Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The Ghost Dance-Late 1969

 

 

Scene Nine: The Ghost Dance-Late 1969

From The Pen Of The Late Peter Paul Markin

Introduction by Sam Lowell

Many years ago, back in the 1970s (ouch!) many years ago, the late and long lamented Peter Paul Markin, always known when I first meet him in the beginning of sixth grade at Adamsville North Elementary School in the days when around Massachusetts anyway sixth grade was considered elementary school-worthy as just Markin and later in high school after Frankie Riley coined the moniker “the Scribe,” wrote a series of eleven articles about his “search” for what he called the great blue-pink American West night. That search fell between about 1966, 1967 when he had dropped out of Boston University to “find himself” and headed the hitchhike road west and about 1974 just before he headed down Mexico way, down into Sonora, then a very big center of the drug trade mostly marijuana and cocaine, and met his too soon death from gunshot wounds after what we heard was a botched drug deal. Most of the articles, which were printed in the East Bay Other, a now defunct alternative newspaper put out in Berkeley and which was widely read in northern California, were about his early days, about his sense that things were in for a big shake-up and in the not too distant future and he wanted to be there at the creation, and about the early days on the road west looking, well, when all was said and done, looking for something that he never found, maybe never could find when the 1960s high points ebbed, ebbed very quickly leaving him high and dry.     

Most of the early adventures heading west, or out West, were purely of Markin’s own making but the reason that I am reprinting the article below is that I was actually there at the ghost dance which is the subject of this piece. See Markin had called all his high school corner boys from Tonio’s Pizza Parlor, or rather from “holding up the wall” in front of that establishment, Tonio’s of blessed memory during our high school days to head out to California and join him on what he called a yellow brick road bus owned and operated by a guy called Captain Crunch who was cruising up and down the coast partying and searching, again that searching for what business was never clear. What was clear was that the bus was a floating den of drugs, booze, women, sex and rock and roll. Markin had begun calling his corner boys out something in late 1966, early 1967 and guys like Josh Breslin and Bart Webber were the first to go out sometime in that latter year. Their adventures have been incorporated into some of those early Markin articles.

Truthfully I was a little square, was looking to break out of the poverty that my family, my parents, had endured and so in those early years I was not interested hitchhiking west, joining a traveling caravan or anything like that. When the Scribe would begin with his monologue on how things were going to be turned upside down and soon I dismissed that as so much Markin bullshit, could have given a rat’s ass about some pipe dream. I was into the college grind looking to get good enough grades to eventually get into law school and prosper. Then one night in early 1968 I was at a party in Boston, some students from around the town, and a guy passed me a joint, marijuana. At first I said no but the second pass I said what the hell. That’s when I “got religion,” started seeing that the grind was not the place where I was happy and while I was still driven by the desire to be a lawyer I began thinking that I could put that on hold for a while. So after I graduated in June of that year I decided that I would join the Scribe in the big ass search for something (and join Josh, Bart, and I think Frankie Riley who were also there then).         

Now in those days people, ordinary young people in all kinds of garb and with all kinds of travelling gear alongside, were on the road a lot, would hitchhike places and so that was what I decided to do. At that time Markin had made one of his hitchhike trips home to take a break from the yellow brick road bus and to check on his draft status since the local draft board was harassing him about trying to draft him (I had one leg shorter than the other, and was lame as a result so I was 4-F unfit for military duty). He came at a time I was getting ready to go west but had not finalized my plans. He decided to head back west without me but told me that he was going to stop in Denver for a while on the way back so I should go that route and meet him there, or if I was too late someplace in Arizona. Which I wound up doing and along that way west we got involved in that ghost dance. Markin, when we talked about it later, a few years later after I had left the road and before I had lost contact with him, told me that ghost dance experience was the highlight of his journey west, had been what the “search” was all about.    He was right, right as the Scribe was ever right about anything. S.L.    

[The Angelica mentioned in the first section below was a young woman whom Markin had met when he was left off in Steubenville, Ohio by a truck-driver who was supposed to be heading west to Chicago but decided to see his girlfriend there first and left Markin off at the famous Dew Drop In Diner, the truck stop diner where she was serving them off the arm for the summer. Markin had stopped in for a short something to eat, they hit it off just fine, he wound up back at her cabin that night and several days later, showing the tenor of the times, Markin and Angelica headed west in search of, well, you know what they were in search of if you have been paying attention. Angelica, as it turned out was like many people not built for the road and so headed back to her school in Indiana after some mishaps along the way in Omaha. That was the tenor of the times too.]   

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Damn, already I missed Angelica, road-worthy, road-travel easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us a ride Angelica as I traveled down Interstate 80 onto the great prairie Mid-American hitchhike road after we parted at the Omaha bus station, she heading home East, at least Indiana east from Nebraska, and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. And I will tell you true that first ride and every ride after that, every miserable truck stopped or sedan ride, it didn’t matter, made me utter that same missed Angelica oath.

Right then though I was on my first connection ride out of Omaha and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses and lost loves names, truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and was talking a blue streak was driving right through to Denver, my next destination. All I wanted was the ride but I knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such a lucky break.

See, some guys, some guys like Denver Slim, who left me off at that long ago (or it seemed like long ago) Steubenville truck stop and Angelica (hey, now I know who to blame for my miseries, if I ever get my hands on that damn Denver Slim… Yah, yah, what are you going to do, big boy?), wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as I reminded him of his errant (read: hair growing long , full-bearded hippie –swaying) son. Other guys are happy for the company so they can, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with  “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and their take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Yah, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” will stand you in good stead and you can nod out into your own thoughts.

And that is exactly where I wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names out in Mid-America anyway) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. Thinking about what Aunt Betty, sweet Neola, Iowa grandmotherly Aunt Betty, said as she left me off at the Interstate 80 entrance still rings in my ears. I was good for Angelica. Hell, I know I was. Hell, if I had any sense I would admit what I know inside. Angelica was good for me too. But see certain times were funny that way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say, that I would have run into an Angelica. I was strung out, strung out hard on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, I say), bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. If I said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereal, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls you’d know what I mean.

As a kid I was cranked on pale, hell wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and I mean hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and unrequited lust in their hearts. So, I swear, when Angelica’s number turned up I was clueless how to take just a plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, I can’t explain it now, and I doubt I ever will. Just say I was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and let me listen to old Buck’s drone.

