Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bruce Springsteen performing his classic Thunder Road.
Thunder Road Lyrics
Artist: Bruce Springsteen
Album: Born To Run
The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey, that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again, I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside, darling, you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty but, hey, you're alright
Oh, and that's alright with me
You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now, I ain't no hero, that's understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey, what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
Well, the night's busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven's waiting on down the tracks
Oh oh, come take my hand
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh oh oh oh, Thunder Road
Oh, Thunder Road, oh, Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey, I know it's late, we can make it if we run
Oh oh oh oh, Thunder Road
Sit tight, take hold, Thunder Road
Well, I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk
And my car's out back if you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride ain't free
And I know you're lonely for words that I ain't spoken
But tonight we'll be free, all the promises'll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines rolling on
But when you get to the porch, they're gone on the wind
So Mary, climb in
It's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win
*************
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
As I mentioned in an earlier entry in this series, courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, who seems to think I still have a few things to say about this wicked old world, recently, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod I came across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramps camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”
Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this 1979 sketch had an off-beat story that brought him down to the ravines. But see he, Jeanbon Leclerc (the bon part after Jean is organic for those of us who trace some French-Canadian [ F-C] Downeast Maine heritage, mine via my mother Delores, nee LeBlanc), out of the lowland white clay back water potato road Calais night (north of my hometown Olde Saco, way north and don’t pronounce it Calay, not if you if you don’t want an argument) , did not want to talk about ‘Nam, about his war- weary troubles in the “real world” or about how he got himself hoboed up a continent away. No he wanted to talk about the time before Vietnam, 1966 time, the time when he was the max daddy of the Calais (Callus, and he drawled it out just that way) night down on Thunder Road (my term) and about how he “won” Diana Dubois away from all the Podunk corner boys. The story that accompanies the song to this little piece, Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road, is written under that same sign.
I should note again since these sketches are done on an ad hoc basis, that the format of the story here follows those of the “Brothers Under The Bridge” series previously posted .The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.
The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this series, have reconstructed this story here as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said. This is Jeanbon Leclerc’s short, breathless story, the story of a soldier born under the sign of that blasted Thunder Road:
Hell, I don’t know when I first started fooling around with cars, putting parts together to make some heap that would run for a while and then daddy would sell it, or trade it for whiskey and I would have to put another one together. That happened five, six times anyway. I do know that I was running the back roads in some kind of car when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. And no I didn’t have a license, hell, which needed a license in the back country.
I know for sure though that I was a lot more interested in cars than girls for a long time until I got my ’64 green Mustang put together and I had to be interested in girls, or I couldn’t drive the streets of Calais. That’s way up in Maine right along the Canadian border and I am F-C and Mainaic proud too or was, before ‘Nam. But I already told you I don’t want to talk about that, that ‘Nam part. I want to talk, and you said I could talk about anything I wanted to, about when I was the king of the road, back roads anyway, and they called me; she called me her Rock and Roll Johnnie. And she, the she I am talking about was Diana Dubois, the girl who made me interested in girls more than cars, almost.
It really doesn’t take much these days, these old time memory L.A. smogged in days, to have some snippet come swirling out of the air, some caught phrase in a passing conversation, some half-glanced word mentioned on some media outlet, some fragrance smelled from long ago soaps, perfumes, downy billows, to get me into that frame of mind to speak of old time Calais and Diana now that she is long gone and I am stuck here under this f-----g ravine. That’s what happened to me when you mentioned about the “chicken runs” you used to go on with your corner boy down at Olde Saco Beach on Saturday nights. Yah, we had them too up in Calais and we hung out, when not all-out fixing up our cars, in front of Jake’s Pool Hall over on East Main Street. [Really Route 1, the end of U.S. Route 1-JLB.] That was the Calais of the 1960s dying textile mills, of various working- class rites of passage, of teenage this and that, and most of all of the French-Canadian ethos, pathos, and bathos that permeated the town. And of course, of F-C loves, lost and found.
That stuff brought to mind my mad passion for fast cars, fast Mustangs a specialty, and my fate. Strange to think of now since I haven’t even owned a car of any kind of a couple of years. What it really brought to mind though was about, Diana Dubois, who had been a class mate of mine at Calais High School (I never finished so don’t ask me my graduation year, it did not happen) who one Jeanbon Leclerc “stole” with his fast cars, and fast hands in 1966 (exact date and month unknown, Christ what day is it today? I have trouble enough with that.).
I had better start at the beginning otherwise you will accuse me of puffing stuff up, or something like that. Yes, she had to be a dizzy blonde (don’t make anything out of that I just had, and have, when I am sober enough to get cleaned up and have a yearning for women have a preference for non-dizzy brunettes as a rule) and yes, she looked good in an early 1960s cashmere high school sweater. And yes, she had nice legs and such. But mostly she had six gallons of personality and, well, a smiling interest in me, or rather what I had to ride in those high school days. And what I had to say. See I was what they called an alienated youth , a beatnik they called me in Podunk Calais just because I tried to be the spitting image of Jean Dean with maybe a The Wild Ones Marlon Brando thrown in.
And what I had to say in those days was almost every arcane fact I could find out about the “beats.” You know on the road Jack Kerouac, om-ing Allen Ginsburg, doped-up drugstore cowboy William S. Burroughs and most of all, mad monk, mad cosmic traveler Neal Cassady. [The real life model for Dean Moriarty in that on the road Kerouac search for the great American night-JLB]. But see that is all I cared about, except cars, so I never got hip to school or stuff like that until it was too late, until they called my number.
Yes, I know , I know now, in 1966 these guys, these beats, were “old news” in places like Greenwich Village and Harvard Square but in Podunk Maine talking about such things was “cool.” Especially if accompanied by the “look,” black chinos, work boots, flannel shirts, and mandatory midnight sunglasses worn 24/7/365. And don’t forget the French-Canadian connection, Jeanbon Kerouac was an F-C as were half the residents of that old working class mill town just like in your Olde Saco (we were just a northern, way northern, Kerouac hometown Lowell). More importantly so was Diana.
And that is exactly where the problem, my problem, began and ended, the midnight crying hour began and ended. See Diana was crazy for beat stuff but she wanted a guy, and an F-C guy, with a little more speed. Literally. She was looking, and looking hard, and I know this because she told me so straight out, for a guy with big wheels, maybe a 1964 Mustang (green, of course) like mine so she could be sitting high and wide on the front seat but with some dough, and some prospects. Not white picket fence, spotted dog, three kids, two boys and a girl, prospects but dough to take her places and see things. And she found him, Rene Genet, a little older, out of school, working at the Downeast Valley Textile Mill (like about a quarter of the town’s population in those long gone good-paying mill jobs days) and with some dough to spent . But I am getting slightly ahead of my story.
Diana and I went on a few dates, afternoon dates, after school, mainly down to Jimmy Jack’s Homemade Diner (the one on Main Street, not the one on East Main that is strictly for tourists and “summer guests”) to listen to some jazz, rock or other be-bop stuff on the big old jukebox that drew every half-hip kid in town. But mainly we talked, talked late on the telephone, about this and that, mainly dreams, and mainly abstract stuff. I was in seventh heaven and I thought she was too. What I didn’t know, and never thought to know (or really wanted to know thinking back) was that Diana was working her way out of my front seat into beau Rene’s front seat. Want to know, or not, one night, one Thursday night, when I rang her up about eleven o’clock (her sole provider mother worked the second shift at the mill so I could call then) her younger sister answered the phone. Answered that her sister, Diana, was out and about with Rene Genet and that she would not be taking any more midnight calls from me. Period.
After our unceremonious “break-up” I would see Diana around school and we would “nod” heads but that was about it. Then just before school got out that summer I heard that Diana and Rene were having some troubles. I decided to make my move and to challenge Rene to a “chicken run’ down Route 1 early one morning going south as fast and furious as we could. Winning prize: Diana Dubois. Rene was a little unsure about taking the bet because he knew, knew in his heart if he had a heart, he couldn’t beat me not with those stakes. Diana? Diana was sky high like any princess would be when two modern knights were ready to do battle to win her favors. One June Saturday night I left Rene Genet in a puddle of water in some side ditch about twenty miles south of Calais. Diana, cool as a cucumber, and very aware of the spoils of war rules stepped right into my waiting Mustang like we had never parted. Moreover that night, or really that morning, after she had been totally turned on by the joust, the thought of the joust, and everything else she was crazy, crazy like I had never seen her before, in bed. And, hell, I guess I was too.
Diana and I got married a short time after her graduation and set up household in Ellsworth (Maine) where I got a good paying job in a paper mill. Naturally, 1960s F-C naturally, a child came along, and that complicated things, complicated things for me.
See I was really a “homer,” a Calais guy to the bone and while I was in love with Diana I knew that with the baby (and presumably more babies in Gallic Roman Catholic F-C speak knowledge ) I wasn’t going to be able to go back to dying mill town Calais any time soon.
That meant I wasn’t going to be the king hell king (my term –JLB) of the northern Maine back roads. And that last sentiment was important to understanding what happened later. It wasn’t, by the way, just Calais lonesomeness that distracted me but that I had actually lost the title as king hell king of the back roads “chicken runs” to one Rene Genet by default. That was a title I had held since I first learned to drive and “soup up” any old automobile (a burned-out ’57 Chevy was my first reclamation project). Nobody around northern Maine challenged , or even thought of challenging me and my 1964 green Mustang now named “Diana” after I put Rene in that ditch. Another distraction was a slight flirtation with Laura Bleu, Diana’s second cousin back in Calais before we moved to Ellsworth. Hell I was a good looking guy then, and like I said I had that fast car and fast hands so I would never lack for “flirtations” for the always plentiful girls who wanted to sit in that green Mustang front seat of mine.
But still and all I was always thinking about Calais, figuring ways to get to Calais (to see, uh, Laura?), or yakking about it to one and all in Ellsworth. And when I was in high dudgeon (my term JLB) I would take it out on Diana. Not physically, not for anything, but I would pout, I would spend endless hours working on the “Diana,” and I would be gone for hours. With no explanation (but also with no whiskey breathe or woman’s fragrance on my clothes either). I would head over to Cadillac Mountain in the Arcadia National Park the other side of Bar Harbor wind out on the deserted curves and sit, just sit, and stare out at the homeland sea. I know that sea stare-out, I know it from my father, I might have invented it, at least for our generation up there, so I know that I was troubled in mind, no question.
