***A Pauper Comes Of Age- For the Adamsville South Elementary School Class Of 1958-Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

This is the way my old corner boy, Fritz Taylor, from down in “the projects” told me the story one night years later when we were sitting on the grey granite steps of North Adamsville High. Sitting there, no dough in our pockets, our main guy for a ride out of town on a family vacation, no girls in hand, talking slowly, kind of softly for us, kind of dreamy really about the first times we had been smitten by a girl, not necessarily a forever smitten thing (forever then being maybe a month or six weeks) but with a bug that disturbed our sleep. Yeah, that is exactly the way to put it, when some frail disturbed our sleep, the first of many sleepless nights on that subject.  (That “frail” a localism for girl, heavily influenced by watching too many 1930s and 1940s gangster and hard-boiled private detective movies.) So we were sitting there thinking about how we were now chasing other dreams, well, maybe not other dreams but older versions, sweet sixteen versions of that same dream.  Of course at sixteen it was all about girls but as it turned out that subject had its own pre-history way back when. Just ask Fritz Taylor if you see him.

Fritz Taylor, if he thought about it at all and at times like that dream vision night at sixteen on the step in front of the high school he might have, probably would have said that he had his history hat on again  like when he was a kid, loving history or even the thought of history since some teacher blew him away with talk of ancient Greeks and Roman, blew him away more when she freaked him out with talk of Egypt Pharaoh time and he ran all the way over to the art museum in Boston to look at old  Pharaoh.  That sixteen summer night when out of the blue, the memory time blue, he thought about more modern history, thought about her, thought about fair Rosimund.

No, before you get all set to turn to some other thing, some desperate alternate other thing, to do rather than read Fritz’s poignant little story, this is not some American Revolution founding fathers (or mothers, because old-time Abigail Adams may have been hovering in some background granite-chiseled slab grave in very old-time Adamsville cemetery while the events to be related occurred) or some bold Massachusetts abolitionist regiment out of the American Civil War 150th anniversary memory history like Fritz used to like to twist the tail around when you knew him, or his like. This is about first love so rest easy.

Fritz, that early summer’s night, was simply trying to put his thoughts together and figured that he would write something, write something for those who could stand it, those fellow members of his who could stand to know that the members of the North Adamsville High School Class of 1963 were that year celebrating the 5th anniversary of their graduation from elementary school. In Fritz’s case not North Adamsville Elementary School like many of his fellows but from Adamsville South Elementary School across town on the “wrong side of the tracks.” And although, at many levels that was a very different experience from that of the average, average North Adamsville class member the story had a universal quality that he thought might amuse them, amuse them that is until the name, the thought of the name, the mist coming from out of his mouth at the forming of the name, holy of holies, Rosimund, stopped him dead in his tracks and forced him to tell me that story and to write that different story later.

Still, once the initial trauma wore off, Fritz thought what better way to celebrate that milestone on the rocky road to surviving childhood than to take a trip down memory lane, that Rosimund-strewn memory lane. Those days although they were filled with memorable incidents, good and bad, paled beside this Rosimund-related story that cut deep, deep into his brown-haired mind, and as it turned out one that he have not forgotten after all. So rather than produce some hokey last dance, last elementary school sweaty-palmed dance failure tale, some Billie Bradley-led corner boy down in the back of Adamsville South doo wop be-bop into the night luring stick and shape girls like lemmings from the sea on hearing those doo wop harmonies, those harmonies meant for them, the sticks and shapes that is, or some wannabe gangster retread tale, or even some Captain Midnight how he saved the world from the Cold War Russkies with his last minute-saving invention Fritz preferred to relate a home truth, a hard home truth to be sure, but the truth Here is his say:

At some point in elementary school a boy is inevitably supposed to learn, maybe required to, depending on the whims of your school district’s supervisory staff and maybe also what your parents expected of such schools, to do two intertwined socially-oriented tasks - the basics of some kind of dancing and to be paired off with, dare I say it, a girl in that activity. After all that is what it there for isn’t it. At least it was that way in then a few years back, and if things have changed, changed dramatically in that regard, you can fill in your own blanks experience. But here that is where fair sweet Rosimund comes in, the paired-off part.

I can already hear your gasps, dear reader, as I present this scenario. You are ready to flee, boy or girl flee, to some safe attic hideaway, to reach for some dusty ancient comfort teddy bear, or for the venturesome, some old sepia brownie camera picture album safely hidden in those environs, but flee, no question, at the suggestion of those painful first times when sweaty-handed, profusely sweaty-handed, boy met too-tall girl on the dance floor (age too-tall girls hormone shooting up first, later things settled down, a little). Now for those who are hopped up, or even mildly interested, in such ancient rituals you may be thinking, oh well, this won’t be so bad after all since I am talking about the mid-1950s and they had Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on the television to protect us from having to dance close, what with those funny self-expression dance moves like the Stroll and the Hully-Gully that you see on re-runs. And then go on except, maybe, the last dance, the last close dance that spelled success or failure in the special he or she night so let me tell you how really bad we had it in the plaid 1960s. Wrong.