Later.

I have now put many a mile between me and Omaha and here I am well clear of that prairie fire dream now in sweet winter desert night Arizona not far from some old now run down, crumbling Native American dwellings that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath, that Angelica oath. Sitting by this night camp fire casting its weird ghost night-like shadows just makes it worst. Old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies”, Jack and Mattie, playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone. And Sam Lowell, old corner boy, just joined us, finally, finally on the road west, and finally after just missed Denver when we wanted to get out before the early snows clogged up the high Rockies.  

Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Angelica and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here from that star-crossed Neola night, at least the past Denver part. Jesus, and here we are only a few hundred miles from the ocean. I can almost smell, smell that algae sea- churned smell, and almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys from another time looking for that perfect wave. Yah, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Angelica plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only makes the Angelica hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that I went on and on about. I was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world. Well let me get to it, the filling you in part.

 

After grabbing that straight ride from blue streak talkin’ old Buck I did tell you about, and a short but scary two day delay by a serious snow squall hurricane-wind tumult just before the Rocky Mountain foothills leading into Denver I got there in good order. If I didn’t tell you before, and now that I think about it I didn’t, I was to hook up with my now traveling companions, Sam, Jack and Mattie, there for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. If you don’t remember Jack and Mattie, whom I did meet there and Sam who was delayed in Illinois west of Chicago since his hitchhiking was going slower than he expected, they are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a car in the early spring. We had some adventures going south, that I will tell you about another time, before I left them off in Washington, D.C. so they could head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver later in the year where they expected to stay for a while. My last contact with them in late summer had them still there but when I arrived at the communal farm on the outskirts of Denver where they had been staying I was informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could. They had left a Phoenix address for me to meet them at. I stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up, doing a little of this and that, mostly that, and then headed out myself on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix to connect with them. That is where Sam caught up with us afterchecking out that Denver connection. Forward.

 

And so here we are making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.

 

Earlier today we had been over to Red Rock for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely here not all that long ago but who are now mere “cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as they pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of our own warrior shaman trances are still in our heads. I am still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as they drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who had broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but we scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and they have started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old bong hash pipe (again strictly for medicinal purposes).

So right now in this dark, abyss dark, darker than I ever saw the night sky in the East with all its lights at every corner to keep the bad element at bay but forgetting whatever made us build a thing from which we had to run, though it is star-filled, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented hash pipe-filled dreams of Angelica I am embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if my ears don’t deceive me, and they don’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle I hear, and hear plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.

 

And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls I see the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we four as Sam, head full of peyote, hash and who knows what else, greedy to be high in this locale from his utterings, we four television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so we were actually out of synch with the wall action to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya,…..until we speed up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we were ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white man injustices.

But just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame goes out, or goes to ember, since in the trance nobody remembered to throw a few more logs or keep the flames stoked the shadow ghost dance warriors are gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance. We, after regaining some strength, all decide that we had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean as soon as possible the next morning. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.

The Not So Discreet Charm-Luis Bunuel’s Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell 

The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie, Luis Bunuel, 1972  

 

Back in the day, back in the later part of the 1960s, early 1970s anybody who was involved in any aspect of the counter-cultural movement that animated “youth nation” in this country and abroad had to have some kind of critique of late capitalist society, of the thing that previous generations had built from which we had to run, and run like hell, That critique could go from high Leninist assaults on economic imperialism to a soft-shell lambasting of bourgeois manners and norms from cultural anarchists to cultural Marxists (mainly through small press journals and magazines where such material appealed to the academy). Into that mix any manifestation by film, book or song of such critiques drew immediate attention from some segments of youth nation such as the film under review, Luis Bunuel’s Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie. This one was like catnip for those who needed a visual representation of what was wrong with capitalist society in the raw.      

Of course Bunuel was an old hand at such critiques. He was old man at the time of this film but in his youth and in his earlier works very much drawn to the Surrealists and Dadaists and it showed in this film as well especially the dream sequels which dominate this award-winning effort. In fact the dreams, or rather nightmares, of the bourgeoisie get quite a sent up here. The basic plotline is pretty standard critique of the affluent and their allegedly superior manners and tastes. A small group of Parisian Mayfair swells which expanded (mostly) and contracted depending on the scene are connected together through trying to break bread, trying to eat together which through might and main does not get accomplished. Something always got in the way from the beginning starting with a wrong date for dinner to a restaurant being used as a funeral parlor after the death of the owner to the French military showing up to do practice exercises and so on.      

Of course this group of bourgeois are also tied together by the men, one an ambassador from a fictitious country in South America, who are making a ton of money running a drug smuggling operation through using his diplomatic immunity as cover. This operation and its possible discovery has then on edge (they are eventually arrested but are let go to avoid an international incident). Has them having dreams turned to nightmares involving getting caught, being murdered and other combinations including a couple being characters in each other’s dream. Of course standard for such an anti-establishment 1972 film there were references to Chairman Mao, guerrilla warfare, terrorists and every other dread that the bourgeois elements lived through in those times. At the end (and also interspersed throughout the film) the six main characters are seen walking, walking on a deserted road to someplace, no place, any place. Whatever Bunuel had in mind for his characters by this piece of symbolism they need not have worried about their futures since this period was the ebb tide of the big changes that “youth nation” expected to bring unto the world. Straight up, they won, we lost and have been fighting a rearguard action ever since. Enough said.

The Lady From Shanghai-Hey, She Ain’t No Lady-Redux-In Honor Of Rita Hayworth

[Dream sequel: Whiskey breath, rotgut whiskey fire breath and the bloated aftertaste of beer chasers, in need of a shave, maybe two with his five o’clock shadow although the time is still before noon, maybe a haircut trim, and a cold shower wouldn’t hurt after last night slept along the skid row docks near Benny’s Pub. He, Brendan Bradley, fresh off the ‘Frisco boats, the stinking oil tankers, walked, walked shamble walked, headed uptown, along the cobblestone pavement with its rutted indentations that bothered the hell out of his worn out feet, and his life. He heard the sound of Mayfair swell horse hoofs beating their time on the Central Park cobblestones behind him. He turned around to place the sound and there she was, blonde, naturally blonde he thought but he was willing to wait on that question.

