***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..The Midnight Angel 

 

 

I'll Get By-Paul and Doris Riley's "forever" song.

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, you will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer time class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want. As I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Other stuff defies simple classification, like here where a fellow classmate, Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie, the leader, no, the king hell king, of my high school corner boy existence “up the Downs (local expression)” at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor pays homage, I think, to his mother who while she lived was both his main nemesis and his main angel if that makes sense. Here something he put on his personal profile page which I picked up on and we exchanged e-mails about since I knew her in the old days and knew what heartache he brought her and what anguish she brought him as he fought for his place in the sun:      

[Frankie and I met up in seventh grade in the junior high school over at Adamsville North where he, after I had moved from the Adamsville projects on the other side of town, took me under his wing and told me what was what. What was what about, well, obviously about girls since Frankie, a good-looking guy and a smooth-talker, always had a bevy of them around him until his “forever” main squeeze, Joanne Murphy, pulled the hammer down in tenth grade (and even then he would sneak around after they had one of their ten thousand break-up fights and he took advantage of his “freedom” to, well, “look around”). Told me too what was what about hygiene and sex (the hygiene part was helpful since my mother neglected to give her children the word on this but the sex part reflected the hard fact that we good Catholic boys learned about the whys and wherefores of sex on the streets and in the locker-rooms and so got a ton of misinformation only corrected years later). And told me also about the ways of the world and not to be a chump (advice I mercifully did not always follow). In return I (and later others when we graduated to hanging our feet on the wall in front of Salducci’s) I was his scribe, his flack-catcher, his “press agent,” his confidant (especially when mother hells reared their ugly head after some Frankie sin, usually venial), his best friend (sometimes in dispute on both sides) and his midnight creeper when we were short of dough. So, yeah, I knew Frankie for a long time until after high school graduation when he went his way a little and I went mine. He eventually to lawyering, I told you he was a smooth talker, and me to political public service (chump stuff in his vocabulary). We kept in touch for a while, drifted apart, got back together drifted, now back, well, e-mail back together since he lives in another state. But mostly for our purposes here I know his mother, or knew her, so what he says here is aces. (I wasn’t his “press agent” for nothing.)]        

 

Doris Margaret Riley (nee Kelly), NAHS Class of 1942, 50 Newbury Street -1925-2007 by Frankie Riley     

[Frankie mother (and his grand and great grandparents) had been born in North Adamsville, lived on the street listed above, and she went to the high school there before her marriage to Paul Riley whom she met while working at the Hullsville Naval Depot where she was a clerk and he, after seeing bloody service with the Marines in the Pacific wars, had been stationed there waiting demobilization. They, Frankie and his three sisters, lived with her parents for a while before the moved to Elm Street on the “wrong side of the tracks” (wrong side according to grand-mother Kelly and others) where they lived when I first met Frankie and all through school.      

By the beauties of computer technology and the Internet Frankie was able to place his mother’s photo on his personal profile page. The Thomas Parker Public Library, the town library, had several years ago placed all of the Magnet class yearbooks on-line and he had linked and downloaded that photo to his profile page. That photo is what he is referring in his tribute.]      

 

…you cannot tell from this class photograph that this young woman would have more sorrows in her life than she deserved. And created some sorrows too. She had a hard life, had married young, a teenage bride, certainly too young by today’s norms, somewhat sickly with one hungry growing boy and three whining daughters born close together, and an eternally loving husband who however was hampered by his inability to give her whatever he had promised her after he left the Marines at the end of World War II. And the sorrows started early as the four children overwhelmed her capacity to deal with them as they strayed from some worthy paths. (I am being kind to myself and my sisters here.) And so she brought sorrows to them as well. Home life was a series of screams, shouts, verbal fights, an occasional truce, years of estrangement, and in the end bewilderment. Not a pretty picture, not at all, and it never really did get better before the end. I wish it had because now I realize that she did deserve better, whatever her incapacities. Every once in a while I fret over that “deserved better” fact but I am okay with the idea that she did the best she could. Yeah, sometimes a picture isn’t better than one thousand words.             

[Enough said, enough said, brother.]

***When The Literary Titians Roared-Hemingway and Gellhorn-A Film Review

 

Gellhorn and Hemingway in China   
DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Hemingway and Gellhorn, starring Nicole Kidman, Clive Owen, HBO, 2012

A long time ago when after I had come of age, come of political age in my early twenties, an old socialist I knew and sought personal and political consul from told me after I had ended a fiery affair with a fellow women political activist that that combination did not mix. Meaning that between ego, the stress of high-wire political activity, and just the likelihood of long separations portended doom to two highly political types surviving together for long. (He did not mention the sexual temptations of being away a lot although if I had asked he probably would have added that as well, or as he well should have). Well, apparently, no, obviously, two literary types like Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn the subjects of this film under review, Hemingway and Gellhorn, are under the same constraints. From a long look (almost two and one half hours) at the film it sure looked that way.  