Oh, of course, we were all after school black and white television-addled and addicted making sure that we got home by three in the afternoon to catch the latest episode of the American Bandstand saga about who would, or wouldn’t, dance with that cute girl in the corner (or that leering Amazon in the front). That part was true, true enough. But here we are not talking fun dancing, close or far away, but learning dancing, school-time dancing, come on get with it. What we are talking about in my case is that the dancing part turned out to be the basics of country bumpkin square-dancing (go figure, for a city boy, right?). Not only did this clumsy, yes, sweaty-palmed, star-crossed ten-year-old boy have to do the basic “swing your partner” and some off-hand “doze-zee dozes(sic)” but I  also had to do it while I was paired, for this occasion, with a girl that I had a “crush” on, a serious crush on, and that is where Rosimund really enters the story.

Rosimund see, moreover, was not from “the projects” but from one of the new single-family homes, ranch-style homes that the up and coming middle-class were moving into up the road. In case you didn’t know, or have forgotten since elementary school days, I grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks” down at the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments. The rough side of town, okay. You knew that the minute I mentioned the name, that AHA name, and rough is what you thought, and that is okay. Now. But although I had started getting a handle on the stick "projects" girls I was totally unsure how to deal with girls from the “world.” And Rosimund very definitely was from the world. I will not describe her here; although I could do so even today, but let us leave it at her name. Rosimund. Enchanting name, right? Thoughts of white-plumed knighted medieval jousts against some black-hooded, armored thug knight for the fair maiden’s hand, or for her favors (whatever they were then, mainly left unexplained, although we all know what they are now, and are glad of it)

Nothing special about the story so far, though. Even I am getting a little sleepy over it. Just your average one-of-the-stages-of-the-eternal-coming-of-age-story. I wish. Well, the long and short of it was that the reason we were practicing this square-dancing was to demonstrate our prowess before our parents in the school gym. Nothing unusual there either. After all there is no sense in doing this type of school-time activity unless one can impress one's parents. I forget all the details of the setup of the space for demonstration day and things like that but it was a big deal. Parents, refreshments, various local dignitaries, half the school administrators from downtown whom I will go to my grave believing could have cared less if it was square-dancing or basket-weaving because they would have ooh-ed and ah-ed us whatever it was. But that is so much background filler. Here is the real deal. To honor the occasion, as this was my big moment to impress Rosimund, I had, earlier in the day, cut up my dungarees to give myself an authentic square-dancer look, some now farmer brown look but back then maybe not so bad.

I thought I looked pretty good. And Rosimund, looking nice in some blue taffeta dress with a dark red shawl thing draped and pinned across her shoulders (although don’t quote me on that dress thing, what did a ten-year old boy, sister-less, know of such girlish fashion things. I was just trying to keep my hands in my pockets to wipe my sweaty hands for twirling time, for Rosimund twirling time) actually beamed at me, and said I looked like a gentleman farmer. Be still my heart. Like I said I though I looked pretty good, and if Rosimund thought so well then, well indeed. And things were going nicely. That is until my mother, sitting in a front row audience seat as was her wont, saw what I had done to the pants. In a second she got up from her seat, marched over to me, and started yelling about my disrespect for my father's and her efforts to clothe me and about the fact that since I only had a couple of pairs of pants how could I do such a thing. In short, airing the family troubles in public for all to hear. That went on for what seemed like an eternity. Thereafter I was unceremoniously taken home by said irate mother and placed on restriction for a week. Needless to say my father also heard about it when he got home from that hard day’s work that he was too infrequently able to get to keep the wolves from the door, and I heard about it for weeks afterward. Needless to say I also blew my 'chances' with dear, sweet Rosimund.

Now is this a tale of the hard lessons of the nature of class society that I am always more than willing to put in a word about? Just like you might have remembered about me back in the day. Surely not. Is this a sad tale of young love thwarted by the vagaries of fate? A little. Is this a tale about respect for the little we had in my family? Perhaps. Was my mother, despite her rage, right? Well, yes. Did I learn something about being poor in the world? Damn right. That is the point. …But, oh, Rosimund.

***On The 50^th Anniversary Of The Voting Rights Act-Blowing In The Wind - With Bob Dylan And The Generation Of ‘68 In Mind

 

 

 

Scene: Girls’ Lounge, North Clintondale High School, Monday morning before school, late September, 1962. Additional information for those who know not of girls lounges, for whatever reason. The North Clintondale High School girls’ lounge was reserved strictly for junior and senior girls, no sophomore girls and, most decidedly, no freshmen girls need come within twenty feet of the place for any reason, particularly by accident, under penalty of tumult. It was placed there for the “elect” to use before school, during lunch, after school, and during the day if the need arise for bathroom breaks, but that last was well down on the prerogatives list since any girl can use any other “lav” in the school. No queen, no lioness ever guarded her territory as fiercely as the junior and senior girls of any year, not just 1962, guarded the aura of their lounge.