Her carriage, one of those rent- by- the- hour tourista things that destroyed the quiet and mucked up the roads of half the big cities in the world, passed by almost tumbling him to the ground as it brushed beside him. He caught his balance just in time. She ordered the carriage stopped, waved a slight, very slight wave, like she had being doing to men since about, about eternity. And like eternity he came hither. Upon his approach she gave him a look, a look only a woman- hungry man can know. She asked for a cigarette, although he could see, see clear as day, that she had an enameled cigarette case sitting right on her lap, probably filled with expensive exotic cigarettes of unknown origin. He also could see, see clear as day, that she has a very, very expensive wedding ring prominently displayed on her finger. He hesitated for just a moment. Just that moment when he knew, knew, hell, knew as clear as day, that she was poison, well-wrapped poison, but poison. She would lead him to unknown lower depths, maybe even to the gallows. He offers a cigarette, a Camel…]

A few days later Brendan, hell let’s not be formal, everybody, every shipmate, every barroom boon companion, every bar girl from ‘Frisco to the Faroes called him Brownie, was sitting on the mussed up bed of one very blonde (question answered) Victoria Smythe, Mrs. Victoria Smythe (yes of one of the branches of that well-known high society New York Smythe family, if you are interested) mused that life takes some funny turns. A few nights back he was, newspaper for a pillow, sleeping the sleep of the damned (damn poor, he smirked) down in Skid Road wharves half an eye opened to the exploits of roaming jack-rollers. Last night, hell the last few nights, though he had definitely moved up the social ladder about fifteen steps, and moved up them in the arms of the previously mentioned Mrs. Smythe who just then was combing her hair not twenty feet away from him before her majestic vanity.

He, maybe anticipating her, was reviewing that first meeting, that first Central Park meeting, and that first offered cigarette hoping that he would not rue the day he did so. He laughed. A down and out seaman, “Brownie” Bradley, hits New York looking for… something. And he finds it without much trouble, although in the end it may be nothing but trouble.

Enter Victoria Smythe who just happened to be slumming on a per diem horse and buggy ride in Central Park and who, as fate would have it, a not uncommon fate at least in Central Park, bumped against a mere plebeian walker none to steady on his feet. Milady Smythe comes to the rescue and he/she/they are immediately smitten. Brownie paid the ticket and took the ride, despite that bell in his head ringing that please, please she is poison, and even a fool could tell that. But, no, old Brownie was bound and determined to pursue this deadly course, to play his hand until the end, also a not uncommon occurrence when one is smitten, although it is not always with blondes.

Of course, as he put his head down on those downy pillows to try to think things through, problem number one was that said Victoria was married, despite the messed up sheets he was sitting on, very married to a well-known banker, Arthur Winslow Smythe, from the great banking family branch, an older man with some serious physical disabilities and a perverse mental make-up. She made no excuses that she had married old Arthur strictly as a gold-digging proposition, he, Arthur, knew it, accepted it, accepted the ten thousand other men, and had made provision for that in his will on the off-chance that one Victoria Meacham got , well, as he called it “a little frisky.” Otherwise she got everything, everything he owned.

Naturally young, attractive, dear Victoria was fed up. Probably fed up from day one the way she pillow talk told it. Fed up with cranky, feisty, grabby Arthur in an almost murderous way. At least that was the way she had said it last night before the sheets got mussed up, although she laughed at the thought of murder and dismissed it out of hand. Brownie thought then though that he detected a little evil in the laugh but the whiskey, high shelf -bonded whiskey, Arthur whisky, not in need of beer chasers, and those pastel sheets got in the way. He thought though she would be crazy to upset the apple cart with the gold-plated set-up that she had going for her.

Problem number two, a more immediate problem, a problem of where he fit into the gold-plated set-up, was that Victoria and said hubby were going on a long sea voyage via the Panama Canal to their home port, ‘Frisco, on their yacht. Last night out of the blue she had practically taunted him with her purred “Hey, Brownie , you’re a sailor,” (but strictly playing Mrs. Smythe at that moment as the mister was sitting right across the dinner table), “ why don’t you come along as a crew member?” Okay Brownie, second chance, please, please don’t do it. Remember the bells? He signed on, no questions asked. Damn, he thought, after-thought once the Haig fog had worn off and the pastel sheets had faded in the morning sun glaring through the bay window. But from then on you know he was a goner.

Why? Well, up front, old Arthur has a partner, Grimes, who was also under Victoria’s spell, at least enough to try to assist her in getting rid of the old goat by any means necessary. See Grimes wanted the firm to himself and was willing to ally himself with the devil herself to get it. A little Victoria perfume, a little scotch (actually a lot of scotch), and couple of views of Victoria’s sheet collection and he was busy making the funeral arrangements, complete with wreath, for his dearly lamented partner. I don’t have to draw you a diagram on this proposition. Brownie knew nothing of this, was to know nothing of it, and was probably better off not knowing, that sweet very blonde Victoria was working all the angles. Grimes, of course, was more than delighted by Victoria’s new found acquisition, a skid row bum, perfect.

Here is the “skinny” on the plot to do in one Arthur Winslow Smythe, banker, in. Poison. Poison, pure and simple, except not some exotic snake oil stuff, or some chemist’s special blend, or anything like that. No, nothing but coffee or actually the caffeine in coffee. See the physical maladies that old Arthur had required him to take about twelve mediations just to allow him to operate without pain on a daily basis. The problem was that the various combinations were so delicately balanced that any extra stimulant would wreak havoc on his heart.

So the idea was that someone, and we now know who that someone is, and it is not Grimes, and it sure as hell isn’t Mrs. Smythe, is going to deliver the fatal dose (actually about six caffeine pills) to our boy Arthur when he is “pretty please” asked by Victoria to bring Arthur his nightly “meds.” All of this to be done during that leisurely trip to ‘Frisco. Sweet. And, of course, as a mere crew member Brownie can gain easy access to Arthur’s room on his Florence Nightingale mission and nobody will think anything of it. Even sweeter. And if anything gets screwed up we all know who the fall guy is.