When you think about it the above comment makes sense. Take one high-powered manly man (from all appearances, inclinations, life-style and his own bravado) and a top-rated 20^th century author, Ernest Hemingway (played by Clive Owen), and one fetching fearless and feisty journalist, Martha Gellhorn(played by Nicole Kidman), and while sparks may fly in the bedroom they almost surely would fly when careers and other issues came up as well, and they did. From the first meeting in Hemingway watering hole Key West (among many others) when they began that dance that eventually led to the bedroom there was always a  one-ups-manship (oops personship) relationship between them from drinking each other under the table to vying for interesting and dangerous war assignments. War assignments that Gellhorn carried out for the rest of her long journalistic career well as the first women to do so, and do it well, after she split with Hemingway in 1945.

 Of course meeting in 1936, meeting at time that the Spanish Civil War was breaking out, a time when people, political people had to take sides, so they did her gathering an assignment as a war correspondent and he working on the film Spanish Earth which was produced to raise money for the Republican side. As a longtime interested party in the Spanish Civil, having written many pieces about the struggle, I will add here what I have expressed elsewhere-those who fought and defended the Republican side whatever else our political perspectives from the International Brigades to writer like Gellhorn, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Langston Hughes, and the like are kindred spirits. Kudos for Spain.

Naturally in a modern romance-centered drama the romance part (okay, okay the sex part) eventually gained center stage and while in Spain for important political business they were able to finally stop dancing around each other and ruffle up the sheets. Hemingway had a little problem though he was still married his second wife. Eventually that problem got resolved by his divorce and subsequent marriage to Gellhorn. That marriage (rather than living together. let’s say) proved to be a big mistake since Gellhorn had justified big ambitions to cover the impeding wars ahead in Europe and elsewhere after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain and that was a bone of contention throughout their five-year marriage. So, yes, my old socialist friend’s advice applies as well to the literati as well. Enough said.

Note: There are many steamy scenes (oaky, okay sex scenes) in the film between the pair (and why not with a fetching Nicole Kidman) as one would expect in a film using some cinematic license with the true story line. A recent Gellhorn biography and some of her own later comments on the men she had loved and her feelings about sex though would belie some of that torrid sexually displayed. Just so you know if you watch the film. But like I said that’s what cinematic license is all about.                 

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..A Running Guy 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, you will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want. As I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren mentioned above, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Other stuff as here defies simple classification such as this unsolicited contribution on my part to a neglected track man from my era (okay, okay friend too).

 

On The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner -For The Great Runner Of Our Class of 1964, Bill Cadger

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

This sketch started life a few years ago as a question about why my schoolboy friend the great cross-country runner and trackman, Bill Cadger, had not been inducted into the North Adamsville Sports Hall of Fame. Well that question was summarily answered for me in passing-except for football there is not such organization. Nevertheless, if for no other reason than to get Mr. Cadger to come out of his lair over in Newton and join this site, the following appreciation of his skills stands the test of time.   

 

Funny how things come back to haunt you, although maybe haunt is not just the right word but will do for now. I, probably like you, was over the top in high school about the school teams, especially football. On any given autumn Saturday the big weekday issues were like tissue in the wind when the question of third down and six, pass or run, held the world on its axis. Many a granite grey, frost-tinged, leaves-changing afternoon I spent (or maybe misspent) yelling myself hoarse cheering on our gridiron goliaths, the North Adamsville Red Raiders, to another victory. Cheering for guys I knew, some of whom I knew personally.

Those guys, those brawny guys, who held our humbles fates, our spiritual fates in their hands if you must know because many of us took the occasional defeats just slightly less hard than the team, deserved plenty of attention and applause, no question. Today though I don’t want to speak of them, but of those kindred in the lesser sports, specifically my own high school sports, cross country, winter track and spring track. Running, running in shorts, in all seasons to be exact. I will mention my own checkered career only in passing. You need not hold your breath waiting for thundering- hoofed grand exploits, or Greek mythical olive branch glory on my account.

What you should give your attention to is my aim below to give, or rather to get, some long overdue recognition for the outstanding runner of our high school days, Bill Cadger. Arguably the best all-around trackman of the era, the era of the “geek” runner, the runner scorned and abused by motorist and pedestrian alike, before the avalanche of honors fell to any half-baked runner when “running for your life” later had some cache. Christ, even the guys on the just so-so tennis team got more school recognition, and more importantly, girl recognition, the boffo, beehive-haired, Capri-pants-wearing, cashmere sweater-wearing, tight sweater-wearing girls and even I went over to the courts on Billings Road when the team had competitions to check out the, uh, volleys and serves.