Needless to say the place was strictly off-limits to boys, although there had been recent talk, 1962 talk, if talk it was, about some girls thinking, or maybe better, wishing, that boys could enter that hallowed ground, after school enter. Unlike the cigarette rumor this one while persistent never seemed to have gone anywhere. Moreover after school most junior or senior girls were either working part-time jobs, heading home to help mother take of younger children, playing lady-like intramural sports far away from boy eyes, or, most likely already with some boy in his latest homemade automobile after a quick run over to North Adamsville Beach. Still that boy rumor possibility was much more likely than entry by those forlorn sophomore and freshman girls, lost or not.

Now the reasoning behind this special girls’ lounge, at least according to Clintondale public school authority wisdom established so far back no one remembered who started it, although a good guess was sometime in the Jazz Age, the time of the “lost generation,” was that junior and senior girls needed some space to attend to their toilet and to adjust to the other rigors of the girl school day and, apparently, that fact was not true for the younger girls. So for that “as far back as can be remembered” junior and senior girls have been using the lounge for their physical, spiritual, demonic, and other intrigue needs.

Certainly it was not the décor that they were fierce about. Now the physical set- up of the place, by 1962 anyway, was that of a rather run-down throne-ante room. Your standard school, heck, for that matter any public building Ladies’ restroom (remember as well this was situated in a public school so erase any thoughts of some elegant woman’s lounge in some fancy downtown Clintondale hotel, some Ritz-ish place); stalls, three, three sinks complete with oversized mirrors for proper preening, several paper towel dispensers and a couple of throw away waste paper baskets (and of course a place to dispense with those monthly napkins) all set off in public building colors.

Beyond that though was the lounge area maybe twice the size of the bathroom area which this year as almost any of the previous ten years contained two old time sofas, a couple of easy chairs, three end tables filled with magazines, mainly girl-fashion related magazines from various years and a couple more waste paper baskets. On one long green wall photographs of previous years of junior and senior girls who were privileged to sit in this very area. On the other providing some fresh air in season three very large glass windows with latch opening for ease of use. (Those windows rumored but only rumored to allow an errant young woman or seven to puff cigarettes and blow the smoke out into the airs. If the school authorities ever discovered that such practices went, of if they did, did anything about it is unclear however those rumors persisted until long after 1962.)        

The “charm” of the place was thus in its exclusivity not its appearance. Come Monday morning, any school day Monday morning, the ones that counted after hard social weekend of fending, or not fending off some sidewalk Lothario, and the place was sure to be jam-packed with every girl with a story to tell, re-tell, or discount as the case may be. If this had been a Catholic school rather than public it would have required the full-time services of a senior cleric to absolve all the lies told on any given Monday morning. Also needless to say, and it took no modern sociologist, no sociologist of youth culture, post-World War II youth culture, no one studied in the tribal norms, in the angsts and alienation, to figure it out in even such an elitist democratic lounge which apparently took it model from ancient Greek civic life except ruled by young women rather than old men certain pecking order, or more aptly cliques aplenty.

The most vocal one, although the smallest, was composed of the “bad” girls, mainly working class, or lower, mostly Irish and Italian, fathers working in the local shipyard or the factories that dotted the river, cigarette-smoking, blowing the smoke out the window this September day as the weather was still good enough to have open windows. As if the nervous, quick-puff stale smells of the cigarettes were not permanently etched on the stained walls already, taking no bloodhound to figure out the No Smoking rule was being violated, violated daily. (Again no action by school authorities was ever taken while a junior or senior girl was in this sanctuary.) Oh yes, and those “bad” girls just then were chewing gum, chewing Wrigley’s double-mint gum, although that ubiquitous habit was not confined to bad girls, as if that act would take the smell of the cigarette away from their breathes. One girl, Anna, a usually dour pretty girl, was animatedly talking, without a seeming hint of embarrassment or concern that others would hear about how her new boyfriend, a biker from Adamsville who to hear her tell it was an A- Number One stud, and she “did it” on the Adamsville beach (she put it more graphically, much more graphically, but the reader can figure that out). And her listeners, previously somewhat sullen, perked up as she went into the details, and they started, Monday morning or not, to get a certain glean in their eyes thinking about the response when they told their own boyfriends about this one. If they did.

Less vocal, but certainly not more careful in their weekend doings talk, were the, for lack of a better term, the pom-pom girls, the school social leaders, the ones who planned the school dances and such, and put the events together in order to, no, not to show their superior organizing skills for future resumes as one might think, but to lure boys, the jock and social boys, into their own Adamsville beach traps. And not, like Anna and her biker, on any smelly, sandy, clamshell-filled, stone-wretched beach, blanket-less for chrissakes. Leave that for the “bad” girls. They, to a girl, were comfortably snuggled up, according to their whispered stories, in the back seat of a boss ’57 Chevy or other prestige car, with their honeys and putting it more gingerly than Anna (and less graphically) “doing it.”

And, lastly, was the group around Peggy Kelly, not that she was the leader of this group for it had no leader, or any particular organized form either, but because when we get out of the smoke-filled, sex talk-filled, hot-air Monday morning before school North Clintondale junior and senior girls’ lounge we will be following her around. This group, almost all Irish girls, Irish Catholic girls if that additional description is needed, of varying respectabilities, was actually there to attend to their toilet and prepare for the rigors of the girl school day. Oh yes, after all what is the point of being in this exclusive, if democratic, lounge anyway, they too were talking in very, very, very quiet tones discussing their weekend doings, their mainly sexless weekend doings, although at least one, Dora, was speaking just a bit too cryptically, and with just a little too much of a glean in her eyes to pass churchly muster.

