sometimes did some street singing in Harlem. By the early 1960's, with the re-emergence of interest in traditional black music, Davis finally received the recognition and prominences he so richly deserved.
*******
Blow, Gabriel, Blow Lyrics
[RENO]
Brothers and sisters, we are here tonight to fight the devil...
Do you hear that playin'?
[COMPANY]
Yes, we hear that playin'!
[RENO]
Do you know who's playin'?
[COMPANY]
No, who is that playin'?
[RENO]
Well, it's Gabriel, Gabriel playin'!
Gabriel, Gabriel sayin'
"Will you be ready to go
When I blow my horn?"
Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow,
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Oh, I was low, Gabriel, low,
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since I have seen the light,
I'm good by day and I'm good by night,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Come on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Come on you scamps, get up you sinners!
You're all too full of expensive dinners.
Stand up on your lazy feet and sing!
[ALL]
Blow, Gabriel, blow, (Blow, Gabriel!)
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow. (Blow, Gabriel!)
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
I was low, Gabriel, low, (Low, Gabriel!)
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since that I have seen the light
I'm good by day and I'm good by night
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
[RENO]
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel!
[ALL]
Go on and...
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
I wanna join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land,
So blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow!
CD Review
Reverend Gary Davis: At Home:1964-1966, Shanachie Records, 2000
I have mentioned many of the old time black male country blues singers in this space, for example, Son House, Bukka White and Skip James. I have also mentioned the close connection between this rural music, the routine of life on the farm (mainly the Mississippi Delta plantations or sharecropping) and simple religious expression in their works. The blues singer under review meets all of those criteria and more. The Reverend Gary Davis, although not as well known in the country blues pantheon, has had many of his songs covered by the denizens of the folk revival of the 1960's and some rock groups, like The Grateful Dead, looking for a connection with their roots. Thus, by one of the ironies of fate his tradition lives on in popular music. I would also mention here that his work was prominently displayed in one of Stefan Grossman’s Masters Of The Blues documentaries that I have reviewed in this space. That placement is insurance that that the Reverend's musical virtuosity is of the highest order. As an instrumentalist he steals the show in that film. Enough said.
Stick out songs here which have a decidedly more religious bent than a previously reviewed “Twelve Keys To The City” CD are “I Am The True Vine", "Soon My Work Will Be Done" , "I Want To Be Saved,” the gospelly "Blow Gabriel" and “Tired, My Soul Needs Resting”
Some Biographical Information From the Back Cover
Durham, North Carolina in the 1930's was a moderate sized town whose economy was driven by tobacco farming. The tobacco crop acted somewhat as a buffer against the worst ravages of the Depression. During the fall harvest, with its attendant tobacco auctions, there was a bit more money around, and that, naturally, attracted musicians. Performers would drift in from the countryside and frequently took up residence and stayed on. Two master musicians who made Durham their home, whose careers extended decades until they become literally world famous, were Reverend Gary Davis and Sonny Terry.
REV. GARY DAVIS
Reverend Gary Davis was one of the greatest traditional guitarists of the century. He could play fluently in all major keys and improvise continually without repetition. His finger picking style was remarkably free, executing a rapid treble run with his thumb as easily as with his index finger and he had great command of many different styles, representing most aspects of black music he heard as a young man at the beginning of the century. Beyond his blues-gospel guitar, Davis was equally adept at ragtime, marches, breakdowns, vaudeville songs, and much more. Born in Lawrence County, South Carolina in 1895, Davis was raised by his grandmother, who made his first guitar for him. Learning from relatives and itinerant musicians, he also took up banjo and harmonica. His blindness was probably due to a congenital condition. By the time he was a young man he was considered among the elite musicians in his area of South Carolina where, as in most Southern coastal states, clean and fancy finger picking with emphasis on the melody was the favored style. Sometime in the early 1950's, Davis started a ministry and repudiated blues. In 1935, he recorded twelve gospel songs that rank among the masterpieces of the genre. In 1944, he moved to New York where he continued his church work, and sometimes did some street singing in Harlem. By the early 1960's, with the re-emergence of interest in traditional black music, Davis finally received the recognition and prominences he so richly deserved.
*******
Blow, Gabriel, Blow Lyrics
[RENO]
Brothers and sisters, we are here tonight to fight the devil...
Do you hear that playin'?
[COMPANY]
Yes, we hear that playin'!
[RENO]
Do you know who's playin'?
[COMPANY]
No, who is that playin'?
[RENO]
Well, it's Gabriel, Gabriel playin'!
Gabriel, Gabriel sayin'
"Will you be ready to go
When I blow my horn?"
Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow,
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Oh, I was low, Gabriel, low,
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since I have seen the light,
I'm good by day and I'm good by night,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Come on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Come on you scamps, get up you sinners!
You're all too full of expensive dinners.
Stand up on your lazy feet and sing!
[ALL]
Blow, Gabriel, blow, (Blow, Gabriel!)
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow. (Blow, Gabriel!)
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
I was low, Gabriel, low, (Low, Gabriel!)
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since that I have seen the light
I'm good by day and I'm good by night
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
[RENO]
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel!
[ALL]
Go on and...
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
I wanna join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land,
So blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow!
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