But as such things do, the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go awry. First, Grimes winds up dead, very dead. How? Well, Arthur might have been old, might have been perverse, and might have been susceptible to random acts of murder but he did not get where he was by playing the fool. Grimes had left one of his expensive cigarette butts (Orient’s Special Blend) in the bedroom ashtray of one Victoria Smythe after he had mussed up her pastel sheets one night during a planning session. The next morning Arthur, coming in to wish his lovely bride top of the day, spied it.

He then, suspicions aroused, caught on to the plan to do him in by hiring a detective to follow Grimes (and another one on Victoria, smart guy) and waited to play his hand out. One night late at the office down in Wall Street, after luring Grimes there on a business discussion, he just shot Grimes point- blank as he entered his office. Nerves of steel, nerves of steel not counted on by our co-conspirators. Then he went into his office and took, took about twelve caffeine pills, along with his regular medications. They found him the next morning slumped over his desk.

So Grimes was out, but so was Victoria. See, that will Arthur left behind stipulated that if there was any peculiarity about his death Victoria would get nothing, nada. Not one dime. They never did figure out what killed old Arthur but it sure was strange the way he died. And the fingerprints on his killer gun, and the ballistics, sealed it. Victoria, when last seen, was headed to cheap street with a one-way ticket, walking. Brownie? Well Brownie decided that New York City was just a little too small for him and his ways just then. Life’s lesson learned- he found out soon enough that not all femme fatales are on the level when the heat is turned up. Love, or what passed for love, will only take you so far though, and then justice, rough justice anyway has to come into play. Still, if you asked Blackie in the sober light of day whether he would do it again, would offer that Camel, hell, you know the answer. When there is a femme fatale around stand in line brother, just stand in line.

An Encore-Tales Of The Be-Bop 1960s -Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night

 

 

A YouTube film clip of The Platters performing the juke-box Saturday night classic, Only You to set the tone for 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 had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.

 

Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex; or rather I should say “doin’ the do” in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”

 

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get-my- medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

 

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on the compilation that I am thinking of just now shows dreamy girls waiting for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some cashmere-sweatered, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Lucky guy, maybe.

 

But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (one of eight million guy slang words for girl in our old working class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next.

 

Then you made your move-“Have you heard Only You? NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up.” Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs from that compilation I am thinking about. Here are the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights):

 

Oh Julie, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie but be sure, check with somebody because if her name is Judy, Julia, Jewel and you misname her go to the back of the line, way back because you will be spending you own quarters otherwise); Lavender Blue, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word play, especially the dilly stuff but if you really wanted to impress her, or maybe goof if that looked like the direction was headed in tell that Sammy’s versionwas just a rip-off of an old time folk song from way back when); Sweet Little Rock and Roller, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. Your damned if you do take a run at her and fail, damned if you don’t  and could never be sure that you could tame her, worse, worse of all those is taking the run and then being dumped about a  week later for the next, next best thing and you with that un-mended heart.  I will tell you about the ONE time my patter came in handy sometime); You Were Mine (ditto sweet little rock and rollers), The Fireflies; Susie Darlin’, Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above except no Suzanne, Susan, Sukie okay other you know where you will be in line); Only You, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, keep it for if and when you get past first base, have a date, have a school dance date and you are looking for the perfect last chance last dance song, unless you really are a sensitive guy and fade it fast).

Nah, I Couldn’t Keep Her, My Little Rock ‘n’ Roller-With Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock And Roller In Mind   

By Bart Webber

 

 

A YouTube film clip of mad man rock and roller Chuck Berry performing his classic Sweet Little Rock and Roller.

 

Sweet Little Rock and Roller-Chuck Berry

 

 

Nineteen years old and sweet as she can be.
All dressed up like a downtown, Christmas tree.
Dancin' an' hummin' a rock-roll melody.

She's the daughter of a well-respected man.
Who taught her how to judge and understand.
Since she became a rock-roll music fan.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Her daddy don't have to scold her.
Her partner can't hardly hold her.
She never gets any older.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Instrumental break.
Should have seen her eyes when the band began to play.
And the famous singers sang and bowed away.
When the star performed she screamed and yelled, "Hooray!"

Ten thousand eyes were watchin' him leave the floor.
Five thousand tongues were screamin', "More! More!"
And about fifteen hundred waitin' outside the door.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.Fades. Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.

 

 

Joshua Lawrence Breslin was, is, a natural born liar so what he says, sometimes, can be, and should be, taken with a very large grain of Himalaya salt. Part of that characteristic stems from his long, too long according to some circles, stint as a writer, including those of us who had to subscribe to various journals and magazines that he wrote for over the years and place them unread on coffee tables on the off-chance he might drop in unexpectedly or when there was a party in which case he would definitely drop in. Part stemmed from his, and my, stint as a corner boy back in the day when we were growing up in the Acre, the working poor section of North Adamsville where we hung out in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor holding up the walls “up the downs” as they called that part of the Acre where the shop was located. The lying part came from various midnight creeps to places looking for, well, looking for stuff to get some dough from and we’ll just leave it at that. So we, of necessity, lied to cops, parents, teachers, judges and whoever else questioned us about anything at any time. We made it an art form, had those old fogies scratching their heads in despair, even the cops who often gave us the evil eye as they passed by and more than once one of us would find ourselves in a cruiser heading to the station to face their version of the “third degree.” Hell, part of it was that we just liked, very much liked to lie, liked to take our chances against God once we broke away a little from the Church (Roman Catholic of course since I do not believe others put the “the” in front expressing their understanding that there is only one such institution in the God business) whose mysteries were less awesome as we grew older and realized that worrying about heaven or hell as against figuring what to do about, and with, girls was wasting precious time.

The current cause for my characterization of Josh though is a recent little dispute that he and I have had about women who, well, were little rock and rollers back in the day. And what effect they had on us, then and now. For those not in the know, and there may be a few not familiar with the specific term  although once described it will sent bells of recognition ringing through your head, she (and “she” here is meant to be nothing more than the proper pronoun designation for the subject of two women-loving guys. Women and other combinations choice your own pronoun) was that little “hot” flirt that you (and about one hundred other guys in town or school) had no shot, nada nunca nada shot, at. And if you did get to first base then about a week later she left you for the next best thing on her next best thing list of conquests. And you? Well, you were left with either eternal regret that you didn’t at least take a chance and take a run at her or eternal pining away that that you did take a run at her and didn’t have what it took to keep her. Yah, I thought you would recognize the situation once I clued you in. 