And what of Peggy? Well Peggy had her story to tell, if she decided to tell it which she had no intention of doing that day. She was bothered, with an unfocused bother, but no question a bother about other aspects of her life, about what she was going to after high school, about her place in the world than to speak of sex. It was not that Peggy didn’t like sex, or rather more truthfully, the idea of sex, or maybe better put on her less confused days, the idea of the idea of sex. Just this past weekend, Saturday night, although it was a book sealed with seven seals that she was determined not to speak of, girls’ lounge or not, she had let Pete Rizzo “feel her up,” put his hands on her breast. No, not skin on skin, jesus no, but through her buttoned-up blouse. And she liked it. And moreover, she thought that night, that tossing and turning night, “when she was ready” she was would be no prude about it. When she was ready, and that is why she insisted that the idea of the idea of sex was something that would fall into place. When she was ready.

But as she listened to the other Irish girls and their half-lies about their weekends, or drifted off into her own thoughts sex, good idea or not, was not high on her list of activities just then. Certainly not with Pete. Pete was a boy that she had met when she was walking at “the meadows,” For those not familiar with the Clintondale meadows this was a well-manicured and preserved former pasture area that the town fathers had designated as park, replete with picnic tables, outdoor barbecue pits, a small playground area and a small restroom (a facility that made the girls’ lounge at Clintondale High look like one in a downtown hotel by comparison). The idea was to preserve a little of old-time farm country Clintondale in the face of all the building going on in town. But for Peggy the best part was that on any given day no one was using the space, preferring the more gaudy, raucous and, well, fun-filled Gloversville Amusement Park, a couple of towns over. So she could roam there freely, and that seemed be Pete’s idea, as well one day. And that meeting really set up what was bothering Peggy these days.

Pete was a freshman at the small local Gloversville College. Although it was small and had been, according to Pete, one of those colleges founded by religious dissidents, Protestant religious dissidents from the mainstream Protestantism of their day, it was well-regarded academically (also courtesy of Pete). And that was Pete’s attraction for Peggy, his ideas and how he expressed them. They fit right in with what Peggy had been bothered by for a while. Things that could not be spoken of in girls’ lounge, or maybe even thought of there. Things like what to do about the black civil rights struggle that was burning up the television every night. Pete was “heading south” next summer he said. (That term of youthful political art signifying that he would be taking a bus, or maybe as part of a carload, and head for hellish Alabama or goddam Mississippi to aid the besieged black civil rights fighters in one of the programs drawn up by one of the increasingly active Northern campus activist coalitions.) They also as youth will talked of things like were we going to last until next week if the Russians came at us, or we went after the Russians.

Also things though like why was she worried every day about her appearance and why she, like an addiction, always, always, made her way to the girls’ lounge to “make her face” as part of the rigors of the girl school day. And that whole sex thing that was coming, and she was glad of it, just not with Pete, Pete who after all was just too serious, too much like those commissars over in Russia, although she liked the way he placed his hands on her. And she was still thinking hard on these subjects as she excused herself from the group as she put the final touches of lipstick on. Just then the bell rang for first period, and she was off into the girl day.

Scene: Boys’ “Lav,” Second Floor, Clintondale High School, Monday morning before school, September, 1962. (Not necessarily the same Monday morning as the scene above but some Monday after the first Monday, Labor Day, in September. In any case even if it was the same Monday as the one above that coincidence does not drive this story, other more ethereal factors do.) Additional information for those who know not of boys’ lavs, for whatever reason. The Clintondale High School boys’ rest rooms, unlike the girls’ lounge mentioned above at North, or where a similar rule applied to the girls’ lounge at Clintondale, was open to any boy in need of its facilities, even lowly, pimply freshmen as long as they could take the gaffe. Apparently Clintondale high school boys, unlike the upperclassmen girls needed no special consideration for their grooming needs in order to face the schoolboy day.

Well, strictly speaking that statement about a truly democratic boys’ lav universe was not true. The first floor boys’ lav down by the woodworking shop was most strictly off limits, and had been as far back as anyone could remember, maybe Neanderthal times, to any but biker boys, badass corner boys, guys with big chips on their shoulders and the wherewithal to keep them there , and assorted other toughs. No geeks, dweebs, nerds, guys in plaid shirts and loafers with or without pennies inserted in them, or wannabe toughs, wannabe toughs who did not have that wherewithal to maintain that chip status need apply. And none did, none at least since legendary corner boy king (Benny’s Variety Store version), “Slash” Larkin, threw some misdirected freshman through a work-working shop window for his mistake. Ever since every boy in the school, every non-biker, non-corner boy, or non-tough had not gone within fifty yards of that lav, even if they took shop classes in the area. And a “comic” aspect of every year’s freshman orientation was a guided finger to point out which lav NOT to use, and that window where that freshman learned the error of his ways. No king, no lion ever guarded his territory as fiercely as the “bad” boys did. Except, maybe, those junior and senior Clintondale girls of any year, and not just 1962, as they guarded their lounge lair.