Needless to say no such fanfare tarnished our lonely pursuits, our lonely, desolate pursuits, running out in all weathers. Even the female track scorer was nothing but the girlfriend of one of the shot-putters, and she served only because no other girl would do it, and she loved her shot-putter. Here is how bad it was- a true story I swear. I spent considerable time talking up one female fellow classmate whom I noticed was looking my way one day. That went on for a while and we got friendly. One day she asked me if I played any sports and so I used that opening to pad up my various meager exploits figuring that would impress her. Her response- “Oh, do they have a track team here?”

Yes sad indeed, but so that such an injustice will not fall on Bill Cadger’s eternal exploits I, a few years back, determined to pursue a campaign to get him recognition in the North Adamsville Sports Hall of Fame. To that end I wrote up the following simple plea for justice, the superbly- reasoned argument for Mr. Cadger’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame:

Why is the great 1960s cross country and track runner, Bill Cadger, not in the North Adamsville Sports Hall Of Fame?

“Okay, okay I am a “homer” (or to be more contemporary, a “homeboy”) on this question. In the interest of full disclosure the fleet-footed Mr. Cadger and I have known each other since the mist of time. We go all the way back to being schoolmates down at Snug Harbor Elementary School in one of the old town’s housing projects, the notorious Adamsville “projects” that devoured many a boy, including my two brothers and almost, within an inch, got me. Bill and I survived that experience and lived to tell the tale. What I want to discuss today though is the fact that this road warrior's accomplishments, as a cross-country runner and trackman (both indoors and out), have never been truly recognized by the North Adamsville High School sports community. (See below for a youthful photograph of the “splendid speedster” in full racing regalia.).

And what were those accomplishments? Starting as a wiry, but determined, sophomore Bill began to make his mark as a harrier beating seniors, top men from other teams on occasion, and other mere mortals. Junior year he began to stake out his claim on the path to Olympus by winning road races on a regular basis. In his senior year Bill broke many cross-country course records, including a very fast time on the storied North Adamsville course. A time, by the way, that held up as the course record for many years afterward. Moreover, in winter track that senior year Bill was the State Class B 1000-yard champion, pulling out a heart-stopping victory. His anchor of the decisive relay in a dual meet against Somerville's highly-touted state sprint champion is the stuff of legends.

Bill also qualified to run with the “big boys” at the fabled schoolboy National Indoor Championships at Madison Square Garden in New York City. His outdoor track seasons speak for themselves. I will not detain you here with the grandeur of his efforts for I would be merely repetitive. Needless to say he was captain of all three teams in his senior year. No one questioned the aptness of those decisions.

Bill and I have just recently re-united [2008], the details which need not detain us here, after some thirty years. After finding him, one of the first things that I commented on during one of our “bull sessions” was that he was really about ten years before his time. In the 1960s runners were “geeks.” You know-the guys, and then it was mainly guys, who ran in shorts on the roads and mainly got honked at, yelled at, and threatened with mayhem by irate motorists. And the pedestrians were worse, throwing an occasional body- block at runners coming down the sidewalk outside of school. That was the girls, those “fragile” girls of blessed memory. The boys shouted out catcalls, whistles, and trash talk about maleness, male unworthiness, and their standards for it that did not include what we were doing. Admit it. That is what you thought, and maybe acted on then too.

In the 1970's and 1980's runners of both sexes became living gods and goddesses to a significant segment of the population. Money, school scholarships, endorsements, soft-touch “self-help” clinics, you name it. Then you were more than willing to “share the road with a runner.” Friendly waves, crazed schoolgirl-like hanging around locker rooms for the autograph of some 10,000 meter champion whose name you couldn’t pronounce, crazed school boy-like droolings when some foxy woman runner with a tee-shirt that said “if you can catch me, you can have me” passed you by on the fly, and shrieking automobile stops to let, who knows, maybe the next Olympic champion, do his or her stuff on the road. Admit that too.

And as the religion spread you, suddenly hitting thirty-something, went crazy for fitness stuff, especially after Bobby, Sue, Millie, and some friend’s grandmother hit the sidewalks looking trim and fit. And that friend’s grandma beating you, beating you badly, that first time out only added fuel to the fire. And even if you didn’t get out on the roads yourself you loaded up with your spiffy designer jogging attire, one for each day of the week, and high-tech footwear. Jesus, what new aerodynamically-styled, what guaranteed to take thirteen seconds off your average mile time, what color- coordinated, well- padded sneaker you wouldn’t try, and relegate to the back closet. But it was better if you ran. And you did for a while. I saw you, and Bill did too. You ran Adamsville Beach, Castle Island, the Charles River, Falmouth, LaJolla, and Golden Gate Park. Wherever. Until the old knees gave out, or the hips, or some such combination “war story” stuff. But see, by then, Bill had missed his time.