And that is where my liar accusation comes in. Josh Breslin when he wound up meeting me out in San Francisco a couple of years after I had finished high school introduced himself (without one bit of self-consciousness) as the Prince of Love in those summer of love, circa 1967, San Francisco love-in nights. (Josh’s full moniker, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, which he tried might and main to make us call him like he was some Mayflower swell, hell, nobody called him that three name monte thing back in the day he just picked that up again when he started writing for those small publication magazines and journals that we had to make sure we displayed prominently on those poor harmless coffee tables of ours because he thought it sounded “cool” and distinguished him for other average joe writers.) Pete Markin, another Tonio’s corner boy, had beckoned us all out there after he had dropped out of Boston University to “find himself” in the great American West night and I then Josh had heeded  the call.   Josh, after he had graduated from high school, was not sure he wanted to go to college, not sure if his grades were good enough and not sure if he could hack it and was looking, well, looking for something like we all were that year and had hitchhiked across the country in that quest before starting off on some career. Well, one thing led to another and that college idea of his got pushed back a couple of years when  he decided to tag along with Markin, and me, on Captain Crunch’s merry pranskster-ish, yellow brick road bus as we headed up and down the West Coast looking, well, looking for the great American West night if nothing else.

 

 

 

 I have now known Josh for over forty years through thick and thin and while we parted ways for a while, he off to write and I to do this and that, the last few years have brought us together like that sneak thief (love variety) pair we were back in the day so I can feel free to call him a liar. And I can say so (actually call him out is what I am trying to) in the public prints a place where he is (or was until his recent retirement) fairly well-known as journalist for various left-wing and progressive magazines and newspapers, the ones that eventually after doing enough service on those coffee tables to satisfy him wind up in the back hall recycle bin.

The subject of our current “dispute” centers on whether one “Butterfly Swirl” (real name Karen Riley, Carlsbad [CA] High Class of 1968 the last time we saw or heard of her) was a little rock ‘n’ roller heartbreaker, or rather THE rock and roll heartbreaker of his life. Ms. Butterfly had been my girlfriend before Josh “stole” her away from me on that merry prankster bus trip. I had met her in Frisco, in Golden Gate Park where our yellow brick road bus caravan was perched for time a few months after I and then Josh had gone out west when she had heard down in Carlsbad that big things were happening that year up north in Frisco town and decided to leave her perfect wave tan blonde, blue-eyed surfer boy to check out life on the other side. So she travelled with us for a while, made me happy with her to me totally foreign young California surfer girl persona. As a slender, blonde, blue-eyed, nice legged and well-turned ankle young woman she had a lot of guys on and off the bus taking their looks and was flirty enough to drink all that admiration in. No, could not get enough of the attention and was as flirty as any woman we had ever known. We both agreed on than, then and now. One night, one night when we were doing hell-broth load of drugs and had the music from the sound system blaring away something happened, something I should have seen coming at least from Josh’s end since he had taken half a shot at my high school sweetheart, Melinda Loring and I had to evil-eye him out of whatever he was attempting to do, between Josh and Butterfly and the next thing I knew they were together and I was out in the cold.

Now in those days, those wild days and nights when the drugs, booze, and rock and roll music all came together and we were supposed to be “cool” the whole boy-girl thing was also supposed to be turned around and nobody was to take umbrage if somebody took up with another guy’s girlfriend. Or the other way around either. Of course the corner boy system that we both grew up in, which was still strong in us, but which we were supposed to have shed dictated that one corner boy’s girl was off-limits to another corner boy. That was mainly honored in the observance although like I said I had to have words with Josh over Melinda and in the interest of full disclosure Markin had had ot warn me off his high school sweetie, Mimi Murphy.

But that whole boy-girl exchange thing is not, or only a little, of what burns me up at this moment. See I had said that Butterfly was the heartbreaker of his life and quoted chapter and verse the number of times HE said she was but now Josh has conveniently nominated another girl (young woman) whom he met after he left the prankster bus and headed home. He met her up at the Sea and Surf Club in Old Orchard in Maine when he went up there to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He now says that Butterfly was nothing but a surfer girl and not much of one at that compared to one Allison D’Amboise, the heartbreak girl of the ocean night according to Josh. He can tell you about Allison’s virtues as a heartbreaker sometime but I want to speak of Ms. Butterfly Swirl right now.    

 

Let me explain how things happened with Butterfly that little rock and roll heartbreaker. Captain Crunch (real name Steve Silverman, Columbia Class of ’58) was a friend, not close as I recall, but a friend of the main merry prankster in those days, Ken Kesey (you can read about him and the whole merry prankster experience in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), and had put together his own merry prankster expedition which he had been running up and down the West Coast in 1966 and 1967. After Markin had called us out to the Coast I had picked up the bus when I was hitch-hiking up from Mexico and met them on the Pacific Coast Highway at La Jolla just north of San Diego in the late spring of 1967. They were heading north toward San Francisco for some big bust out jail-break cultural thing that was going to change all of us forever (the now well-remembered “summer of love,” and maybe it did). Like I said from then on for a few years I was “on the bus.” As were Josh and Markin (a couple of other guys Frankie Riley and Jack Callahan spent a few months on that golden road and then left for home).

 

That is where Butterfly Swirl comes in, or rather the times, maybe. Butterfly (like I said before real name Karen Riley, but we were not into real names that year, or for a few years after that either, I was then calling myself The Be-Bop Kid) was nothing but a young girl getting ready to go into her senior year in high school in Carlsbad and that summer, but like a million others then, she was looking, well, looking for something. Now Carlsbad was (is) one of those eternal surfer towns where all the young guys “hang five” or ten or whatever looking for the perfect wave. And in those days all the “hot’ chicks (term of art used then, okay) sat on the sand waiting for those “hot” surfer guys to find the damn thing, find that five or ten. Yes, as one can readily see boring, especially if you are waiting on the beach, “hot,” know it, and are looking to break out of the waves yourself and interested in taking no prisoners. That is what drove Karen to our prankster bus when we parked on Carlsbad Boulevard one beautiful blue sky day to take in the view of mother Pacific splashing fiercely to shore.