That left the boys’ rooms on the second floor, the third floor, the one as you entered the gymnasium, and the one outside of the cafeteria for every other boy’s use. A description, a short description, of these lavs is in order. One description fits all will suffice; a small room, with stalls, sinks, mirrors, etc the same as found in any rest room in any public building in the country. Additionally, naturally, several somewhat grimy, stained (from the “misses”) urinals. What draws our attention to the second floor boys’ room this day are two facts. First, this rest room is in the back of the floor away from snooping teachers’ eyes, ears and noses and has been known, again for an indeterminate time, as the place where guys could cadge a smoke, a few quick puffs anyway, on a cigarette and blow the smoke out the back window, rain or shine, cold or hot weather. So any guy of any class who needed his fix found his way there. And secondly, today, as he had done almost every Monday before school since freshman year John Prescott and friends have held forth there to speak solemnly of the weekend’s doing, or not doings. To speak of sex, non-sex, and more often than seemed possible, of the girl who got away, damn it.

Of course, egalitarian democratic or not, even such drab places as schoolboy rest rooms have their pecking orders, and the second floor back tended to eliminate non-smoking underclassmen, non-smokers in general, serious intellectual types, non-jocks, non-social butterflies, and non-plaid shirt and loafer boys. And Johnny Prescott, if nothing else was the epitome of the plaid shirt and loafer crowd. And just like at that up-scale North Clintondale girls’ lounge come Monday morning, any school day Monday morning, the ones that count, and the place was sure to be jam-packed with every plaid-shirted, penny-loafered boy with a story to tell, re-tell, or discount as the case may be. Also needless to say, and it took no modern sociologist, no sociologist of youth culture, post-World War II youth culture, to figure it out in even such a smoky democratic setting there was a certain standardized routine-ness to these Monday mornings. And that routine-ness, the very fact of it, is why John Prescott draws our attention on this day.

And if Johnny was the king of his clique for no other reason than he was smart, but not too smart, not intellectual smart, or showing it any way, that he was first to wear plaid and loafers and not be laughed at, and he had no trouble dating girls, many notched girls, which was the real sign of distinction in second floor lav, he was nevertheless a troubled plaid-ist.

No, not big troubled, but, no question, troubled. Troubled about this sex thing, and about having to have the notches to prove it, whether, to keep up appearances, you had to lie about it or not when you struck out as happened to Johnny more times than he let on (and as he found out later happened to more guys more often than not). Troubled about political stuff like what was going on down in the South with those black kids taking an awful beating every day as he saw on television every freaking night. And right next store in Adamsville where some kids, admittedly some intellectual goof kids, were picketing Woolworth’s every Saturday to let black people, not in Adamsville because there were no blacks in Adamsville, or Clintondale for that matter, but down in Georgia, eat a cheese sandwich in peace at a lunch counter and he thought he should do something about that too, except those intellectual goofs might goof on him.

And big, big issues like whether we were going to live out our lives as anything but mutants on this planet what with the Russian threatening us everywhere with big bombs, and big communist one-size-fits- all ideas. Worst, though were the dizzying thoughts of his place in the sun and how big it would be. Worse, right now worse though was to finish this third morning cigarette and tell his girl, his third new girl in two months, Julie James, that he needed some time this weekend to just go off by himself, “the meadows” maybe, and think about the stuff he had on his mind.

*******

Scene: Clintondale Meadows, late September 1962. The features of the place already described above, including its underutilization. Enter Johnny Prescott from the north, plaid shirt, brown loafers, no pennies on this pair, black un-cuffed chinos, and against the winds of late September this year his Clintondale High white and blue sports jacket won for his athletic prowess in sophomore year. Theodore White’s The Making Of A President-1960 in hand. Enter from the south Peggy Kelly radiant in her cashmere sweater, her just so full skirt, and her black patent leather shoes with her additional against the chill winds red and black North Clintondale varsity club supporter sweater. James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain in hand. Johnny spied Peggy first, makes an initial approach as he did to most every girl every chance he got, but noticed, noticed at a time when such things were important in Clintondale teen high school live the telltale red and black sweater, and immediately backed off. Peggy noticing Johnny’s reaction puts her head down. A chance encounter goes for not.

****

That is not the end of the story though. Johnny and Peggy will “meet” again, by chance, in the Port Authority Bus Station in New York City in the early summer of 1964 as they, along with other recent high school graduates and current college students- “head south.”

The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman On Your Mind- Mannish Child

From The Pen Of  Frank Jackman

Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, had given him for Christmas after he has taken a fit when she quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and more practical too, for a sixteen-year old boy. No, he had screamed he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was, and didn’t have, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe singing about some place over there, or Harry James’ Sentimental Journey or Tommy Dorsey or his brother Jimmy doing the inevitable Tangerine 1940s war drum thing. Or worse, the Inkspots, Jesus, he was tired of that spoken verse they include in every freaking song doing I’ll Get By or If I Didn’t Care which had to listen to on the huge immobile radio complements of RCA Victor downstairs in the Prescott living room.