Time passed this way, a few months, a year. Rumors though started to swirl around that Jimmy Jack’s’ son, Pierre, (Jimmy Jack was the owner of two teenage hang-out diners, one complete with an incredible jukebox where I had taken Diana a few times) had a super-souped up Chevy that would “blow” my Mustang away. Way down in Ellsworth I heard those rumors. Then one night, one kind of foggy October night, a night not uncommon in Maine almost any part of the year, I found myself, and not by accident, in Calais. And not just in any spot in Calais but down at the corner of Main and East Main where every chicken run started ,where every head-to-head car duel started since back before memory, ready, willing and able to take on one Pierre Jacques (Jimmy Jack’s real last name) in the “chicken run to end all chicken runs.”
I won’t bore you with the details of the run; you have probably if you have seen that film that came out a few years ago, American Graffiti, or Rebel Without A Cause, or about twelve other teen alienation /angst films seen the scenes. Fast souped-up cars. Pierre’s “Lonnie Jean” against my “Laura.” They are off. And the winner is… Pierre. End of story. No. Diana, when she found out what I had done (and my thing with Laura), left me. Left for parts unknown with the baby one night, one night when I was up in Calais with Laura. End of story.
[End of story? No. One more little detail needs to be brought up although the details around it are sketchy. Like how Jeanbon drifted back to Calais after our talk in L.A., how he got the old heap running and what was on his mind that fateful night. Was he thinking of some lost Diana? Laura? On October 14, 1980 (really the early morning of the 15th according to the police report) one Jeanbon Leclerc was D.O.A. at Bangor General Hospital after being pried out of a rusted out green 1964 Mustang that had still been in great running order and that had been clocked doing one hundred and twenty miles an hour on Route One by the police in pursuit. The car had spun out of control and crashed about one hundred yard inside of the Calais border. JLB]
Friday, August 17, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- It Ain’t About The Pool, Fast Eddie- Paul Newman’s “The Hustler”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Paul Newman’s “The Hustler.”
DVD Review
The Hustler, starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961
Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it, and it probably will in the end. Fast Eddie, coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post- World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek with everything you owned in the Great Depression or not having gotten your fill of blood, action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away.
Put it plain. Some Neal Cassady/Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg howl against the fates moment all gassed up to run the tables on the red scare cold war night. And like those sainted brothers, beat down, beat around, beatitude beat, beat six ways to Sunday beat looking for the hook to show the world your wares, your blue-eyed , if you had blue-eyes and okie look said you did, Adonis wares ready to take on six kings before supper. Hell it was easy, wasn’t it. Just ask king Neal riding the clutch, and nothing but the clutch around some dead man’s curve, riding easy, like some Spanish dancer, or matador flaying the cape gently before the kill. Ask million word king Jack, writing those log roll be-bop words for a hungry world to hear in the deadened go-go night, no hero he, but some Frankish Adonis kindred flaying at typewriters, and taking notes on small Woolworth pads. Ask king Allen who proclaimed the empty night, who heralded the empty night, who sang Kaddish to the empty night to those who sought fame instead of truth. And, in the end, ask Fast Eddie, ask Fast Eddie what he proclaimed, what he heralded, what empty night he raised his sword against.
For Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Hanging out in white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide bucket belt, whipsaw ready, holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety store , some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.
So it was hell’s angels big hog cycles and whipsaw chains beating down terrified citizens (or each other) for pocket change and a three to five stretch courtesy of the California penal system, or break of dawn at some smoke-filled factory making widgets with after dinner corner boy nights holding up storefront walls, or going on the hustle. And it started early. Maybe it was hunger started stealing milky way candy bars at mom and pop’s, or maybe just a soft touch from some mislaid mother’s purse. Easy pickings.
But hunger, gnawed hunger, festering hunger is a tyrant, a hard and cruel tyrant, when you have Fast Eddie appetites. So maybe a round of jewelry store “clips” for some teenage tart with visions of femme fatale and you are the practice. Later, older later, some midnight auto takedown for whiskey shots. Easy stuff but with tight margins and guys, cops, hoods, and hard boys ready, willing and able to cramp your style. Yes, Fast Eddie, join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade.
Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it. See Fast Eddie besides his dream (and enough intelligence to see clips, stolen hubcaps and armed robberies would eventually put a crimp, a very big crimp, in his Adonis wares), had something else, he had some talent.
After dismissing from his mind those big hog wild boys from across the Sonny Barger street as nowhere and after wiping up the poolroom floor with half the half-smart blond, blue-eyed faux hard guy surfer boys in California he wanted a chance to beat down pharaoh like a lot of okie, arkie guys had been trying to do since Egypt time (although their names were different then that is what they were and Fast Eddie had the eternal DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, they had gotten busted up by pharaoh’s boys for their troubles. Still Fast Eddie had talent and that is worth something in this wicked old world, something okay.
To watch Fast Eddie when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, a wayward shoulder here or there, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot like he and the balls were one, and maybe they were, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then go on those runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to hanging off that wall at the mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Rich guys too, rich guys looking for cocaine kicks, maybe some off-hand roughhouse sex with some hard-pressed corner boy in some back alley, and getting kicks out of smelling the sweat, the special criminal metallic sweat of guys who had done time while they were at Saint Mark’s, or someplace like that, hanging around reading Nelson Algren or Jean Genet, with their boyfriends. Hell, Fast Eddie would relentlessly faggot tease them (even if they weren’t) and they would lap it up. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh.
And he got Pharaoh, got pharaoh in spades. Got more of Pharaoh that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Got Pharaoh with his blood up, with his king hell king no prisoners blood up. Jesus Fast Eddie looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful.
Pharaoh about that time, about round ten, took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Fast Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.
But that guy, that no quote nine to five guy, had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he had never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world, to carry. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.
And then she showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie too much hunger pieces. To curb his hunger a little, maybe, and also to disturb his sleep. Some called her a tramp, an easy lay, a place to hang your hat while you were nursing your fresh wounds but Fast Eddie never, even from minute one, at the bus station diner saw her that way. And even wild corner boy sullen guys like Eddie who couldn’t say the right words knew she was no whore, no dish rag to dirty and move on.
She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, not Fast Eddie blue-eyed Greek Adonis beautiful with flashy moves, more like our lady of the lord Madonna drink her in like fine wine beautiful. More like those women you see, hear or read about that make you say to yourself that you had better hold on to her Mr. Blue-eyed Adonis man searching for that elusive fame.
Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to her bed. Polite society had called her a tramp, hanging on to a succession of beat down corner boys for dear life, maybe for her life. What could they know about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, he knew it, she knew it, and that thought got her through some stuff. And Fast Eddie too.
Some dreams though are monstrous and Fast Eddie’s was just that way. And she, Sarah to give her a name now that he had shared her bed, could do nothing, nothing at all to slay that monster. It gnawed at him. And like most dreams, most modern dreams, there was a need for money, serious money to run at pharaoh again. Now if the world was just made up of mad dream men and clinging women it would not be such a hard place at that. But there are in this wicked old world, especially down in the darkened lamp-less corners, down in the alleys, down in the gutters when even dreaming is against the law, outlawed no questions asked, guys, ten percent guys let’s call them, hang out. Hang out waiting for broken dream cheap street has beens with talent (those without just keep moving, moving down) to come to their door. And with nothing to lose (or so Fast Eddie thought) he bought in, bought into the bargain with the devil, and with no looking back.
Sarah, Fast Eddie’s lifeline Sarah out of some biblical prophecy, out of those million books read, out of her own dark street past, knew the ten percent men, knew their clawing and scratching away at a man’s soul, at a woman’s soul too when they got their blood up. She knew, back streets knowledge knew at a heavy price, and a couple of off-hand bought drinks, that their price was too much to pay for fifteen minute fame dreams. Knew from her own much abused bed they had no pure Fast Eddie dreams, no Fast Eddie soul, just clawing away at more than their ten-percent cut. But would Fast Eddie listen, hell, not our boy, and so the dice were cast.
But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, forget some formless woman, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. Can’t live in the world of dirt and dust, and blood and still take breathe. And can’t live in the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. So Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hungers. Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to nevertheless even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the Pharaoh or die.
As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when I first saw him work his magic against some scrub surfer guy down in some southern California pool hall way out of his element in the 1950s be-bop night. The pockets were like manholes that night and I thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired Pharaoh. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory,” that Sarah Packard –paid for victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool like your life depended on it.
DVD Review
The Hustler, starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961
Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it, and it probably will in the end. Fast Eddie, coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post- World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek with everything you owned in the Great Depression or not having gotten your fill of blood, action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away.
Put it plain. Some Neal Cassady/Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg howl against the fates moment all gassed up to run the tables on the red scare cold war night. And like those sainted brothers, beat down, beat around, beatitude beat, beat six ways to Sunday beat looking for the hook to show the world your wares, your blue-eyed , if you had blue-eyes and okie look said you did, Adonis wares ready to take on six kings before supper. Hell it was easy, wasn’t it. Just ask king Neal riding the clutch, and nothing but the clutch around some dead man’s curve, riding easy, like some Spanish dancer, or matador flaying the cape gently before the kill. Ask million word king Jack, writing those log roll be-bop words for a hungry world to hear in the deadened go-go night, no hero he, but some Frankish Adonis kindred flaying at typewriters, and taking notes on small Woolworth pads. Ask king Allen who proclaimed the empty night, who heralded the empty night, who sang Kaddish to the empty night to those who sought fame instead of truth. And, in the end, ask Fast Eddie, ask Fast Eddie what he proclaimed, what he heralded, what empty night he raised his sword against.
For Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Hanging out in white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide bucket belt, whipsaw ready, holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety store , some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.
So it was hell’s angels big hog cycles and whipsaw chains beating down terrified citizens (or each other) for pocket change and a three to five stretch courtesy of the California penal system, or break of dawn at some smoke-filled factory making widgets with after dinner corner boy nights holding up storefront walls, or going on the hustle. And it started early. Maybe it was hunger started stealing milky way candy bars at mom and pop’s, or maybe just a soft touch from some mislaid mother’s purse. Easy pickings.
But hunger, gnawed hunger, festering hunger is a tyrant, a hard and cruel tyrant, when you have Fast Eddie appetites. So maybe a round of jewelry store “clips” for some teenage tart with visions of femme fatale and you are the practice. Later, older later, some midnight auto takedown for whiskey shots. Easy stuff but with tight margins and guys, cops, hoods, and hard boys ready, willing and able to cramp your style. Yes, Fast Eddie, join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade.
Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it. See Fast Eddie besides his dream (and enough intelligence to see clips, stolen hubcaps and armed robberies would eventually put a crimp, a very big crimp, in his Adonis wares), had something else, he had some talent.
After dismissing from his mind those big hog wild boys from across the Sonny Barger street as nowhere and after wiping up the poolroom floor with half the half-smart blond, blue-eyed faux hard guy surfer boys in California he wanted a chance to beat down pharaoh like a lot of okie, arkie guys had been trying to do since Egypt time (although their names were different then that is what they were and Fast Eddie had the eternal DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, they had gotten busted up by pharaoh’s boys for their troubles. Still Fast Eddie had talent and that is worth something in this wicked old world, something okay.
To watch Fast Eddie when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, a wayward shoulder here or there, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot like he and the balls were one, and maybe they were, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then go on those runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to hanging off that wall at the mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Rich guys too, rich guys looking for cocaine kicks, maybe some off-hand roughhouse sex with some hard-pressed corner boy in some back alley, and getting kicks out of smelling the sweat, the special criminal metallic sweat of guys who had done time while they were at Saint Mark’s, or someplace like that, hanging around reading Nelson Algren or Jean Genet, with their boyfriends. Hell, Fast Eddie would relentlessly faggot tease them (even if they weren’t) and they would lap it up. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh.
And he got Pharaoh, got pharaoh in spades. Got more of Pharaoh that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Got Pharaoh with his blood up, with his king hell king no prisoners blood up. Jesus Fast Eddie looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful.
Pharaoh about that time, about round ten, took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Fast Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.
But that guy, that no quote nine to five guy, had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he had never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world, to carry. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.
And then she showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie too much hunger pieces. To curb his hunger a little, maybe, and also to disturb his sleep. Some called her a tramp, an easy lay, a place to hang your hat while you were nursing your fresh wounds but Fast Eddie never, even from minute one, at the bus station diner saw her that way. And even wild corner boy sullen guys like Eddie who couldn’t say the right words knew she was no whore, no dish rag to dirty and move on.
She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, not Fast Eddie blue-eyed Greek Adonis beautiful with flashy moves, more like our lady of the lord Madonna drink her in like fine wine beautiful. More like those women you see, hear or read about that make you say to yourself that you had better hold on to her Mr. Blue-eyed Adonis man searching for that elusive fame.
Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to her bed. Polite society had called her a tramp, hanging on to a succession of beat down corner boys for dear life, maybe for her life. What could they know about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, he knew it, she knew it, and that thought got her through some stuff. And Fast Eddie too.
Some dreams though are monstrous and Fast Eddie’s was just that way. And she, Sarah to give her a name now that he had shared her bed, could do nothing, nothing at all to slay that monster. It gnawed at him. And like most dreams, most modern dreams, there was a need for money, serious money to run at pharaoh again. Now if the world was just made up of mad dream men and clinging women it would not be such a hard place at that. But there are in this wicked old world, especially down in the darkened lamp-less corners, down in the alleys, down in the gutters when even dreaming is against the law, outlawed no questions asked, guys, ten percent guys let’s call them, hang out. Hang out waiting for broken dream cheap street has beens with talent (those without just keep moving, moving down) to come to their door. And with nothing to lose (or so Fast Eddie thought) he bought in, bought into the bargain with the devil, and with no looking back.
Sarah, Fast Eddie’s lifeline Sarah out of some biblical prophecy, out of those million books read, out of her own dark street past, knew the ten percent men, knew their clawing and scratching away at a man’s soul, at a woman’s soul too when they got their blood up. She knew, back streets knowledge knew at a heavy price, and a couple of off-hand bought drinks, that their price was too much to pay for fifteen minute fame dreams. Knew from her own much abused bed they had no pure Fast Eddie dreams, no Fast Eddie soul, just clawing away at more than their ten-percent cut. But would Fast Eddie listen, hell, not our boy, and so the dice were cast.
But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, forget some formless woman, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. Can’t live in the world of dirt and dust, and blood and still take breathe. And can’t live in the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. So Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hungers. Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to nevertheless even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the Pharaoh or die.
As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when I first saw him work his magic against some scrub surfer guy down in some southern California pool hall way out of his element in the 1950s be-bop night. The pockets were like manholes that night and I thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired Pharaoh. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory,” that Sarah Packard –paid for victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool like your life depended on it.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Teen Queens’ “Eddy My Love” (1956) - A 55th Anniversary, Of Sorts-An Alternate Take-For Those Who Waited By The Midnight Phone
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Teen Queens performing the classic Eddie My Love.
My old friend Peter Paul Markin has kept incessantly reminding me that he has “allowed “me to be a guest commentator on his various sites in order for me to share my political perspectives with the cyberspace universe, such as it is. And normally I would agree with premise since his spaces (and his lifelong interests in seeking a newer world as he calls it) are noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world. I though, occasionally, like to investigate the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression meet, and that interplay has increasingly drawn some of my interest over the past several years.
The most enduring example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, city or country, hard Delta cotton fields working, hard drinking, hard Saturday night shack up Sunday morning repentant, church repentant blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly early 1960s protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set me, us, the generation of ’68, off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies but goodies demographically-attuned CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived, and what we listened to back in the day. Okay Peter Paul?
EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962
Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.
Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)
**********
Come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell. Come on over here and get away from that midnight phone waiting and maybe put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,
Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are different, well, well there you have it.
And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints 1950s story (although maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village small print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario).
And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.
And let’s make it a winter night, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…
And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along.
I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. Her Eddie’s flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.
Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. Yes, I know the story because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more after the mailman came.
Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a mantrap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way. Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge:
“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.
Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes car but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Eddie John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,
Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do automatically, even though I secretly thrill to know that that once over is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We talked, idle talk, sex in the air talk, but don’t talk it straight out about it talk, still talk a lot for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.
Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Eddie John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date”, some donk poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.
And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.
Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.
I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day.”
Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that.
But Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Eddie John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well, enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on.
Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone.
My old friend Peter Paul Markin has kept incessantly reminding me that he has “allowed “me to be a guest commentator on his various sites in order for me to share my political perspectives with the cyberspace universe, such as it is. And normally I would agree with premise since his spaces (and his lifelong interests in seeking a newer world as he calls it) are noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world. I though, occasionally, like to investigate the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression meet, and that interplay has increasingly drawn some of my interest over the past several years.
The most enduring example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, city or country, hard Delta cotton fields working, hard drinking, hard Saturday night shack up Sunday morning repentant, church repentant blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly early 1960s protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set me, us, the generation of ’68, off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies but goodies demographically-attuned CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived, and what we listened to back in the day. Okay Peter Paul?
EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962
Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.
Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)
**********
Come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell. Come on over here and get away from that midnight phone waiting and maybe put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,
Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are different, well, well there you have it.
And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints 1950s story (although maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village small print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario).
And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.
And let’s make it a winter night, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…
And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along.
I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. Her Eddie’s flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.
Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. Yes, I know the story because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more after the mailman came.
Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a mantrap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way. Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge:
“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.
Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes car but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Eddie John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,
Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do automatically, even though I secretly thrill to know that that once over is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We talked, idle talk, sex in the air talk, but don’t talk it straight out about it talk, still talk a lot for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.
Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Eddie John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date”, some donk poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.
And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.
Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.
I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day.”
Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that.
But Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Eddie John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well, enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on.
Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Prescott Breslin’s War
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire.
He was scared, scared silly, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Rugged hills and hollows born, Appalachia mountain Kentucky hard-scrabble farm born, fear hid under the rug, or somewhere else born he was still scared. He, Prescott Breslin, just weeks, maybe a couple of months if he counted it up, out of those hills and hollows, was scared because his unit, his semper fi 1st Marine Corps Division unit had just received orders to head out in the morning, head out west. Since he was sitting by himself just then in a Camp Pendleton, California make-shift Quonset hut PX at a picnic table munching coffee and cakes west could only mean the Pacific islands that dotted the way to Japan. Some units had already gone out, gone out quickly all through early 1942 and as 1943 approached all hell was breaking loose with men and material heading west, just like in old time pioneer west if he had thought about it that way then.
[Prescott Breslin, even forty years later, in relating this story to his son, Josh, would not give the precise day that his unit left California just in case some Nips or Chinks (Prescott’s terms) might be lurking around and could use the information in the future. He was certainly a man of his Great Depression/World War II times. ]
But sitting with that cup of black coffee (hell, nobody back home ever had it any other way besides who had extra milk or cream left over for such fixings, and black was fine anyway) and cruller donut (he had grown to love this donut business after a lifetime of Ma’s old patched-up bread pudding and sunken baking soda-laden cakes) he was not thinking about pioneer west stuff, or even, after he bit into the cruller, scared thoughts so much but about how life was funny. Not funny to have a laugh over but just the way the cards were dealt funny. It might have been the sugar, or it might have been the caffeine but his started to think about all the stuff that he hadn’t done, and some stuff he had done, to keep the thoughts of the days ahead in check.
First off though was his pride in being one of the best troopers in his training unit down at Parris Island, and then his assigned unit at Pendleton. It wasn’t so much that it came natural to him, although coming from the hard rock country didn’t hurt when they went out into the “boonies” on those twenty mile full-pack hikes or when he busted out number one on the rifle range with that silly M-I pop gun. It was more that, at first, guys, yankee city guys from Boston and New York, or northern farm boys anyway, laughed at him about his back mountain drawl, about his not knowing about donuts, about not knowing about how to handle a folk and spoon right and all kinds of yankee stuff that didn’t make sense to him, or them when he asked them to explain what they meant and why.
After a while, after a ton of callouses and blisters, after a ton of KP, after half a ton of pranks, and after about eight weeks of showing guys, yankee guys and farm boys, that he could be depended on if something happened to them they were practically competing to have him as their “buddy.” More than one guy said, said straight out, when they got the news of the move out that as long as Prescott Breslin was going along with them he wasn’t quite so scared. Here was the kicker though, the one that made him beam. A couple of days before they got orders they had all chipped in to by him drinks at the enlisted men’s club to show their appreciation AND a dozen donuts, assorted, the next morning. Still sitting at that piney table Prescott Breslin was scared.