Butterfly was drawn like a magnet to the by then psychedelically-painted bus.  She talked to a couple of guys, including the Captain, and the rest was history. She came with us up the highway and after a week or so although she was a few years younger than I we were “married,” meaning whatever that meant on any given day on the bus. (I did not find out until later as I was involved with another woman when Butterfly came “on the bus,” a woman who called herself Madame DeFarge in honor of the revolution, the French one she said, that Butterfly had twisted a couple of other guys on the bus around her finger before she go to me just for a little practice.)

That “marriage” lasted until we hit ‘Frisco and the Prince of Love (remember Josh’s moniker) showed up at a park on Russian Hill where we were parked and was also drawn to the bus, and eventually to my “wife” Butterfly. That affair lasted, hot and heavy lasted, for a couple of weeks and then Butterfly just disappeared one night leaving a short note saying she had to get back to her boyfriend, some golden-tanned, golden-haired water-pruned surfer boy she had left on the beach at Carlsbad forlorn and contrite.

Yah, that was the last we saw of her and Josh was crestfallen for a while. In those days crestfallen was a couple of weeks max, although I sensed for the many months after that while we were together travelling he had something eating at him. Later, like I said, when we talked it over finally he made his first confession, and would do so periodically for many years, years that encompassed three marriages and several other relationship combinations.   But that was then. Now, over forty years later, he comes up with this Old Orchard flame burn-out story. This mermaid from the sea saga about Ms. Alison D’Amboise. And you wonder why I have to call him out publicly on this one.

The thing that Josh said knocked him out about Butterfly was that she was a tall, thin, sandy blond with plenty of personality, especially around guys. Fetching is the word we used at the time (and still do). She would flirt like crazy whenever a guy was within about ten feet of her [maybe five if I recall]. And she knew it, although not in a calculating way but more “here I am boys, take a chance on paradise if you dare.” And that got every guy’s blood up; especially once she got a guy in her sights but wasn’t going to let him get to first base. Jesus, and just 17. Like I said now Josh is calling her just another faded bleach blond sex trap bimbo. Nah, she was nothing but a little rock and roller. Hell, I was glad to get her off my hands at some point (to go back to Madame De Farge) but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t glad, glad as hell to take a run at her even if I couldn’t keep her. And I still think that.             

The Devils Speak In Tongues-With Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood In Mind

The Devils Speak In Tongues-With Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood In Mind    

By Bart Webber

 

Jesus, and maybe you and I had better not even invoke that name as common as it is even for agnostics and atheists brought into the world with such expressions in common usage to utter, one best not speak of religion, any religion but particular the Church, you know, the Roman Catholic Church, around Sam Lowell. You are very likely to get a ration of crap, maybe two rations if he has his heels dug in, from one Samuel Francis Lowell who despite hiding behind a common WASP name, a name out of the Puritan brethren that landed in Plymouth a while back, actually a good while back, was brought up as nothing but a wet-behind-the ears little Church heathen, that church again if you were not paying attention a minute ago was the universal apostolic Roman Catholic Church you hear about a lot these day because the guy who runs the operation, the Pope, which means the Roman Catholic Pope, Francis has been busy as a beaver trying to  bring the organization into the 19^th century or some time like that with all kinds of forgivenesses to bring the flock back after lots of crazy and ugly happenings inside the organization. In the interest of full disclosure I also was brought up in the Church, and now I know I don’t have to tell you what church, but unlike Sam when the dogma, the tenets, and for that matter the ritual of the Church lost its appeal to me as a system of belief I just kind of walked away, stopped going to the services, stopped believing, and stopped worrying on a day to day basis about whether I would go to heaven or hell but then I was brought up by parents who were only nominally church members and so I didn’t inherit a lot of Sam’s scars. But enough of my “conversion” this is Sam’s story after all.  

See Sam was brought up in the matters of religion by his mother’s side of the family, his mother Delores nee Riley and that surname, that Irish surname added to the hard fact that Sam was brought up, as I was, in the hard knocks Acre section of North Adamsville, the working class Irish section which had three you know what churches, and that hard fact tells you almost all you need to know about why you will get a ration or two of crap from Sam if you dare to mention religion around the man. The neighborhood was so Church-infested and clannish that people in town would judge whether you were fit for human companionship depending on which parish you belonged to. Saint Anne’s was for the Mayfair swells, the white collar workers, Saint Joseph’s was for the tradesmen types and Sacred Heart, our parish was for the lowest of the low, the desperately working poor. Many fights got started by young buckos like Sam and I and the other corner boys who hung around Salducci’s Pizza Parlor across the street from Sacred Heart when guys from others parishes, just because they were from other parishes, tried to swagger around the Acre, and Acre girls but that is a different story that can be told some other time because it does not concern why Sam Lowell was so bitter against the Mother Church.     

 Now his mother Delores was not more than nominally a Catholic, or at least she didn’t lay out a big blueprint about what Sam was supposed to do with what the Church had to offer. But Delores was half a heathen anyway according to the real villain of this piece, Grandmother Riley, Anna, since she had actually gone out and not only married somebody not Irish, somebody not from North Adamsville, but somebody who was not Catholic. Yes, Sam’s father, Fritz, may he rest in peace because he was no question a good guy despite all the arrows life threw at him, was not only not from North Adamsville in the days in the 1940s when such things mattered around town before half the population left for the leafy golden age suburbs but was from some Podunk town down south, down in Kentucky and had been born a Baptist. Quickly, Delores and Fritz had met during World War II when she worked at the Naval Depot as a civilian clerk at Portsmouth and he, back from the dastardly Pacific wars as a Marine, was stationed there before being discharged. They met at a dance, fell in love and were married in short order. That marriage though had to be performed not in the Church as one would have suspected but in the rectory because in those days, maybe now too, Protestants could not be married in the main church.

That benighted marriage (Grandmother Riley’s term), not sanctified in the Church is why Delores as part of getting permission from her parents had to agree that the children of that marriage would be instructed in matters of religion by her mother (her father Daniel was also a nominal Catholic but in matters of doctrine had always, if for no other reason to keep peace in the family on an issue he could as he said give two figs about, let Anna have her way. If only he had put his foot down as he did in virtually every other matter maybe Sam’s world would have looked dramatically different as least that was Sam’s take on the matter.)                            