Hearing shades of that stuff all day every day when Ma Prescott got dreamy while dusting the furniture or washing the floors had finally gotten to him. Even more disturbing than that was passing through the downstairs on Saturday night after dinner, maybe out for some elusive date or just hanging with the guys in front of Doc’s Drugstore looking at the girls passing by or stepping inside every now and again to hear what one of those girls was playing on Doc’s super-jack jukebox, and seeing his mother and father gearing up for a full night, seven until eleven of that stuff presented by Bill Marlowe on his Stagedoor Johnny show on WJDA. Strictly squaresville, cubed.

[Hey, for a minute I forgot who my audience might be. Sure those of you from the generation of ’68, those who for a minute in the 1960s thought along with me that we might turn the world upside down, might change things for little guys and gals for the better, turn things around so that they might look like something we might just want to pass on to the next generation know what a transistor radio was. Lived and died by that neat invention invented by some guy who knew what the hell he was doing, knew we who came of age in the cold war red scare 1950s needed our own way of getting privacy and created a radio that was small enough to conceal, put in our pockets if need be, and let us at the flick of a wrist listen to whatever radio station was providing that be-bop music that we craved. Those of you not from that generation of ’68 should know that this gizmo was like a primitive iPOD or MP3 player except, well, except you could not download whatever songs you were interested in. Yeah, I know primitive now but a breath of fresh age back then when we needed to break-out from our parents’ music just like you and every generation needs to do.] 

So Johnny glad that he had won one battle although he knew he was behind, seriously behind in the war, that inevitable generational war (although he did not, and probably his parents did not either if they had forgotten their own battles against intransigent parents, know enough then to call the tussle of wills a battle) was primed to go nightly to his room to hear all those songs that he first heard on that Doc’s jukebox. But here was his dilemma, here is what he could not make heads or tails out of at first. One night as he listened to this new record Shangra-la by The Four Coins that just finished up a few seconds before and as this Banana Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip he was not sure that those ties wouldn’t have been a better deal, and more practical too. Yeah, this so-called rock station, WAPX out of North Adamsville, the closest station that he could receive at night without some static in the air had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new, now that Elvis was gone, killer rocker, Chuck Berry who proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move along, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town. As he turned the volume down a little lower (that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the towel though.

Johnny could not quite figure how that magic that first got him moving, first got him swaying his hips, first got him feeling funny thoughts about girls and how they had changed from being kind of just plain nuisances (and they were, no question in  Johnny’s mind about that) to kind of nice to have around changed and why. Changed from every guy around town (young guys anyway, the guys who counted) wearing sideburns, wearing a swagger, and wearing a sneer that they hoped some foxy girl would wipe off their faces (and the girls, those not totally and fantastically addicted to the “king” himself, were hoping that they could wipe off). Changed from running, yes, running home after school each and every week day afternoon to watch on television for the latest dances and tunes on American Bandstand  (and the latest foxy chicks too don’t forget that Johnny) ever since Bill Haley and the Comets rocked the joint, or beloved Eddie Cochran went summertime blues crazy. Changed from sexually-charged lyrics by Chuck Berry and what he would do, or not do, to his sweet little sixteen. Changed from the high energy explosion of Jerry Lee working off the back of some hokey flatbed truck, piano keys flailing away, hair bouncing with the beat, on High School Confidential  in the movie by the same name when he put his name forward as the new king of the rock hill (although the movie itself was kind of dippy). Yeah, changed to guys like Fabian, Bobby Vee, and Neil  Sedeka who you would not dream of hanging around with, would not allow on your corner boy corner but who all the girls, well, most all of the girls flipped out over. Worse, worse than anything else these guys and their music was stuff that parents actually went for, saw as innocent and nice. Jesus.       

Desperate he fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 blasted the airwaves. But funny it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ it was actually a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that performance was finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through. No need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.

Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high school-er in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it before because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to ever have the  strength to pick Be-Bop Benny’s live show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. And so when he heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stomp and up with his Someday added in he was hooked. And you know he started to see what Billie, Billie Bradley from over in Adamsville, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned that if you want to get rock and roll back you had better listen to blues, and if you want to listen to blues, blues that rock then you had very definitely had better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.

And Johnny thought, Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had been further either, couldn’t understand why that beat, that da, da, da, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head, sometime out of Mother Africa (although again what did he know of old African instruments and that sound, that beat that seemed like eternity beating on his brain). That beat turning his own very personal teen-age blues to something else for the duration of the song anyway. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew it had to be in his genes.

 

***From The Brothers Under The Bridge Series- The Road Less Traveled- Johnny Prescott’s Choice- With A Tip Of The Hat To Poet Robert Frost

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:

In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come 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 (Frisco town, California East Bay, 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, tramp 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.”

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 another 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 hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

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 sketch from 1979 told to me by my friend Peter Paul Markin about a corner boy from back in his old North Adamsville neighborhood fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.