While he was thinking an odd-scared thought or two somebody, a guy he didn’t recognize sitting with a nice- looking tanned Oceanside girl, at another table had gotten up to put some nickels in the jukebox and he, still thinking about life’s ups and downs, could hear the strains of I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire and that song got him kind of choked up at first. He then laughed, not a funny laugh, as he listened to the lyrics and thought that he sure didn’t want to, and hadn’t, set the world on fire. He sure hadn’t.
Getting into the heart of the song, the lonely guy misery part, he hadn’t a girl left behind to think of him while he was away blasting Pacific islands to smithereens. Out here, out here in sunny California, he had had not too much luck finding a girl, not much luck at all really. The girls seemed too fast for him, to ready to dismiss his back mountain drawl and write him down as a damn hillbilly. One time at the Surfside Grille in Oceanside where all the guys went when they had passes he met a girl, a pretty girl who liked his looks she said, liked his black hair, and brown eyes. She nevertheless told him flat out once she found out where he was from that she would pass him by. Why? Well, she, herself was from some podunk okie town and now that she was a California girl she was thinking of becoming a blonde and had definitely shaken the dust off her of okie kind of boys. She wanted, and she said this flat out too, a movie star soldier boy like Robert Taylor. Jesus, women, California women.
Sure, back home, he had had a few nibbles, a couple of girls from Prestonsburg and Hazard, girls with nice looks and manners and who couldn’t complain of his drawl. But nothing serious happened, nothing serious because from about age fourteen all the girls where he came from, even Prestonsburg girls, got all moony over being married and, in order to get from under being embedded in their own large families, start families of their own. He had wanted no part of that, not at twenty, no way. But he got just a little melancholy, taking another sip of that sweet black coffee, when he thought that he might never have a chance to get married. Never have a family of his own to take care of him in his old age, if he had an old age.
Mainly though he thought about the things he did had done over the past few
years before he had enlisted and wished that he had had more time to do them. Hell, it wasn’t nothing big, nothing to set the world on fire, but it was his life. His life, six or seven years ago, once he knew the score, knew the hard-scrabble Kentuck farm score, and that if he didn’t want nothing but hard calloused hands and looking eighty at forty (like his pa and grandpa) he had better hit the highway. Since there were twelve kids at home, and only enough to feed about eight right nobody (except Ma, he later, much too much later, found out) missed him when he set out for Lexington one dark night. He got a ride from Colonel Eddie (not really a colonel but everybody with two bucks for a genuine certificate called himself that) the local long-haul driver who was always looking for company on his runs west, and knew how to keep quiet when a guy asked him to about stuff like where he was going, and why.
And he also thought about how once he got to Lexington, after a few crop-picking and dish-washing jobs to keep him alive in the city, he met up with a couple of guys, Doc and Hank, at Lucy’s Diner who wanted form a band and make some money playing what they called the coal-dust circuit. He played a fair guitar for a kid, had a decent voice that had become deeper and more tuneful as he aged, and best of all he knew all the old-timey songs that the hills and hollows folks wanted to hear. Boy, did he know them all. Stuff like Tom Doulas, Ommie Wise, and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies.
A couple of weeks later with some practice, a small stake, and lots of dreams, they hit the back road Saturday night places where the locals held their weekly barn dances (complete with plenty of moonshine to liven things up). Sometimes they, now known as the Kentuck Sheiks (that sheik name had been made popular a few years before and you just added your state name in front and you had a genuine band name), passed the hat, sometimes when there was no dough they just took a couple of days room and board for their troubles.
He remembered too the time that through some white lightning connections, some Moonshine Johnnie, the king of the illegal local whiskey ring, or whatever the liquid was by the time it got boiled down, packaged, and run through the hills and hollows just in front of the revenue agents, the Sheiks got to play before a crowd in his hometown of Hazard. And they were billed on flyers, handbills, and posters as the Kentuck Sheiks featuring Prescott Breslin. Moonshine Johnnie’s idea was that he would throw a free Saturday barn dance down at Farmer Ben’s, a place where locals had been having their weekly dances since, well, since there was a Hazard as far as anybody knew. Johnnie wanted to introduce those who didn’t know to his product, or who knew and had a thirst. In short to move product, be an outstanding citizen, and listen to the mountain-etched music just like any other hillbilly.
The Sheiks were to pass the hat like they had done at a hundred such gatherings and with a hometown boy on the stage they expected a little extra haul. Additionally, Johnnie, just in case the cash haul was short, threw in five jugs of his premium liquor for the boys. That addition proved to be his undoing. The art of drinking hard liquor, hard still-made liquor takes some cultivation, some time to get used to it. Young men need to grow into with age like drinking wine is for some Europeans. The night of the barn dance, that Saturday afternoon really, he had started drinking a steady stream out of the jug so that by show time his was in good form (as were Doc and Hank partners), and as far as the show went they were a great success. As far as the show went.
But this was just flat-out the wrong night to develop his whiskey skills. Just before the dance, while the band was setting up and checking things out, Becky Price, an old Hazard sweetheart came up and started to rekindle some flame. Becky sure did look fine that night he thought with a pretty, frilly store-bought dress (really Montgomery Ward catalogue bought he found out later) and her hair done up in ribbons. She had heard he was playing that night and had gotten herself all pretty for him. They talked some then and some at intermission and agreed to meet after the dance at Lance’s Diner over on Route 5 when he was finished packing up after the show. But that is where the liquor proved to be a demon. After the show, things packed up, he decided to take a little curse off the liquor in his system by having a couple more hits at the jug. After the second swallow he just keeled over dead drunk. When he woke up the next morning the boys were up front in their sedan, Doc driving, while he laid across the back seat as they headed for a show in Steubenville, Ohio. Poor Becky, I hope she didn’t wait long that night.
That band job lasted for about a year or so, maybe a little bit more, but then times got so bad about 1937 or 38 that three guys just couldn’t make it on bread and butter, literally. So he got off the road, headed back home, and started to work in Mr. Peabody’s coal mines (not every mine was owned by the Peabody Coal Company as he was at pains to inform his fellow platoon members when they had asked what he did in the “real world” but that is what everybody called it around home when a guy went into the mines).
Now even a hills and hollows boy who grew up in that hard –scrabble country but who grew up on a farm needed to adjust to the hard times in the mines. The early hours, the wash up time that was unpaid for adding to the long day, the damn coal dust, the noise, the deafening noise, from the machines drilling against god’s ancient rock, and the sweat, the infernal sweat even on cold days once you got down in the pits. After a couple of months he adjusted to the routine, got to know real coal-miners who were the third or fourth generation going down there, and got some respect when he told the boys that they were not getting paid nearly enough for the tough work they did for the damn Johnson Coal Company. The boys listened, and knowing Kentucky coal fields traditions, hell Harlan, bloody Harlan, was just down the road they prepared to strike one time. Somehow the company got wind of it and offered a small raise and paid wash-up time just to keep the production moving. That was enough, enough then with plenty of guys out of work, and plenty of guys, scabs, with hungry mouths to feed ready to cross the lines if anything happened.
There he was though stuck in the mines, the damn black-lung mines (his mother cried every time he came home at night looking, well, looking like a damn nigra, and coughing the dust out half the night) when the news of the Japs hitting Pearl came over the radio and guys, guys like him, all over the country, were lined up three, maybe more, deep, to enlist. Funny though he could, having worked his way up a little in the mines, have gotten a vital industries draft deferral and been sitting right then in the Prestonsburg hotel with some pretty town girl drinking real store-bought liquor and working up his courage to ask her up into his room. But no, on December 9, 1941 he had gone to Prestonsburg and enlisted in the Marines right on the dotted line. And he never looked back.
Scared, scared to death, or not, sitting at that wooden table having a second cruller and a third cup of mud Private First Class Prescott Breslin thought it over for a minute. He then said to himself, hell, between shoveling coal for Mr. Peabody forever and fighting the damn Japs I’ll take the Japs. And that made him just a little less scared as someone walked up and put another nickel in the jukebox to play If I Didn’t Care.
He was scared, scared silly, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Rugged hills and hollows born, Appalachia mountain Kentucky hard-scrabble farm born, fear hid under the rug, or somewhere else born he was still scared. He, Prescott Breslin, just weeks, maybe a couple of months if he counted it up, out of those hills and hollows, was scared because his unit, his semper fi 1st Marine Corps Division unit had just received orders to head out in the morning, head out west. Since he was sitting by himself just then in a Camp Pendleton, California make-shift Quonset hut PX at a picnic table munching coffee and cakes west could only mean the Pacific islands that dotted the way to Japan. Some units had already gone out, gone out quickly all through early 1942 and as 1943 approached all hell was breaking loose with men and material heading west, just like in old time pioneer west if he had thought about it that way then.
[Prescott Breslin, even forty years later, in relating this story to his son, Josh, would not give the precise day that his unit left California just in case some Nips or Chinks (Prescott’s terms) might be lurking around and could use the information in the future. He was certainly a man of his Great Depression/World War II times. ]
But sitting with that cup of black coffee (hell, nobody back home ever had it any other way besides who had extra milk or cream left over for such fixings, and black was fine anyway) and cruller donut (he had grown to love this donut business after a lifetime of Ma’s old patched-up bread pudding and sunken baking soda-laden cakes) he was not thinking about pioneer west stuff, or even, after he bit into the cruller, scared thoughts so much but about how life was funny. Not funny to have a laugh over but just the way the cards were dealt funny. It might have been the sugar, or it might have been the caffeine but his started to think about all the stuff that he hadn’t done, and some stuff he had done, to keep the thoughts of the days ahead in check.
First off though was his pride in being one of the best troopers in his training unit down at Parris Island, and then his assigned unit at Pendleton. It wasn’t so much that it came natural to him, although coming from the hard rock country didn’t hurt when they went out into the “boonies” on those twenty mile full-pack hikes or when he busted out number one on the rifle range with that silly M-I pop gun. It was more that, at first, guys, yankee city guys from Boston and New York, or northern farm boys anyway, laughed at him about his back mountain drawl, about his not knowing about donuts, about not knowing about how to handle a folk and spoon right and all kinds of yankee stuff that didn’t make sense to him, or them when he asked them to explain what they meant and why.