Now there is no question that a legendary football player like Bill Curran from our class should be in the North Adamsville Sports Hall of Fame. On many a granite gray autumn afternoon old "Bull Winkle" thrilled us with his gridiron prowess running over opponents at will. But on other days, as the sun went down highlighting the brightly-colored falling leaves, did you see that skinny kid running down East Squantum Street toward Adamsville Beach for another five mile jaunt? No, I did not think so. I have now, frankly, run out of my store of sports spiel in making my case. Know this though; friendship aside, Bill belongs in the Hall. What about making a place in the Hall for the kid with the silky stride who worked his heart out, rain or shine, not only for his own glory but North's.

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight

 

…he wondered, truly wondered whether she missed him, missed her walking daddy tonight after all the slow meaningless time that had passed these past few months since their over-heated short love affair had gone down in flames almost as quickly as it had started.  (That walking daddy moniker was a little term of endearment that she tagged him with after they had, well, done the “do the do” and she though that she had him reined in, reined him in with kisses and a few little special things that he liked, and that she knew he liked even before he told her that he did). He did not really believe that she did, did miss him, she was not built that way, and he knew from the first, and she made the fact abundantly clear and with examples (citing chapter and verse ex-husbands and lovers) in all their conversations that once she was done with a man that was that and she moved on, maybe to the next man, maybe just to lick her wounds. Still he took a ticket, took a chance that he would be, what did she call him, oh yeah, her “forever” man (and a few short months later her “never” man).  Yeah, so no question he was as sure as a man could be, a man who no longer was on speaking terms with her, that she did not miss him.

 

He wondered too whether she was lonesome tonight for her walking daddy, a very different proposition than whether she missed him. He was not sure on that score, although he thought she might. See even if she was through with a man, had moved on the way she put the fact in those same conversations mentioned above they had about her way with men, she was as likely to be licking her wounds as looking for another man. As likely to be filled with solitary sadness as out on the town, out with another man. That is where those two marriages and many love affairs came in, came in and softened rather than hardened her to life’s romantic ups and downs. She mentioned that she had a hard time letting go, letting the past fade and that it took her a long time to get over a man once they were through. How did she put it one night, oh yeah, she was fast to love a man when he got under her skin and slow to forget him (that fast love had been her way with him in their whirlwind love affair not giving him time to breathe before trying to plan their future unto infinity after about a month). Yeah, she might be lonesome tonight but let me tell you what he told me one night when we were sipping white wines at a Boston bar, tell you some details and you figure the damn thing out.      

 

He had met her sitting in a bar in Cambridge, a rock and roll bar, an oldies but goodies bar that he frequented when he needed to hear Elvis, Chuck, Bo, or some rockabilly beat after some hard case was done or he just needed to blow off steam when some appeals case was slipping away for lack of presentable issues that could win. Some nights, like this night, he wound up just slugging quarters in the juke-box, others, mainly weekend nights listening to a live band, The Rockin’ Ramrods,  covering the classics, when he noticed that she looked very familiar in a long ago way. After he slid down the row of barstools to get beside her he had mentioned that fact to her as a come-on and bought her a drink (a glass of red wine which she loved, loved to perdition as he would find out) they spent the next several minutes trying to figure where that might have been. Work, no, the Cape, no, College, no, and so on. 

 

Strangely they found out once they discussed where they had grown up that the link had been  that they had gone to the same high school together, North Adamsville High, located on the South Shore of Boston although they had not known each other, had not had any of the same classes, back then (but since they had also gone to the same junior high school they agreed later after they were “smitten” with each other, her term, and wanted to make some symbolic “written in the wind” closeness count they must have been in the same space at some point if only the gym, auditorium or cafeteria). That got them cutting up old torches that night for a while, well, a long while since they closed the bar that night. They agreed that they had some common interests and that they should continue the conversation further via e-mail and cellphone. See, she lived up in New Hampshire in a town outside of Manchester, was a professor at the state university and had been in Cambridge to attend a conference at Harvard so getting together soon in person with her schedule was problematic.

 

So for a while, a few weeks, they carried on an e-mail/cellphone correspondence. Both were however struck by the number of things they had in common, things from childhood like growing up poor, growing up in hostile and dangerous family environments, growing up insecure and with nothing to guide them. Moreover they found that they had many similar teenage angst and alienation episodes in high school in common as well as current political and academic interests. Both agreed that they should meet again in person since they had already “met” in high school (somehow in the rush of things they discounted that they had really met in Cambridge in a bar, go figure).