 

Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Let Markin tell the tale his way and you will see that it exactly fits the series and the times, the times of the Vietnam two roads. The sign to place this one under, easy; the road not taken.

********

Added Comment:

I am not a big fan of Robert Frost's poetry (although his public readings were very interesting with that old swamp Yankee wisdom voice although don’t borrow anything from him or let him borrow because that is the way of the swamp Yankee) but this one, this one about the two roads (hell, maybe more but two makes the point nicely), one not taken, not taken like some childhood door choice   every once in a while "speaks" to me when there are two (or more) choices to make in life. That choice business certainly applies to the characters below, certainly speaks to their respective predicaments. o

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 20

*********

Sergeant John Prescott, “Johnny P.” to his pals gathered around a small table, drinking sodas (although in their North Adamsville neighborhood in the old days everybody, everybody in New England too, maybe, called it tonic but that term fell out of usage with mass national advertising of soft drinks and so soda) and coffee, in the next room was a quiet, unassuming guy, no great scholar in high school just getting by although mainly getting by because being quiet and unassuming his teachers found no reason not to push him on until graduation. Quiet and unassuming too around with his corner boys, not the leader, a rank and filer really, but always ready to “show the colors” when some other corner boys wanted to take a run for the store front corner of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, his hang-out corner boy place. Quiet and unassuming with the girls too, a little shy really being raised in an all boy family and so not wise to girl ways, silly or profound, never without a date when it counted but also never the subject of “can’t wait to tell you” talk in that manic Monday morning before school girls’ room talkfest where what did or did not get done to whom, and by whom, over the weekend was hashed out. Johnny was “nice” was the best that any girl ever uttered about Johnny later when the dust had settled.    

Yeah, Johnny P., a guy with just that barebones patriotism that animated many working class kids, North Adamsville neighborhood kids no exception, to “do their duty” and join up when America was in danger, no questions asked. Father, an ex-Marine, who had seen all the action a man could want in the Pacific island-hopping war during World War II (somebody once said there were no ex-Marines but we will let that pass since his father, a taciturn man, taken to occasional bouts of heavy silent drinking never talked about those Pacific experiences like many in his generation, except for the life-long after-effect trouble from malaria). Scads of uncles, grand-uncles (one killed in World War I and who had an eternal square up near the high school named after him like too many squares in this wicked old world), older cousins, older neighbors all taking the oath, all going through the male neighborhood rite of passage.

Not quite some gung-ho “my country, right or wrong,” that dividing line came later, but never questioned because nobody would have thought to pose the question then, but pretty close when all was said and done. Yeah, everybody just quietly and assumingly did their duty and quiet unassuming Johnny followed suite. And as the early 1960s, the time of high school fun and frolic and for sturdy football lineman Johnny P, fun and frolic with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea and their quiet romance that was the decidedly not the talk of the Class of 1964 at old North Adamsville High, turned to mid-1960s and clarion calls that the country was in danger in some place called red-infested Vietnam Johnny, and not just Johnny, answered the call. Answered the call like father, uncles and forbears had done for generations before (it would be later that a few, too few, North Adamsville boys would join the draft resistance movement, a few, again, too few, would join the military resistance when the American Army was half in mutiny in the late 1960s). And here, gathered around a small table, in early May 1968 his old corner boys from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” (the local section of  town was called Norfolk Downs like in bloody England and hence the “up the Downs”) were chatting away like mad.

Suddenly, Frank Riley, fabled Frankie, the king of the be-bop Salducci’s night in those fresher days, in Johnny corner boy rank and filer days  yelled to no one in particular but they all knew what he meant, “Remember that night after graduation when Tonio threw us that party at the pizza parlor.” And all the other five gathered at the table became silence with their own memories of that night. See, Tonio was the king hell owner and Zen master pizza maker at Salducci’s who had even those waiting for that never coming local bus in front of the shop looking in amazement through the glass windows at Tonio flipping pizzas.  And a guy for some unknown reason, call it Frankie’s charisma (or blarney which amounted to the same thing in Irishtown) who treated Frankie (and therefore most of Frankie’s friends) like some prodigal son. So Tonio put out a big deal party right on the premises, closed to all but Frankie, his friends and hangers-on (and girls of course, many girls because although Frankie was “hitched” to his sweetheart from junior high, Joanne he had many “girl friends”). Tonio, at least this is what he said at the time, appreciated that Frankie brought so much business his way what with his corner boys, their corner boys, and the, ah, girls that gathered round them and who endlessly fed the juke box that he had to show his appreciation in such a way. And everybody had a great time that night, with the closed-door illegal wine (against a state-mandated twenty-one but hell it was only wine), Tonio-provided wine, flowing like crazy and nobody, no authorities or parents the wiser for it.