After a while, after a ton of callouses and blisters, after a ton of KP, after half a ton of pranks, and after about eight weeks of showing guys, yankee guys and farm boys, that he could be depended on if something happened to them they were practically competing to have him as their “buddy.” More than one guy said, said straight out, when they got the news of the move out that as long as Prescott Breslin was going along with them he wasn’t quite so scared. Here was the kicker though, the one that made him beam. A couple of days before they got orders they had all chipped in to by him drinks at the enlisted men’s club to show their appreciation AND a dozen donuts, assorted, the next morning. Still sitting at that piney table Prescott Breslin was scared.
While he was thinking an odd-scared thought or two somebody, a guy he didn’t recognize sitting with a nice- looking tanned Oceanside girl, at another table had gotten up to put some nickels in the jukebox and he, still thinking about life’s ups and downs, could hear the strains of I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire and that song got him kind of choked up at first. He then laughed, not a funny laugh, as he listened to the lyrics and thought that he sure didn’t want to, and hadn’t, set the world on fire. He sure hadn’t.
Getting into the heart of the song, the lonely guy misery part, he hadn’t a girl left behind to think of him while he was away blasting Pacific islands to smithereens. Out here, out here in sunny California, he had had not too much luck finding a girl, not much luck at all really. The girls seemed too fast for him, to ready to dismiss his back mountain drawl and write him down as a damn hillbilly. One time at the Surfside Grille in Oceanside where all the guys went when they had passes he met a girl, a pretty girl who liked his looks she said, liked his black hair, and brown eyes. She nevertheless told him flat out once she found out where he was from that she would pass him by. Why? Well, she, herself was from some podunk okie town and now that she was a California girl she was thinking of becoming a blonde and had definitely shaken the dust off her of okie kind of boys. She wanted, and she said this flat out too, a movie star soldier boy like Robert Taylor. Jesus, women, California women.
Sure, back home, he had had a few nibbles, a couple of girls from Prestonsburg and Hazard, girls with nice looks and manners and who couldn’t complain of his drawl. But nothing serious happened, nothing serious because from about age fourteen all the girls where he came from, even Prestonsburg girls, got all moony over being married and, in order to get from under being embedded in their own large families, start families of their own. He had wanted no part of that, not at twenty, no way. But he got just a little melancholy, taking another sip of that sweet black coffee, when he thought that he might never have a chance to get married. Never have a family of his own to take care of him in his old age, if he had an old age.
Mainly though he thought about the things he did had done over the past few
years before he had enlisted and wished that he had had more time to do them. Hell, it wasn’t nothing big, nothing to set the world on fire, but it was his life. His life, six or seven years ago, once he knew the score, knew the hard-scrabble Kentuck farm score, and that if he didn’t want nothing but hard calloused hands and looking eighty at forty (like his pa and grandpa) he had better hit the highway. Since there were twelve kids at home, and only enough to feed about eight right nobody (except Ma, he later, much too much later, found out) missed him when he set out for Lexington one dark night. He got a ride from Colonel Eddie (not really a colonel but everybody with two bucks for a genuine certificate called himself that) the local long-haul driver who was always looking for company on his runs west, and knew how to keep quiet when a guy asked him to about stuff like where he was going, and why.
And he also thought about how once he got to Lexington, after a few crop-picking and dish-washing jobs to keep him alive in the city, he met up with a couple of guys, Doc and Hank, at Lucy’s Diner who wanted form a band and make some money playing what they called the coal-dust circuit. He played a fair guitar for a kid, had a decent voice that had become deeper and more tuneful as he aged, and best of all he knew all the old-timey songs that the hills and hollows folks wanted to hear. Boy, did he know them all. Stuff like Tom Doulas, Ommie Wise, and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies.
A couple of weeks later with some practice, a small stake, and lots of dreams, they hit the back road Saturday night places where the locals held their weekly barn dances (complete with plenty of moonshine to liven things up). Sometimes they, now known as the Kentuck Sheiks (that sheik name had been made popular a few years before and you just added your state name in front and you had a genuine band name), passed the hat, sometimes when there was no dough they just took a couple of days room and board for their troubles.
He remembered too the time that through some white lightning connections, some Moonshine Johnnie, the king of the illegal local whiskey ring, or whatever the liquid was by the time it got boiled down, packaged, and run through the hills and hollows just in front of the revenue agents, the Sheiks got to play before a crowd in his hometown of Hazard. And they were billed on flyers, handbills, and posters as the Kentuck Sheiks featuring Prescott Breslin. Moonshine Johnnie’s idea was that he would throw a free Saturday barn dance down at Farmer Ben’s, a place where locals had been having their weekly dances since, well, since there was a Hazard as far as anybody knew. Johnnie wanted to introduce those who didn’t know to his product, or who knew and had a thirst. In short to move product, be an outstanding citizen, and listen to the mountain-etched music just like any other hillbilly.
The Sheiks were to pass the hat like they had done at a hundred such gatherings and with a hometown boy on the stage they expected a little extra haul. Additionally, Johnnie, just in case the cash haul was short, threw in five jugs of his premium liquor for the boys. That addition proved to be his undoing. The art of drinking hard liquor, hard still-made liquor takes some cultivation, some time to get used to it. Young men need to grow into with age like drinking wine is for some Europeans. The night of the barn dance, that Saturday afternoon really, he had started drinking a steady stream out of the jug so that by show time his was in good form (as were Doc and Hank partners), and as far as the show went they were a great success. As far as the show went.
But this was just flat-out the wrong night to develop his whiskey skills. Just before the dance, while the band was setting up and checking things out, Becky Price, an old Hazard sweetheart came up and started to rekindle some flame. Becky sure did look fine that night he thought with a pretty, frilly store-bought dress (really Montgomery Ward catalogue bought he found out later) and her hair done up in ribbons. She had heard he was playing that night and had gotten herself all pretty for him. They talked some then and some at intermission and agreed to meet after the dance at Lance’s Diner over on Route 5 when he was finished packing up after the show. But that is where the liquor proved to be a demon. After the show, things packed up, he decided to take a little curse off the liquor in his system by having a couple more hits at the jug. After the second swallow he just keeled over dead drunk. When he woke up the next morning the boys were up front in their sedan, Doc driving, while he laid across the back seat as they headed for a show in Steubenville, Ohio. Poor Becky, I hope she didn’t wait long that night.
That band job lasted for about a year or so, maybe a little bit more, but then times got so bad about 1937 or 38 that three guys just couldn’t make it on bread and butter, literally. So he got off the road, headed back home, and started to work in Mr. Peabody’s coal mines (not every mine was owned by the Peabody Coal Company as he was at pains to inform his fellow platoon members when they had asked what he did in the “real world” but that is what everybody called it around home when a guy went into the mines).
Now even a hills and hollows boy who grew up in that hard –scrabble country but who grew up on a farm needed to adjust to the hard times in the mines. The early hours, the wash up time that was unpaid for adding to the long day, the damn coal dust, the noise, the deafening noise, from the machines drilling against god’s ancient rock, and the sweat, the infernal sweat even on cold days once you got down in the pits. After a couple of months he adjusted to the routine, got to know real coal-miners who were the third or fourth generation going down there, and got some respect when he told the boys that they were not getting paid nearly enough for the tough work they did for the damn Johnson Coal Company. The boys listened, and knowing Kentucky coal fields traditions, hell Harlan, bloody Harlan, was just down the road they prepared to strike one time. Somehow the company got wind of it and offered a small raise and paid wash-up time just to keep the production moving. That was enough, enough then with plenty of guys out of work, and plenty of guys, scabs, with hungry mouths to feed ready to cross the lines if anything happened.
There he was though stuck in the mines, the damn black-lung mines (his mother cried every time he came home at night looking, well, looking like a damn nigra, and coughing the dust out half the night) when the news of the Japs hitting Pearl came over the radio and guys, guys like him, all over the country, were lined up three, maybe more, deep, to enlist. Funny though he could, having worked his way up a little in the mines, have gotten a vital industries draft deferral and been sitting right then in the Prestonsburg hotel with some pretty town girl drinking real store-bought liquor and working up his courage to ask her up into his room. But no, on December 9, 1941 he had gone to Prestonsburg and enlisted in the Marines right on the dotted line. And he never looked back.
Scared, scared to death, or not, sitting at that wooden table having a second cruller and a third cup of mud Private First Class Prescott Breslin thought it over for a minute. He then said to himself, hell, between shoveling coal for Mr. Peabody forever and fighting the damn Japs I’ll take the Japs. And that made him just a little less scared as someone walked up and put another nickel in the jukebox to play If I Didn’t Care.
Friday, August 10, 2012
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- From The “Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night” Series – “When Billie Sought To Be Church Hall Dance Champ”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Teen Angels performing Eddie, My Love to add some flavor to this sketch .
Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.
And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word), we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those of us who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie whom I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.
Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery-operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.
And that pious, quietist, chase the devil and his (or her) devil’s music away, say a million Acts of Contrition, church-bent, Roman Catholic church-bent, part formed a great deal of the backdrop for how we related to that break-out rock music. And why we had to practically form a secret cult to enjoy it. Now you all know, since you all went to elementary school just like I did, although maybe you didn’t attend in the Cold War, red scare, we could-all-be-bombed-dead tomorrow 1950s like I did, that those mandatory elementary school dances where we rough-hewn boys learned, maybe we learned, our first social graces were nothing but cream puff affairs. Lots of red-faced guys and giggling girls. Big deal, right?
What you maybe don’t know, especially if you were not from a working class neighborhood (or a public housing project) made up of mainly Irish and Italian Roman Catholic families like I was is that “cream puff” school stuff was seen by the Church (need I add any more identifying words?) as the devil’s playground. Later, I found out from some Protestant friends that their church leaders felt the same way. No, not those Universalist-Unitarian types who think everything humankind does that is not hurtful is okay but real hard-nosed Protestants, like Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians. So to counter that secular godlessness, at least in our area, the Church sponsored Friday night dances. Chaste, very chaste, or that was the intention, Friday night dances.
Now these dances from an outside look would look just like those devil-sponsored secular school dances. They were, for example, held in the basement of the church (St. whoever, Our Lady of the wherever, The Sacred whatever, or fill in the blank), a basement, given the norms of public architecture, was an almost exact rectangular, windowless, linoleum-floored, folding chairs and tables, raised stage replica of the elementary school auditorium. That church locale, moreover, when dressed up like on those Friday nights with the usual crepe, handmade signs of welcome, and refreshment offerings also looked the same.