 

And so they met again, met many times, had many dinners and did other things together before they agreed to meet at a hotel in New Hampshire to see if they had a spark that way. Well you know they did since otherwise there would be no story to tell. Yes, they, he and she, were both smitten, both felt very comfortable with each other and were heading forward with eyes open. Along the way they had discussed their two each marriages, their serious love affairs and their attitudes toward relationships. At those times she would emphasize her take on men, her expectations and her limitations. She also wanted him to come stay with her in New Hampshire and leave Boston. He although not as well formed in his take on their relationship did likewise explain his two marriages and major love affairs, although he balked at leaving the city for the Podunk country up north as he called her place. So yes both sets of eyes were open, open wide.

 

She pulled the hammer down, pulled it down early. Within a couple of months she spoke of love, of living together, of sailing out into the sunset together. He, slower on the uptake, slower having been severely burned in his last marriage was a bit bewildered by her speedy emotional attachment to him. They went on a couple of trips together, had some good times, had some rocky times too when she tried to rein him in. He wasn’t afraid to commit exactly (well maybe he had a little “cold feet” problem but not bad for him) as much as he wanted the thing to develop naturally, give him time to breathe although he already said that air to breathe thing didn’t he, there always seemed to be an air of suffocation every time she got on her high horse, got her wanting habits on, got the best of him sometimes.

 

Then he made his fatal mistake, or rather  series of mistakes, starting with strong words one night at dinner when they both had had a bit too much to drink and she was going on and on. He got snappy, told her they needed to slow down and enjoy each other. She responded with a blast but they were able to kiss and make up that night. The real mistake though was one time after they had not seen each other for a week or so he sent her an e-mail speaking in sorrow of the drift of their recent relationship and he wanted the spark back that had go them going. She exploded at that seeing that as a rebuke to her rather than as what he thought was a plaintive love letter. What did she call it, oh yeah, a closing argument, a damn lawyer’s closing argument (the “damn” part a result of having been married to a lawyer the first time out). They agreed to meet at a neutral restaurant to discuss the matter.

 

When he thought about it later he could see where she had prepared to be confrontational or least prepared to force the issue because the first words out of her mouth were an ultimatum-come live with her or the affair was over. The exchange got heated as she drank more wine (he did not drink that night having learned a lesson from the last session). She said something that when we talked he could not for  the life of him remember but they were fighting words. He exploded saying “I don’t need this,” throwing money on the table and storming out. That was the last he saw of her.  Oh sure the next day he tried to call, no answer. Later that day he got a message on his voicemail from her giving her walking daddy his walking papers. She told him not to call, not to write as she would not respond. He never did.

 

 

What he did do seriously in the few weeks after their break-up, what he was doing this tonight he spoke of to me as well as months later when he fretted over what had gone wrong, was think through how it could have played out differently. Did that blame game in order to curb his own lonesomeness as he replayed their short affair, as he tried to try to figure out something that had bothered him since that fierce parting. No, not about the specific details of what had caused his downfall, although he was still perplexed about why his concern about their present situation and his anger at that last meeting over her ultimatum should have been the irretrievable cause. He would accept that, had to accept that the way she perceived the situation those were the causes of his downfall pure and simple. He didn’t like it but he could see where what she said in her voicemail message that she could never see him in the old way, the way she had in the beginning of their affair when their love flamed, precluded any future romantic relationship. 

 

What he thought about mostly though concerned one point-how could two intelligent,  worldly people, who individually had many strong and powerful inner resources, not figure a way to avoid letting their fragile relationship blow away in the wind, blow away without a trace after many professions of desire, devotion and fidelity. He fretted over how little energy they had devoted to using some of those personal inner resources in order to build the foundations of a strong relationship. He had been willing to take his fair share of the blame for his “cold feet” which had him, more often than not, attempting to walk away from not toward her. That last marriage had damaged him more than he had thought and it had still colored his worldview on intimacy, on commitment, no question. That walking away as they got closer, as she started to get under his skin, always seemed strongest as he left her after some bad days when she was pushing him hard. Or when he thought the whole thing was hopeless since they lived too far away from each other to compromise on a living arrangement. Yeah, he would take his fair share of blame on that.

 

She infuriated him though with her interminable future plans while disregarding the present, although he could not speak for her and whether she believed his house of card blown in the wind idea about what had happened. She had plans for them to go to live in California when they retired, deemed it mandatory that he spent a certain number of days up in New Hampshire even while he had pressing business to take care of in Boston, but best, best as an example, was that she had their next Christmas and New Year already mapped out in March. All the time not paying attention to the drift of the tempo of their day to day relationship where he was, frankly, unhappy, very unhappy. In the end he was shocked by how little there had been to hold them together in a serious crisis which he conceded or would have conceded if she had ever decided to talk to him again was a serious crisis. Now that he thought about it he told me, no, whether she had a new walking daddy or not (or whatever new moniker she would make up for him) she would not be lonesome tonight.                         