Part of that great time, the part the guys around the 1968 table were remembering just then, the part of that great gun-ho 1964 time occurred late that night when, plenty of wine under their belts, Frankie and the corner boys, talked “heroic” talk. Talked about their military service obligations that was coming up right on them after graduation. And this was no abstract talk, not this night, for not only was this a party put on by Tonio to show his gratitude for the business sent his way but a kind of going away party for sturdy football player and increasingly part-time corner boy, Johnny P. (the other part, the more and more part, with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea who many guys coveted but who deferred to the age old tradition of not cutting some fellow corner boy’s time until he was dumped, a tradition unlike some others that was actually honored, had been for a long time ever since a big blow-out back in the early 1950s when some guy tried to cut another guy’s time and wound up face down on North Adamsville Beach ruled a drowning but everybody knew the real score), who signed up right after graduation and was getting ready to leave for “boot camp” at Fort Dix, New Jersey in a few days. So everybody was piling on the bravery talk to Johnny about “killing commies” somewhere, maybe Vietnam, maybe Germany, hell, maybe Russia or China. And Johnny, not any rum-brave kind Johnny, not any blah blah-ing about bravery, football or war, Johnny just kind of sat there and let the noise go by him. His thoughts then were of Chrissie and doing everything he could to get back to her in one piece.

Of course heaping up pile after pile on the bravery formula was one Frankie Riley, ever the politician and well as keenly acknowledged corner boy king, who had so just happened to have landed, through a very curious connection with the Kennedy clan, a coveted slot in a National Guard unit. So, Frankie, ever Frankie, could be formally brave that night in the knowledge that he would be far away from any real fighting. His rejoinder was that his unit “might” be called up. The others kidded him about it, about his “week-end warrior” status, but just a little because after all he would be serving one way or another. Also kind of silent that night was Fritz Taylor just then ready to “do his duty” after having had a heavy-duty fight with his mother about his future, or lack of a future, and her “hadn’t he better go in the service and learn a trade” talk.

Most vociferous that night was Timmy Kiley. Yes, Timmy, the younger brother of the legendary North Adamsville and later State U. football player “Thunder Tommy” Kiley. He was ready to catch every red under every bed and do what, when and where to any he caught. Timmy later joined the Navy to “see the world” and saw much of some dreary scow in some dry-dock down in Charleston, South Carolina. Even Peter Paul Markin, Frankie’s right-hand man, self-described scribe, and publicly kind of the pacifist of the group, who usually got mercilessly “fag”-baited for his pale peace comments was up in arms about the need to keep the “free world” free. But that was just the way he talked, kind of a studied hysterical two-thousand facts diatribe. Markin, student deferred, at that 1968 table had just gotten notice from his friendly neighbors at the North Adamsville Draft Board that upon graduation he was to be drafted. And he was ready, although kicking and screaming about some graduate school project that the world really needed to know about, to go. That was the way it was in the neighborhood. Go or be out. Frank Ricco, the so-called token Eye-talian, of the Irish-laden Salducci’s corner boy night (and a kid that Tonio actually hated, some kind of Mafioso, omerta thing with his father) also displayed super-human brave talk that night but he was credited , not so many months later with not only going in the Marines but of seeing some heavy-duty action in jungle-infested Kontum, and some other exotic and mainly unpronounceable places farther south in the water-logged rice paddles of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

Quiet, quieter than Johnny Prescott thinking of Chrissie, or Fritz, sullenly furious at his mother or at his hard-scrabble fate, or both, was Johnny Callahan. Johnny no stranger to corner boy controversy, no stranger to patriotic sentiments, at least publicly to keep in step with his boys, secretly hated war, the idea of this war coming up and was seriously hung up on the Catholic “just war” theory that had been around since at least Saint Augustine, maybe earlier. See Johnny had a grandmother (and also a mother, but less so) who was an ardent Catholic Worker reader and adherent to their social philosophy. You know, Dorothy Day and that crowd of rebel Catholics who wanted to go back to the old, old days, the Roman persecution days, of the social gospel and the like.

And grandmother had the “just war” theory down pat. She was the greatest knitter of socks for “the boys” during World War II that the world may have ever known. But on Vietnam she was strictly “no-go, no-go, no way” and she was drilling that in Johnny’s head every chance she got (which was a lot since Johnny, having, well let’s call it “friction” with his mother sought refuge over at grandma’s). Now grandma was pressing Johnny to apply for conscientious objector status (CO) but Johnny knew that as a Catholic, a lapsing Catholic but still a Catholic, the formal “just war” theory of that church would not qualify him for CO status. He wanted to, expected to, just refuse induction. So that rounded out that party that night. Hell, maybe in retrospect it wasn’t such a great party, although blame the times not Tonio for that.

Just then, as each member at the table, thought his thoughts started by Frankie’s remembrance sipping their sodas and coffee sort of absent-mindedly someone from the other room called out, “pall-bearers, get ready.”

Postscript: Sergeant, E-5, John Phillip Prescott made the national news that 1968 year, that 1968 year of Tet, made the Life magazine photo montage of those killed in service in Vietnam on any given week. Johnny P.’s week was heavy with casualties so there were many photos, many looks of mainly working-class enlisted youth that kind of blurred together despite the efforts to recognize each individually. And, of course, Johnny P.’s name is etched for eternity in black marble down in Washington, D.C. John Patrick Callahan served his two year “tour of duty” as federal prisoner 122204, at the Federal Correctional Institution, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The road less traveled, indeed.