And just so that you don’t think I am going overboard they played the same damn (oops) music as at school, except the sound system (donated, naturally, by some pious parishioner, looking for good conduct points from the fiery-eyed "fire and brimstone" pastor) was usually barely audible. The real difference then, and maybe now, for all I know, was that rather than a few embarrassed public school teacher-chaperones drafted against their wills, I hope, or like to hope, every stick-in-the-mud person (or so it seemed) over the age of eighteen was drafted into the lord’s army for the evening. Purpose: to make sure there was no untoward, unnatural, unexpected, or unwanted touching of anything, by anyone, for any reason. So, now that I think about it, this was really the Friday night prison dance. But not always.
Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. The Billie who wanted fame and fortune (or at least girls) so bad that he could almost taste it. The Billie who, as I related before, entered a teenage talent show dressed up like Bill Haley and whose mother-made suit jacket arms fell off during the performance and he wound up with all the girls in schools as a consolation prize. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or, maybe, almost best friend as we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music, rock music that is.
During the summer, and here I am speaking of the summer of 1958, these church-held dances started a little earlier and finished a little later. That was fine by us. But part of the reason was that during July (starting after the Fourth of July, if I recall) and August there was a weekly dance-off elimination contest. Now these things were meant to be to show off partner-type dancing skills so I never even dreamed of participating, although I was now hip to the girl thing (or at least twelve year old hip to it), and gladly. Not so Billie. You know, or if you don’t then I will tell you so you know now, that Billie was a pretty good singer, and a pretty good shaker as a dancer. Needless to say these skills were not on the official papal list of ways to prove you had some Fred Astaire-like talent. What you needed to demonstrate, with a partner, a girl partner, was waltz-like, fox-trot stuff. Stuff you were glad to know when last, slow dance time came around but not before, please, not before.
But see, if you didn’t know before, I will remind you, Billie was a fiend to win a talent contest, a contest that, the way he figured it, was his ticket out of "the projects" and into all the cars he wanted, all the girls, and half of everything else in the world. Yah, I know, but poor boys have dreams too. And I don’t suppose it is too early to remind you, like I did with the lost sleeve teenage talent show, that Billie later spent those pent-up energies less productively, much less productively once he knew the score, his score about life. This night, this Friday night, at the start of the contest Billie is going for the brass ring. See, Billie, secretly, at least secretly from me, was taking dance lessons, slow dance lessons with Rosalie, Christ Rosalie, the prettiest girl in our class, the girl that if I had known the word then I would have called fetching, very fetching. That was, and is, high praise from me. And, see also, teaching the pair the ropes is none other than Rosalie’s mother who before she became a mother was some kind of dance queen (I don’t know, or don’t remember, if I knew the details of that woman’s prior life before then). It was almost like the fix was in.
Now you know just as well as I do that I have no story to tell, or at least no story worth telling, if Billie and Rosalie don’t make it out of the box, if they just get eliminated quickly. Sure they made it, and now they are standing there getting ready to do battle against the final pair for the sainted dance championship of the christian world, projects branch. Now my take on the dancing all summer was there wasn’t much difference, at least noticeable difference, between the pairs.
I think the judges thought so too, the junior priest, a priest that the pastor threw into this dance thing because he was closer to our ages than the old-timer "fire and brimstone" pastor was, and four ladies from the Ladies' Sodality usually took quite a bit of time before deciding who was eliminated. Rosalie’s mother (and my mother, as well) thought the same thing when we compared notes. See, now with Billie under contract (oh, yah, naturally I was his manager, or something like that) I had developed into an ace dance critic. Mainly though, I was downplaying the opposition to boost my pair's chances, and, incidentally, falling, falling big, for Rosalie. And not just for her dancing.
So here we were at the finals. It was a wickedly hot night in that dungeon basement so the jackets and ties, if wore (and that needed to be worn by the contestant males), were off. Also, by the rules, each finalist couple got to choose their own music and form of dancing. The first couple did this dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers all hands flailing and quick-movement thing that even impressed me. After than performance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billie talking to Rosalie, talking fast and talking furiously. Something was up, definitely, something was up.
Well, something was up. Billie, old sweet boy Billie, old get out of the projects at any cost Billie, old take no prisoners Billie decided that he was going to stretch the rules and play to his strength by doing a Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock jitterbug thing to show the judges his “moves” and what we would now call going "outside the box." And he had gotten Rosalie, sweet, fetching, deserves better Rosalie, to go along with him on it. See, Rosalie, during all those dance lesson things had fallen for old Billie and his words were like gold. Damn.
I will say that Billie and Rosalie tore the place up, at least I guess Billie did because I was, exclusively, looking at Rosalie who really danced her head off. Who won? Let me put it this way, this time the judges, that priest and his coterie of do-gooders didn’t take much time deciding that the other couple won. Rosalie was crushed. Billie, like always Billie, chalked it up to the "fix" being in for the other couple. Life was against the free spirits, he said, something it took me a lot longer to figure out. Rosalie's family moved away not long after that contest, like a lot of people just keeping time at the projects until their ships to better days came in, and I heard that she was later still furious at Billie for crossing up her chances of winning like that. Yah, but, boy, she could twirl that thing.
Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.
And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word), we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those of us who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie whom I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.
Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery-operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.
And that pious, quietist, chase the devil and his (or her) devil’s music away, say a million Acts of Contrition, church-bent, Roman Catholic church-bent, part formed a great deal of the backdrop for how we related to that break-out rock music. And why we had to practically form a secret cult to enjoy it. Now you all know, since you all went to elementary school just like I did, although maybe you didn’t attend in the Cold War, red scare, we could-all-be-bombed-dead tomorrow 1950s like I did, that those mandatory elementary school dances where we rough-hewn boys learned, maybe we learned, our first social graces were nothing but cream puff affairs. Lots of red-faced guys and giggling girls. Big deal, right?
What you maybe don’t know, especially if you were not from a working class neighborhood (or a public housing project) made up of mainly Irish and Italian Roman Catholic families like I was is that “cream puff” school stuff was seen by the Church (need I add any more identifying words?) as the devil’s playground. Later, I found out from some Protestant friends that their church leaders felt the same way. No, not those Universalist-Unitarian types who think everything humankind does that is not hurtful is okay but real hard-nosed Protestants, like Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians. So to counter that secular godlessness, at least in our area, the Church sponsored Friday night dances. Chaste, very chaste, or that was the intention, Friday night dances.
Now these dances from an outside look would look just like those devil-sponsored secular school dances. They were, for example, held in the basement of the church (St. whoever, Our Lady of the wherever, The Sacred whatever, or fill in the blank), a basement, given the norms of public architecture, was an almost exact rectangular, windowless, linoleum-floored, folding chairs and tables, raised stage replica of the elementary school auditorium. That church locale, moreover, when dressed up like on those Friday nights with the usual crepe, handmade signs of welcome, and refreshment offerings also looked the same.
And just so that you don’t think I am going overboard they played the same damn (oops) music as at school, except the sound system (donated, naturally, by some pious parishioner, looking for good conduct points from the fiery-eyed "fire and brimstone" pastor) was usually barely audible. The real difference then, and maybe now, for all I know, was that rather than a few embarrassed public school teacher-chaperones drafted against their wills, I hope, or like to hope, every stick-in-the-mud person (or so it seemed) over the age of eighteen was drafted into the lord’s army for the evening. Purpose: to make sure there was no untoward, unnatural, unexpected, or unwanted touching of anything, by anyone, for any reason. So, now that I think about it, this was really the Friday night prison dance. But not always.
Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. The Billie who wanted fame and fortune (or at least girls) so bad that he could almost taste it. The Billie who, as I related before, entered a teenage talent show dressed up like Bill Haley and whose mother-made suit jacket arms fell off during the performance and he wound up with all the girls in schools as a consolation prize. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or, maybe, almost best friend as we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music, rock music that is.
During the summer, and here I am speaking of the summer of 1958, these church-held dances started a little earlier and finished a little later. That was fine by us. But part of the reason was that during July (starting after the Fourth of July, if I recall) and August there was a weekly dance-off elimination contest. Now these things were meant to be to show off partner-type dancing skills so I never even dreamed of participating, although I was now hip to the girl thing (or at least twelve year old hip to it), and gladly. Not so Billie. You know, or if you don’t then I will tell you so you know now, that Billie was a pretty good singer, and a pretty good shaker as a dancer. Needless to say these skills were not on the official papal list of ways to prove you had some Fred Astaire-like talent. What you needed to demonstrate, with a partner, a girl partner, was waltz-like, fox-trot stuff. Stuff you were glad to know when last, slow dance time came around but not before, please, not before.
But see, if you didn’t know before, I will remind you, Billie was a fiend to win a talent contest, a contest that, the way he figured it, was his ticket out of "the projects" and into all the cars he wanted, all the girls, and half of everything else in the world. Yah, I know, but poor boys have dreams too. And I don’t suppose it is too early to remind you, like I did with the lost sleeve teenage talent show, that Billie later spent those pent-up energies less productively, much less productively once he knew the score, his score about life. This night, this Friday night, at the start of the contest Billie is going for the brass ring. See, Billie, secretly, at least secretly from me, was taking dance lessons, slow dance lessons with Rosalie, Christ Rosalie, the prettiest girl in our class, the girl that if I had known the word then I would have called fetching, very fetching. That was, and is, high praise from me. And, see also, teaching the pair the ropes is none other than Rosalie’s mother who before she became a mother was some kind of dance queen (I don’t know, or don’t remember, if I knew the details of that woman’s prior life before then). It was almost like the fix was in.
Now you know just as well as I do that I have no story to tell, or at least no story worth telling, if Billie and Rosalie don’t make it out of the box, if they just get eliminated quickly. Sure they made it, and now they are standing there getting ready to do battle against the final pair for the sainted dance championship of the christian world, projects branch. Now my take on the dancing all summer was there wasn’t much difference, at least noticeable difference, between the pairs.
I think the judges thought so too, the junior priest, a priest that the pastor threw into this dance thing because he was closer to our ages than the old-timer "fire and brimstone" pastor was, and four ladies from the Ladies' Sodality usually took quite a bit of time before deciding who was eliminated. Rosalie’s mother (and my mother, as well) thought the same thing when we compared notes. See, now with Billie under contract (oh, yah, naturally I was his manager, or something like that) I had developed into an ace dance critic. Mainly though, I was downplaying the opposition to boost my pair's chances, and, incidentally, falling, falling big, for Rosalie. And not just for her dancing.