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Missing Classmates, Part Two   

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, you will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want. As I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren mentioned above, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Other stuff defies simple classification such as the following which had been the result of an e-mail exchange with a woman from the class of 1963 who remembered my late brother and who, more importantly, had been on that class’s reunion committee and was using me as a medium to transfer information to our class webmaster, Donna, about finding missing classmates from fifty years ago  which she was having some trouble finding beyond those who had some Internet connection to pursue (again, those who want to be found, not those on the lam for some reason, or those who left the dust of old North Adamsville behind and never looked back):   

[Priscilla had contacted me initially via another class and town-related website when she noticed that I had written something there about my late brother, Prescott, who was supposed to but didn’t graduate with my class and because he had been back a year should have been in Priscilla’s class which is where she knew his name from. Whether they had a romance or something I don’t know but she called him “handsome” (which he was, although totally irresponsible and one who never gave up the corner boy life but graduated, well let’s put it this way, to the school of hard knocks) and other expressions that made me think so but at this remove I did not want to press the issue. I thanked her for her kind words in any case.]       

“Frank, so sorry you lost your brother Prescott, that is a tough one, very sad. My dad's name was Kenneth [a reference to my other late brother]. 

[Our class website has an In Memory section for those from our class who have passed on (over seventy at last count, a shocking number to me, out of five hundred and twenty).]  

I emailed Richard Wallace and he wrote back his sister Sarah died in 2001, at the moment I printed your class missing list I think Saturday or Sunday she was still on there.   Rich said he saw my post and contacted someone, Donna did put in the obit, he would love it if sometime she could add the picture of her he attached. [Donna did.]

[Here Priscilla is giving another specific classmate who passed away.]  

Nora is Delores Clark’s daughter and she told me her mother from your class died 3 years ago. If my validation guy was not busy I would ask him to check further but he is transition to Florida. If Donna wishes she could wait to put her into In Memory. I might call Nora on my own to see how she is.  I was looking for our Carol Cooke [Delores’ sister] never found her, then saw she did not graduate with us. Did I mention earlier for you to tell Donna the graduation list is important as it may show names spelled differently from the yearbook? [She had already checked that list.]

Also emailed Maureen Travis and she will have Sheila sign in, they are married to brothers, and I emailed Maize McBride, will let you know if I hear anything.

The cheerleaders also keep in touch, little cliques or groups, like the brains, and your class has a huge Mass population.  [According to Donna this tip turned into a wealth of connections once she found Jean Kelly who still lives in North Adamsville with her classmate husband. Seems most of them stay in touch with one another.] Remember to tell Donna that we are of the age of retirement and use cell phones which makes it more difficult to find people. [Donna knew this.]  Tell Donna If she is going out-of-state classmate hunting, look at Florida and the Carolinas. [She has.]

 And your Tom Kerry, the famous lawyer (not the one on TV) may be a good contact person, we had a private eye who was invaluable. [Tom who still has offices in town was very helpful.]

Tell Donna you can add people as guest members on the website. [Priscilla for obvious reasons now has that status.] [Fellow reunion committee member] Paul and I were uncomfortable with a few guest requests because they can see your classmate profiles which contain private information so tell Donna she needs to be careful that guests are trustworthy and do not have ulterior motives, plus you can limit their membership.  Paul can be reached on his winter phone in SC which is 864-786-0077. Mine in Maine is 207-4636-1456. Tell Donna she is doing a great job and the website looks terrific. 

Priscilla “

***When Norman Mailer Was A Lion-Existential Errands - A Short Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Existential Errands, Norman Mailer, 1972

There was time in my youth back in the 1960s and early 1970s that I devoured everything I could get my hands on by the late American writer Norman Mailer. While that urgency is no longer true I nevertheless still find him an interesting political and philosophical opponent. What was the reason for that enthusiasm in my youth?  Simple, it was Mailer’s commitment to do novelistically and journalistically for the philosophy of existentialism what the French writers, especially, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, did for the philosophical argument itself. That philosophy, borne of terminal despair at the carnage, brutality and inhuman cruelties of World War II (and nicely written about in a first-hand way with his first novel, The Naked and the Dead), the seeming almost organic inability of the international working class to go beyond Stalinism and Social Democratic reformism in the quest for socialism and an acknowledgement that modern humankind had let technological developments outstrip its capacity to understand and control those forces, has nevertheless become threadbare with time. We live too existential lives to find much conform in such philosophy (to speak nothing of the aid of tech/text/eyes down-driven technology)

 

Let us face it; every political and social commentator is confronted with the need to find some basis to ground his or her analysis of the seemingly random events that demand our attentions and explanations. Over long experience I have found historical materialism a much more grounded philosophy for looking at the apparently random individual facts of existence. Although I have not read very recent Mailer all his works I have read lack this connection. So be it. We were after all in the end political opponents. Nevertheless, the man could turn some rather nice metaphors in his arguments. And he sure as hell could write. This compilation of articles, reviews etc., written in the early 1970s will give you some insights into his writing and thinking before wading into the longer (and better) novels and will also demonstrate why when I was younger I grabbed everything I could read of Mailer’s, with both hands