Now a lot of people in this country particularly, in America, have a pretty good idea of what mainstream Christian church services look like even if they are not co-religionists. A priest or minister of some sort performs a ceremony, gives a sermon, gives blessings, maybe offers blessed communion, breaks bread, and then dismisses the flock until next time. That would be my snap take if asked anyway. And the Roman church works pretty much that way as well. That’s the easy way that I remember the experience. But in all the various denominations, Catholic or Protestant, there are little quirky covens.

That is where this story takes an odd twist. Sure Grandmother Riley followed on a day to day basis the basic Church tenets, the weekly observances, the special occasions, the little extra heavenly rewards stuff too. Tilted the damn collection basket too which did raise old Daniel’s ire since it took dough out his pocket, drinking at the Dublin Grille with his cronies, or being a sporting man a few bucks on some football, usually whatever the Irish of Notre Dame were up to. But Grandmother early on in her life, right around the time she had emigrated from Ireland had been a follower of the Brethren of the Common Life, the renegade followers of Bishop Devine, who had been condemned in Rome. Grandmother never talked much about what he followed in Ireland of blessed memory, her blessed memory anyway although if things had been so rosy there why did she grab the first steamer out when she had the chance.  She would only say that when she was fourteen she had been in a meadow tending to the sheep when she started to have a violent headache which could only be relieved by shaking herself violently (in other words around the time she got her period, her “friend” is what Sam speculated later, pure speculation since no way would he have known where she was telling him the tale would he had put two and two together for himself and certainly no way would he have later mentioned the s-x world in her presence since he would have been feted to a serious mouth-washing, literally, since “bad thoughts” were cured not only by confession but by a good mouth-washing to purify the soul). The dour parish priest when she asked about it, asked if was some message from God only smiled and said she was blessed, and told her if it happened again, and it would throughout her life into old age, to let the spirit move her.      

 

See though whatever one was to make of Grandmother’s “shakes” Bishop Devine and his followers including Anna “spoke in tongues,” laid hands on the religiously afflicted and sought a sign by the “speakings. Grandmother was totally ignorant, and probably it would have not mattered if she had known, that there was a rich if eccentric tradition within some Protestant denomination of such speakings, of the shakes, of the laying on of hands, hell, of snake-handling to drive the damn devils away.  At least that was the way Sam tried to explain it to me when he was older, when he would gladly give anybody a ration of crap if they even spoke of religion in his presence.

Week after week on Sunday night Sam (and later his four brothers and two sisters) would go to Riverdale with his grandmother and partake of the “tongues” ceremony, watch as Father Devlin, the local organizer of the Brethren called one and all to “speak.” Sam was ordered out most weeks until he was fourteen or fifteen by his grandmother to “speak” to heal the afflicted, to cast out the devil. If you know Sam these days, Sam the no nonsense lawyer who has stirred more than one jury with his vocal evocations you could just imagine what he went through when “called” to perform in the days when he was a believer. Calling down brim fire and damnation on those who would not repent. Speaking one to one with the devil in some poor misbegotten fellow Brethren until the demons were purged. “Out Satan, take the door and be gone,” Some redemption stuff too about taking God’s graces and holding tight to them when the devil is at the door, at sin’s command.         

Then one day Sam was attending the service when he called out that he could not speak, he could not hear the cries of the wounded, that he could, as he told me later, give a fuck about the whole thing. That last part not expressed or he would have had his mouth washed out daily for a week to purify him.  Then he walked out, walked all the way home thinking that there would be hell to pay for his transgressions, that the devil was winning the battle but he was willing to take his chances. His grandmother insisted he return the next week but that next week and several weeks thereafter he would shout out the same sentiments. After several of these outbursts Father Delvin suggested to Anna that she not bring Sam along (his siblings continued to believe at least until adulthood with his two sisters raising their children in the Brethren way and who continue to believe to this day, although the kids, Sam’s nieces and nephews dropped away as young adults telling him that he was their savior, that his “give a fuck” attitude let them walk away once they left their respective family houses). That was the easy part for Sam but it took him another several years to stop “hearing” the tongues, to stop laying his hands on people. And you wonder why today you and I best not mention religion in his presence. “The devil speaks in tongues” is the answer I got right after the one time I made the mistake of asking about the subject.         

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel (1960)- Billy’s 1960 View

A YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing the classic Teen Angel.

By Bart Webber

 A while back Sam Lowell wrote, more than wrote, spouted forth on the intricacies for lack of a better word of watching the “submarine races” in the old days down at Adamsville Beach where we spent many a summer night going through the to and fro of that tradition. For those who know not of this tradition, perhaps you live in the Middle West and are not close to the shore, or in Mountain time ditto on the ocean or even if you do live fairly near the ocean your lovers’ lane spot might be in the woods somewhere this effort was simplicity itself. You would con, pardon the expression but that was the truth of the matter at least the first time you tried it and the first time the girl bought your silly ass line, some young thing, wise to the tradition or not, in order to get her down by the lovers’ lane ocean. To, well, to watch those elusive U-boat or whatever type you mentioned Nautilus or Soviet that were not far from the shoreline. Preferably watching out in the moonless briny seas from deep within the back seat of your father’s car, or your car if you had some dough in your family and your father maybe passed his three year old “clunker” to you rather than take a trade-in, or that of your newly minted best friend. Absent those choices, especially for those under sixteen and license-less, you could do your thing on the seawall, or rather behind the seawall.                  

Of course “watching submarine races” was not the only pastime among the old time corner boys who populated the front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor along with one Sam Lowell. Nor was that little scam the only thing that the corner boys committed during the high school years when between six and a dozen corner boys who congregated  any given weekend, weekdays too during the summer, that Sam wanted to let a candid world know about when he started his little reminiscences. The whole thing, the whole memory lane thing, by the way got a big boost when Clara Kelly, one of the officers of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 and a woman who stayed in the area (and eventually upon her parents’ deaths move back into the old homestead where she was born), set up a Facebook class page to gather in whoever was still standing. Sam who also stayed in the area after law school and kept a practice there until recently, although he had spent several years along with guys like Pete Markin, Josh Breslin, Frankie Riley, and a few others from the corner headed out West and fully imbibed in all that 1960s counter-cultural expression had to offer, signed up early and pushed, pushed hard by Clare began “telling all,” “telling all there was to tell,” about his experiences in the old town in the old days.            