So here we were at the finals. It was a wickedly hot night in that dungeon basement so the jackets and ties, if wore (and that needed to be worn by the contestant males), were off. Also, by the rules, each finalist couple got to choose their own music and form of dancing. The first couple did this dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers all hands flailing and quick-movement thing that even impressed me. After than performance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billie talking to Rosalie, talking fast and talking furiously. Something was up, definitely, something was up.
Well, something was up. Billie, old sweet boy Billie, old get out of the projects at any cost Billie, old take no prisoners Billie decided that he was going to stretch the rules and play to his strength by doing a Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock jitterbug thing to show the judges his “moves” and what we would now call going "outside the box." And he had gotten Rosalie, sweet, fetching, deserves better Rosalie, to go along with him on it. See, Rosalie, during all those dance lesson things had fallen for old Billie and his words were like gold. Damn.
I will say that Billie and Rosalie tore the place up, at least I guess Billie did because I was, exclusively, looking at Rosalie who really danced her head off. Who won? Let me put it this way, this time the judges, that priest and his coterie of do-gooders didn’t take much time deciding that the other couple won. Rosalie was crushed. Billie, like always Billie, chalked it up to the "fix" being in for the other couple. Life was against the free spirits, he said, something it took me a lot longer to figure out. Rosalie's family moved away not long after that contest, like a lot of people just keeping time at the projects until their ships to better days came in, and I heard that she was later still furious at Billie for crossing up her chances of winning like that. Yah, but, boy, she could twirl that thing.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- It Ain’t About The Pool, Eddie- Paul Newman’s “The Hustler”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Paul Newman’s “The Hustler.”
DVD Review
The Hustler, starring Paul New Man, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961
Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it, and it probably will in the end. Fast Eddie, coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek in the great depression or gotten your fill of action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away. Some Neal Cassady/Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg Howl against the fates moment all gassed up to run the tables on the red scare cold war night.
To Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Wishing to, hanging out white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide belt bucket holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety, some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.
So it was hell’s angels big hog cycles and whipsaw chains beating down terrified citizens (or each other) for pocket change and a three to five stretch courtesy of the California penal system, break of dawn at some smoke-filled factory making widgets with after dinner corner boy nights holding up storefront walls or going on the hustle. Join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade.
Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it. See Fast Eddie besides his dream had something else, he had some talent. After dismissing those big hog wild boys from across the Sonny Barger street as nowhere and after wiping up the poolroom floor with half the half-smart blond, blue-eyed faux hard guy surfer boys in California he wanted to beat down pharaoh like a lot of okie, arkie guys had been trying to do since Egypt time (although their names were different then that is what they were and Fast Eddie had the DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, getting busted up by pharaoh’s boys for their troubles. Still Fast Eddie had talent and that is worth something in this wicked old world, something okay.
To watch Fast Eddie when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then the runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to that mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Rich guys too, rich guys looking for cocaine kicks, maybe some off-hand roughhouse sex, and smelling the sweat, the special criminal sweat of guys who had done time while they were at Saint Mark’s, or someplace like that hanging around reading Nelson Algren or Jean Genet , with their boyfriends. Hell, Fast Eddie would relentlessly faggot tease them (even if they weren’t) and they would lap it up. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh.
And he got Pharaoh, got pharaoh in spades. Got more of pharaoh that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Jesus he looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful. Pharaoh about that time took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.
But that guy had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.
And then she showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie pieces. To curb his hunger a little, and also to disturb his sleep. She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, more like our lady of the lord Madonna beautiful. More like you had better hold on Mr. Blue-eyed man searching for that elusive fame. Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to some bed. Polite society would have called her a tramp, hanging onto some beat down corner boy for dear life, maybe for her life. Who could say about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, and that thought got her through some stuff. And Fast Eddie too.
Some dreams though are monstrous and Fast Eddie’s was just that way. And she, Sarah to give her a name now that he had shared her bed, could do nothing, nothing at all to slay that monster. It gnawed at him. And like most dreams, most modern dreams, there was a need for money, serious money to run at pharaoh again. Now if the world was just made up of mad dream men and clinging women it would be such a hard place at that. But there are in this wicked old world, especially down in the darkened lamp-less corners, down in the alleys, down in the gutters when even dreaming is against the law, outlawed no questions asked, guys, ten percent guys let’s call them, hang out. Hang out waiting for broken dream cheap street has beens with talent (those without just keep moving, moving down) to come to their door. And with nothing to lose (or so Fast Eddie thought) he bought in, bought into the bargain with the devil, and no looking back.
But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. The world of dirt and dust, and blood. And the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. And so Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hunger. And Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the pharaoh or die.
As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when I first saw him work his magic against some scrub surfer guy way out of his element. The pockets were like manholes that night and I thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired pharaoh. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory”, that Sarah Packard –etched victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool.
DVD Review
The Hustler, starring Paul New Man, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961
Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it, and it probably will in the end. Fast Eddie, coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek in the great depression or gotten your fill of action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away. Some Neal Cassady/Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg Howl against the fates moment all gassed up to run the tables on the red scare cold war night.
To Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Wishing to, hanging out white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide belt bucket holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety, some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.
So it was hell’s angels big hog cycles and whipsaw chains beating down terrified citizens (or each other) for pocket change and a three to five stretch courtesy of the California penal system, break of dawn at some smoke-filled factory making widgets with after dinner corner boy nights holding up storefront walls or going on the hustle. Join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade.
Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it. See Fast Eddie besides his dream had something else, he had some talent. After dismissing those big hog wild boys from across the Sonny Barger street as nowhere and after wiping up the poolroom floor with half the half-smart blond, blue-eyed faux hard guy surfer boys in California he wanted to beat down pharaoh like a lot of okie, arkie guys had been trying to do since Egypt time (although their names were different then that is what they were and Fast Eddie had the DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, getting busted up by pharaoh’s boys for their troubles. Still Fast Eddie had talent and that is worth something in this wicked old world, something okay.
To watch Fast Eddie when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then the runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to that mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Rich guys too, rich guys looking for cocaine kicks, maybe some off-hand roughhouse sex, and smelling the sweat, the special criminal sweat of guys who had done time while they were at Saint Mark’s, or someplace like that hanging around reading Nelson Algren or Jean Genet , with their boyfriends. Hell, Fast Eddie would relentlessly faggot tease them (even if they weren’t) and they would lap it up. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh.
And he got Pharaoh, got pharaoh in spades. Got more of pharaoh that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Jesus he looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful. Pharaoh about that time took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.
But that guy had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.
And then she showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie pieces. To curb his hunger a little, and also to disturb his sleep. She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, more like our lady of the lord Madonna beautiful. More like you had better hold on Mr. Blue-eyed man searching for that elusive fame. Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to some bed. Polite society would have called her a tramp, hanging onto some beat down corner boy for dear life, maybe for her life. Who could say about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, and that thought got her through some stuff. And Fast Eddie too.
Some dreams though are monstrous and Fast Eddie’s was just that way. And she, Sarah to give her a name now that he had shared her bed, could do nothing, nothing at all to slay that monster. It gnawed at him. And like most dreams, most modern dreams, there was a need for money, serious money to run at pharaoh again. Now if the world was just made up of mad dream men and clinging women it would be such a hard place at that. But there are in this wicked old world, especially down in the darkened lamp-less corners, down in the alleys, down in the gutters when even dreaming is against the law, outlawed no questions asked, guys, ten percent guys let’s call them, hang out. Hang out waiting for broken dream cheap street has beens with talent (those without just keep moving, moving down) to come to their door. And with nothing to lose (or so Fast Eddie thought) he bought in, bought into the bargain with the devil, and no looking back.
But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. The world of dirt and dust, and blood. And the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. And so Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hunger. And Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the pharaoh or die.
As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when I first saw him work his magic against some scrub surfer guy way out of his element. The pockets were like manholes that night and I thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired pharaoh. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory”, that Sarah Packard –etched victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Markin’s Big Date
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Eddie Cochran performing Sittin’ in the Balcony to add a zest to this sketch.
Sittin' In The Balcony
Recorded by Eddie Cochran
Written by John D. Loudermilk
G D7 G
I'm just a sittin' in the balcony just a watching the movie
D7 G
Or maybe it's a symphony I wouldn't know
D7 G
I don't care about the symphonies just a cymbal and a timpani
D7 G
I'm just a sitting in the balcony on the very last row
C G
I'll hold your hand and I'll kiss you too
A7 D7
The feature's over but we're not through
G D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony holding hands in the balcony
D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony on the very last row
C G
We may stop loving to watch bugs bunny
A7 D7
But he can't take the place of my honey
G D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony just a smooching in the balcony
D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony on the very last row
C G D7 G
Just a hugging and a kissing with my baby in the very last row
You never knew what kind of story Peter Paul Markin my old yellow brick road compadre going back to the1960s was going to come up with back in those California “on the bus” searching for the great American West night days as we roamed up and down that state on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster bus. One day (night, more likely) he might be all high politics and want to talk about what was wrong with various slogans put forth on the workers’ government question at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922. The next day (or maybe that same night if we had hit the right kind of “high” for the occasion) he might just draw back to recall some childhood or teenage angst story. When he went into that mode it usually meant he wanted to discuss some forlorn “chick” that got away in those woe begotten days, or ones that didn’t and he wished they had. This one though is about one that didn’t get away but didn’t work out either. Amazingly, thinking about it later after he told me this story, I noticed how many such no win tales he kept locked in that mind of his.
For this one Peter Paul (I am under the equivalent of a court order not to use his nickname, his childhood stuck to adulthood nickname Pee-Pee when writing about him) reached way back to his elementary school days down at the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments (the “projects” in his terms) where he came of age. And where he “discovered” girls, although not without the usual ten tons of trauma, angst and alienation. Of course the ins and outs of the boy-girl thing have eluded every guy from ten to ten times ten since girls were invented so his story is not one that I found so bizarre. Just the particulars of his dilemma.