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Intellectuals 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, you will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want. As I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren mentioned above, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Other stuff as here defies simple classification as I am taking the high road, taking on a discussion about the class intellectuals, the ones who I admired from a distance, silently. My latest correspondence with Marilyn Madden, who as will be pointed out below was voted our senior class genius-female version, centered on an after-school club that she belonged to, The Great Books club, that I would have loved to have joined if I had known about it. Oh yeah, and if I hadn’t had about seven tons of teenage angst and alienation that made me a loner.  Here is my side of the thing anyway and a little tribute I put together to honor the “smart kids” of the class as a result of the e-mail exchanges between us:

 

[Marilyn and I originally “met” on site (I did not know her in school, no way) after I had noticed that her yearbook class photograph had not been on her profile page, send an e-mail to her about the omission,  and had notified the webmaster, Donna, of that fact which she subsequently rectified. That gave me an opening to mention to Marilyn her having been voted the class genius-female side and my take on that, and hers too. And we were off from there.]        

 

 “Hi Marilyn - Thank for note and thanks for agreeing with me that we should show generous appreciation whenever we can for the efforts of our reunion committee in putting together this website so we can cut up old torches.  As for your photo Donna, our super-wizard webmistress, placed yours on your profile page today. Check it out.  You look properly professorial there. It must be in the genes. [Marilyn’s forbears for three generations had been professors at a local religious college.]   As for the Madden-Smith name that is the way your name is listed on a related North Adamsville High School-website so I used that to address you. From now on I will use just Smith as you requested. [This concerned the way her name was listed in hyphenated form as is still somewhat popular in certain circles to not drown out forever maiden names (and identities).]

Now for the serious stuff-the writing stuff-I am surprised after reviewing your yearbook class photo resume that you said that you were isolated from other classmates. I thought I was the classic loner/outsider. In any case you have at least one thing on your resume I (and others) would be greatly interested in hearing about-the Great Books Club. I swear I didn’t know that we even had such a thing at school. I could have used that kind of club because I was filled to the brill with half-formed social/political/literary ideas and could have used such discussions to sort things out. What books did you discuss?

Here are some other questions you can answer at your leisure- how did North help or hinder you in your career as an editor? [Marilyn had recently retired after a career as an editor as various journals, newspapers, and publishing houses, some well-known.] Any particular teachers influence you? [Marilyn had commented favorably on my appreciation of Miss (Ms.) Sonos, my senior year English teacher placed on the Message Forum page for all to read.] If you don’t want to write about North times then how about your editing career. I hope it was for literary magazines and journals. We would be glad to read anything you could write. Look, we have an exceptional opportunity with the new technology to put together a collective memory of our times to show the stuff we were made of. We need you to help us.            

As for the genius thing I will keep quiet on that but I must confess since I believe the statute of limitations has run out on this “crime” that I actually voted for Sarah Stein for class genius. Forgive me. [Marilyn, too modest since her resume was worthy of such recognition, expressed surprise that she won the “class genius” designation and told me that she too had voted for Sarah. Keep that under your hat.] Later Frank Jackman.‘’

All of which spawned the following appreciation:

“***The Intellectuals Or The Jocks?

Every school since back in Socrates’ time has had discernable social groupings within so I was not surprised when I was asked recently what group(s) I hung around with, if any, at North. Here is my answer and I solicit yours as well…      

I did not then, nor do I now, know Sarah Stein, Marilyn Madden, or Irvin Jack Rubin, fellow classmates at North Adamsville High, Class of 1964 and among the smart set, the class geniuses. I don’t remember if my old “jock” running buddy Brad Badger,  whose very existence prompted me to recently write some teary-eyed thing about him running amok on the streets of North Adamsville in the old days knew them or not, but it was with them in mind that I wrote the following. I, today, strongly believe that I could have learned a lot from that trio and maybe Brad  believes that as well but you will have to ask him that question yourself. No way, no way on god’s good green earth in the year 2014 and while I am still breathing, old time “jock” buddies or not, am I going to vouch for that maniac. Here goes:

Every September, like clockwork, I am transported to a place called the beginning of the year. No, not New Year’s Day like any rational person would expect, but the school year for most students, younger or older. That is a frame of reference that I have not changed in all these years. And every year, or in many of those years anyway, my thoughts go back to the road not taken, or really not taken then, when I ask myself the following question that I am posing in such a way here so that you can ask it to yourself as well: What group(s) did you hang around with in high school?