With some time on his hands now that he had turned over the day to day operation of his law practice to his younger partner Sam went at it hammer and tongs. When he had through that Facebook connection gotten reunited with some of the old corner boys and they gathered occasionally at the Dublin Grille where their father’s drank, sometimes the family paycheck as with the case of Josh’s father and told some tales which Sam would whip into some kind of little sketch.

You know Sam, unlike a number of those corner boys still standing who came around in high school when to be seen at Tonio’s in some circles was to be seen as “cool” (although the intellectuals, you know the nerds and geeks of the day dismissed the whole scene out of hand as did the social butterflies as low-rent but the working-class boys were all for it, wanted in, although not every guy made the “cut”), had always since elementary school been a “corner boy.” So Sam would regale the denizens of the Dublin Grille nights with tales of the Doc’s Drugstore days on Newbury Street and of the doing at Adamsville North Elementary School across the street. As Sam would always mention those days were always centered around the exploits of one Billy, William James Bradley, who would later after moving away from the town meet a bad end after dropping out of high school in sophomore years but who in his rather young prime set the tone at Doc’s, set the tone for Sam too-unto this day. Got it.            

Here is what Sam churned out after one Dublin Grille session when the subject of when the members present gravitated toward the common thread of high school-rock and roll music to sweep the blues away:

 

This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billy, William James Bradley, and the mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood, out in the Acre section of North Adamsville. Yah, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Sam, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own. This song, from 1960 Teen Angel, came out at a time when I had left the projects, had moved across town, acquired new friends, and, most importantly, had definitely moved away from Billy’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe after more than his fair share of failed attempts to go straight, to be the next Elvis or whatever it was that drove the better angels of his nature. Still he knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot (he lost his infectious laugh alone with those faded dreams as well, developed a snarl, and not that theatrical Elvis one either. Here is what I recall from back then that I related to the guys at the Dublin Grille and which as I wrote it down later I tried, probably unsuccessfully, to put in Billy’s voice, what he had to say about one such song. Hey, wherever you are Billy I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

*********

MARK DINNING

"Teen Angel"

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh

That fateful night the car was stalled

upon the railroad track

I pulled you out and we were safe

but you went running back

 

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

 

What was it you were looking for

that took your life that night

They said they found my high school ring

clutched in your fingers tight

 

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

 

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone

They've taken you away.

I'll never kiss your lips again

They buried you today

 

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please

***********

Billy back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Sam’s pal, Sam Lowell’s pal, from over at the Adamsville Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know, the Acre. Sam, whom I hadn’t seen for a while since he moved “uptown” to North Adamsville came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of the old neighborhood and we got to talking about this latest record, Teen Angel, by Mark Dinning that had us both baffled at first, but now I can give to you my take on it. And for one of the few times in recorded history, recorded Billy and Sam from the old projects history, we agree right down the line that this weeper is strictly for the girls.

Yeah, I know, and Sam does too, (I won’t keep saying “Sam does too” but I have to admit I was astounded when he agreed with me, especially on the ring stuff, so I had to say it at least this once) this is a guy lamenting his lost teen angel. So you think right off that he is all broken up about his baby. But that’s just for public consumption. (Do you like that term? Nice, huh?) What’s a guy supposed to say after his bimbo, yes, bimbo, and I will explain that in a minute, runs back to save his f-----g ring from a clunker (probably), some old thing maybe an old Hudson or Studebaker held together with baling wire and sweat, worse his father’s cast-off once he got tired of it and rather than use it for trade in foisted it off on his son, stuck on some old railroad track. In fact the guy should be fuming that this b---o [bimbo, okay-Sam] thought more of his “symbolic” ring (after all they were just “going steady”) that keeping herself alive in order to keep him company on those now lonely Saturday nights down by the seashore, or at the carnival or the drive-in (restaurant or movie). Yeah, Markin says there should be a law against the "bim" (compromise, okay) doing such a thing and the guy should sue the pants off of her folks for raising such a bim, maybe alienation of affection whatever that is that I heard Sam mention one time when Lorna Lee dumped him and he was fuming about it after he had bought her a big box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. And you know I think he might be right.

 

What really grips me though is that f- -king (hell, you know what kind of ring it was) ring thing. I’m not going to beat a dead horse over her running back to some crippled up car held together with baling wire and sweat on an active railroad (by the way where the hell is that place we haven’t seen trains around our way for many years). That’s over and done with. But let’s face facts, and everybody who knows anything about anything knows that those high school class rings are strictly from cheapsville, from nowhere, nada, nothing. Got it. All glitter and glow for lots of dough. But like I said cheapsville. Fake jewels, fake gold, plated or fizzled or something, hell, maybe fake lettering. Frankly stuff that I wouldn’t even bother to grab off some kid I was thumping. Definitely for not a girl. Got it.

Christ, I “clipped” better stuff at Woolworth’s and gave it to my younger sister, as a gag. But see I could have gotten this guy some good stuff, a nice ring that he could have given her, a ring she would have been proud to go back for, although I wouldn’t wish her to give up her young life over it. While I am at it if anybody needs rings, bracelets, or other trinkets as signs of eternal love or just to give your honey something just get a hold of me. There won’t be any fako stuff either. All A-One stuff from Kelly’s Jewelry Store up the square. Got it.

 

When you think about it though, and although I am glad that my boy Sam brought it up after we talked about it for about an hour up in my room before my brother who I share the room came and didn’t want to hear about some weepy story since had had just broken up with his girl, how much time can you really spend on this set of lyrics. See here is where my papal authority comes in, you know my being the undisputed Pope of rock and roll around her, the pope that counts forget that guy in Rome on this one. I put this one strictly under novelty items, and like I said strictly for girls, weepy girls. Girls, up in their lonely rooms waiting by that midnight telephone. No way, no way in hell, is this that moony swoony song that sets up your mood thing down at that previously mentioned seashore. Or do you really want to spend the whole night at the high school dance waiting for that last dance so that the she you have been eyeing all night just falls all over you, and then this “downer” comes on. Take it from the Pope, no way. Got it.