See, for a guy who thought nothing of spouting off those facts about the trials and tribulations of the Fourth Congress of Communist International Peter Paul was (and is) an extremely shy guy. And was back in the back the day time he was talking about, maybe more so. His thing was always to kind of overwhelm the girls with about ten thousand arcane facts on about eleven thousand different things that he had read about. Well, we all have our ways of relating to the world, and the opposite sex (or the same sex these days as far as preferences go). Personally I always thought he was crazy to do that routine when I saw him in action later when we were on the road. But some girls (and women more than I would have figured) were easily impressed by such odd-ball foolishness. My thing, personally, was just to say pretty things about them and take my chances like most normal guys.
Enter Belinda, Belinda Boylston, a blonde-haired stick (local Adamsville corner boy short-hand for girls who had not gotten a figure yet but who, well, who had some other charms only immature teen boys would notice) who had just that year (1958) moved into the new middle class single family colonial-style houses up the street build for those, unlike Peter Paul’s family, moving up in the golden age of American post- World War II prosperity. She had entered the school in October and so was not aware like all the other girls in his class of his special “skills.” And not knowing that she one day, maybe the second or third day of class, gave him a smile, a thin Mona Lisa smile. He blushed, blushed seven shades of red the lightest being blood red. Done. Gone. Finished.
After that in class Peter Paul poured it on especially when he noticed that she was paying attention when he answered a question, or just started to ramble on. (Jesus, I know that one.) But how was he going to get to talk to her. That is where Billie Bradley, the king hell king of the young teen Adamsville corner boy night came to the rescue. Or rather his sister, Celina, who was a year ahead of the boys, did. She corralled Belinda one day at lunch and just came right out with it. Did she like Peter Paul, or not? Of course came the since time immemorial- let him ask me himself. And with that our tale ends. Not end ends but ends for the few weeks that it took Peter Paul to get up the courage to talk to Belinda. And only under threat that Billie Bradley was going to take a run after her himself.
Well the long and short of it was that Belinda had not been coquettish (although she could be that) when she gave her answer to Celina but was pretty shy herself. She had planned to have her new friend, Maude, Maude Riley, ask Peter Paul if he liked her but Celina got there first. And so, finally, like some false-fated lovers out of some Greek tragedy (or Hollywood B script) they talked and she agreed to go on a “date.” with
one Peter Paul Markin that next Saturday.
Now this twelve year old “date” business is not (or was not) like a real date that older teens and we adults have but is strictly around the block stuff. First off it was strictly day time, strictly going to the movies or the beach (in summer) and strictly a few hours, no more. And with no car to drive them to the movies (nobody then, even shy nobodies, and I hope not now either, wanted to be chauffeured by some old foggy parents when they only had that precious few hours to make an impression) they took the bus to the Stand Theater in Adamsville Square for the Saturday matinee double-feature.
Peter Paul dressed in his best shirt and pants and his hair combed picked up Belinda at her house. Belinda looked nice too in her just slightly filling out cashmere sweater all the rage in those days. After the obligatory hi and goodbye (and parental list of dos and don’ts) they headed to the bus stop. Here is a funny part, or I thought it was funny. After leaving the Boylston house they were like two magpies talking about a storm like they had known each other forever. And every once in a while as he was talking she gave Peter Paul that fatal (to him) Mona Lisa smile. Finally they got to the square and headed for the theater.
Peter Paul said the rest of the afternoon was a little hazy. They entered the theater although he confessed that on a stack of seven bibles he could not remember the movies being played that day. Maybe Peggy Sue Meets Godzilla he though, something like that. And here is why things were a little hazy. Now parents and old foggies when they go to the movie theater are looking for the best seats to view the film. Twelve year olds then (and maybe now too for all I know) on their first “date” had a different decision to make. Orchestra seats or balcony? The answer meant an ordinary old foggy-type date or holding hands, and lips, upstairs. Peter Paul shyly asked Belinda where she wanted to sit. She gave him that thin Mona Lisa smile and pointed upstairs.
I wish I could give a postscript that Peter Paul and Belinda lived happily ever after, or until something else came along. However in this wicked old world some things just can’t work out, work out for twelve and thirteen year olds. Peter Paul and Belinda were an “item” for the rest of the school year, or most of it. Then Belinda’s father got a promotion that required a transfer to another part of the state. Such is life. But he still remembers that Mona Lisa smile as she, unable to talk she was so shy at that moment, pointed to those stairs.
Sittin' In The Balcony
Recorded by Eddie Cochran
Written by John D. Loudermilk
G D7 G
I'm just a sittin' in the balcony just a watching the movie
D7 G
Or maybe it's a symphony I wouldn't know
D7 G
I don't care about the symphonies just a cymbal and a timpani
D7 G
I'm just a sitting in the balcony on the very last row
C G
I'll hold your hand and I'll kiss you too
A7 D7
The feature's over but we're not through
G D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony holding hands in the balcony
D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony on the very last row
C G
We may stop loving to watch bugs bunny
A7 D7
But he can't take the place of my honey
G D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony just a smooching in the balcony
D7 G
Just a sittin' in the balcony on the very last row
C G D7 G
Just a hugging and a kissing with my baby in the very last row
You never knew what kind of story Peter Paul Markin my old yellow brick road compadre going back to the1960s was going to come up with back in those California “on the bus” searching for the great American West night days as we roamed up and down that state on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster bus. One day (night, more likely) he might be all high politics and want to talk about what was wrong with various slogans put forth on the workers’ government question at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922. The next day (or maybe that same night if we had hit the right kind of “high” for the occasion) he might just draw back to recall some childhood or teenage angst story. When he went into that mode it usually meant he wanted to discuss some forlorn “chick” that got away in those woe begotten days, or ones that didn’t and he wished they had. This one though is about one that didn’t get away but didn’t work out either. Amazingly, thinking about it later after he told me this story, I noticed how many such no win tales he kept locked in that mind of his.
For this one Peter Paul (I am under the equivalent of a court order not to use his nickname, his childhood stuck to adulthood nickname Pee-Pee when writing about him) reached way back to his elementary school days down at the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments (the “projects” in his terms) where he came of age. And where he “discovered” girls, although not without the usual ten tons of trauma, angst and alienation. Of course the ins and outs of the boy-girl thing have eluded every guy from ten to ten times ten since girls were invented so his story is not one that I found so bizarre. Just the particulars of his dilemma.
See, for a guy who thought nothing of spouting off those facts about the trials and tribulations of the Fourth Congress of Communist International Peter Paul was (and is) an extremely shy guy. And was back in the back the day time he was talking about, maybe more so. His thing was always to kind of overwhelm the girls with about ten thousand arcane facts on about eleven thousand different things that he had read about. Well, we all have our ways of relating to the world, and the opposite sex (or the same sex these days as far as preferences go). Personally I always thought he was crazy to do that routine when I saw him in action later when we were on the road. But some girls (and women more than I would have figured) were easily impressed by such odd-ball foolishness. My thing, personally, was just to say pretty things about them and take my chances like most normal guys.
Enter Belinda, Belinda Boylston, a blonde-haired stick (local Adamsville corner boy short-hand for girls who had not gotten a figure yet but who, well, who had some other charms only immature teen boys would notice) who had just that year (1958) moved into the new middle class single family colonial-style houses up the street build for those, unlike Peter Paul’s family, moving up in the golden age of American post- World War II prosperity. She had entered the school in October and so was not aware like all the other girls in his class of his special “skills.” And not knowing that she one day, maybe the second or third day of class, gave him a smile, a thin Mona Lisa smile. He blushed, blushed seven shades of red the lightest being blood red. Done. Gone. Finished.
After that in class Peter Paul poured it on especially when he noticed that she was paying attention when he answered a question, or just started to ramble on. (Jesus, I know that one.) But how was he going to get to talk to her. That is where Billie Bradley, the king hell king of the young teen Adamsville corner boy night came to the rescue. Or rather his sister, Celina, who was a year ahead of the boys, did. She corralled Belinda one day at lunch and just came right out with it. Did she like Peter Paul, or not? Of course came the since time immemorial- let him ask me himself. And with that our tale ends. Not end ends but ends for the few weeks that it took Peter Paul to get up the courage to talk to Belinda. And only under threat that Billie Bradley was going to take a run after her himself.
Well the long and short of it was that Belinda had not been coquettish (although she could be that) when she gave her answer to Celina but was pretty shy herself. She had planned to have her new friend, Maude, Maude Riley, ask Peter Paul if he liked her but Celina got there first. And so, finally, like some false-fated lovers out of some Greek tragedy (or Hollywood B script) they talked and she agreed to go on a “date.” with
one Peter Paul Markin that next Saturday.
Now this twelve year old “date” business is not (or was not) like a real date that older teens and we adults have but is strictly around the block stuff. First off it was strictly day time, strictly going to the movies or the beach (in summer) and strictly a few hours, no more. And with no car to drive them to the movies (nobody then, even shy nobodies, and I hope not now either, wanted to be chauffeured by some old foggy parents when they only had that precious few hours to make an impression) they took the bus to the Stand Theater in Adamsville Square for the Saturday matinee double-feature.
Peter Paul dressed in his best shirt and pants and his hair combed picked up Belinda at her house. Belinda looked nice too in her just slightly filling out cashmere sweater all the rage in those days. After the obligatory hi and goodbye (and parental list of dos and don’ts) they headed to the bus stop. Here is a funny part, or I thought it was funny. After leaving the Boylston house they were like two magpies talking about a storm like they had known each other forever. And every once in a while as he was talking she gave Peter Paul that fatal (to him) Mona Lisa smile. Finally they got to the square and headed for the theater.
Peter Paul said the rest of the afternoon was a little hazy. They entered the theater although he confessed that on a stack of seven bibles he could not remember the movies being played that day. Maybe Peggy Sue Meets Godzilla he though, something like that. And here is why things were a little hazy. Now parents and old foggies when they go to the movie theater are looking for the best seats to view the film. Twelve year olds then (and maybe now too for all I know) on their first “date” had a different decision to make. Orchestra seats or balcony? The answer meant an ordinary old foggy-type date or holding hands, and lips, upstairs. Peter Paul shyly asked Belinda where she wanted to sit. She gave him that thin Mona Lisa smile and pointed upstairs.
I wish I could give a postscript that Peter Paul and Belinda lived happily ever after, or until something else came along. However in this wicked old world some things just can’t work out, work out for twelve and thirteen year olds. Peter Paul and Belinda were an “item” for the rest of the school year, or most of it. Then Belinda’s father got a promotion that required a transfer to another part of the state. Such is life. But he still remembers that Mona Lisa smile as she, unable to talk she was so shy at that moment, pointed to those stairs.
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