This question is meant to be generic and more expansive that the two categories listed in the headline. The intellectuals and the jocks were hardly the only social groupings that existed at our high school (or any high school, then or now, for that matter) but the ones that I am interested in personally for the purpose of this sketch. The list of other possibilities is long: white tee-shirt, denim jeans, leather jacket, engineer boots complete with whipsaw chain corner boy devotees; wanna-be gangster hoods hanging out one knee bent against the school wall menacing all who entered; the latest Seventeen magazine-attired social butterflies, girl social butterflies, populating the spirit and dance committees and come senior year that prized prom committee looking down their noses at the peasantry below;  teases, male and female, also a sub-genre of social butterflies, avoiding furtive glances thrown their way and then “hurt” when no one pays attention after a while; school administration “brown noses” (really “snitches,” the bastards) who had been in that condition since some ill-disposed elementary school-teacher made them hall monitor; nerdy four-eyed science nuts ready to blow the whole school up to satisfy some morbid curiosity; oil-stained auto mechanics grease monkeys forever talking about engine compression, riding around town in their customized ‘57 Chevys, and strangely leaving a trail of broken-hearted lovely foxy girls behind; incipient Bolsheviks just waiting for the word; black-sweatered  faux “beats” ready to hang “square” on a candid world; choral music nation devotees (okay, okay glee club) ready to sing at the drop of a hat; could-care-if-school-kept-or-not-ers, no explanation necessary; chronic school skippers; drop-outs, religious nuts, and who knows what other “social network” combines, maybe bowling. All of those listed group members can relate your own thoughts on behalf of your high school “community.” I have other thoughts this day.

You, fellow alumni from North Adamsville High School, Adamsville, Massachusetts, U.S.A. may also feel free to present your own categories of hang-out groups in case I missed anything above like baton-twirling, the infamous band (the stories I have heard about after practice in the band room shocked me, made me blush), square-dancing, bird-watchers, or stamp collectors, or all of them intertwined, if your tastes ran that way then. However, for me, and perhaps some of you, there was an unequal running battle between the two choices presented in the title. Or maybe what I wished I had chosen is a better way to put the matter.

Should I have hung out with the intellectuals, formerly known as the "smart kids.” You know, the ones that your mother was always, usually unfavorably, comparing you to come report card time in order to embarrass you or get you to buckle down in the great getting out from under the graying nowhere working- class night and make something of yourself that she (and dad) could be proud of. Yes, those kids who could be seen at the library after school, and even on Saturday, Saturdays if you can believe that, and endlessly trudging, trudging like some Promethean wanderers with about forty- six pounds of books, books large and small, books in all colors, and here is the kicker, well-thumbed, very well-thumbed.

Or with the “jocks.” The jocks, to the extent I could be identified with any school group, were the ones who I hung around with. You know, the guys and in those days it was almost exclusively guys (girls came in as cheer-leaders or girlfriends-sometimes the same thing) who lived to throw, heave, punch, pull, leap upon, trample, block, jump, pummel, everything in sight but, ah, books. You know, mainly, the Goliaths of the gridiron, their hangers-on, wannabes and "slaves." The guys who were not carrying any forty-six pounds of books, although maybe they were wearing that much poundage in sports gear. And any books that needed carrying was done by either girlfriends or the previously mentioned slaves. Other sports may have had some shine but the “big men” on campus were the fall classic guys. Some sports such as cross-country and track and field, my sports, didn’t usually rate even honorable mention compared to say a social butterfly-driven senior bake sale or some high school confidential school dance in the school social pecking order.

Frankly, although I was in one grouping and thought about the other in high school I was mainly a "loner" for reasons that are beyond what I want to discuss here except it very definitely had to do with confusion about the way to get out from under that graying working- class nowhere night. And about “fitting” in somewhere in the school social order that had little room for guys (or girls for that matter) who didn’t fit into some classifiable niche. Room for teen angst and alienated guys, 1960s shorts-wearing track guys, running the streets of old North Adamsville to the honks of automobiles trying to scare us off the road (no “share the road with a runner” then) and jeers, the awful jeers of the girls, that space was very small. The most one could hope for was a “nod” from the football guys (or basketball in winter) in recognition that you were a fellow athlete, of sorts. Yeah, times were tough.

But as this is a confessional age I can now come out of the closet, at last. I read books back then. Yes, I read them, no devoured them endlessly (and still do), and as frequently as I could (can). I LIKED reading, let’s say, “max daddy” English poet John Milton’s tangled Paradise Lost. I lived to read footnotes in arcane history books. You know the sources for the big controversy over whether the Cromwell’s time 17^th English Revolution was driven by declining or rising gentry. Yeah stuff like that. Did you see me carrying tons of books over my shoulder in public though? Be serious, please. Here is the long held secret (even from Brad). I used to go over to the library on the other side of town, the Adamsville Square side, where no one, no one who counted anyway (meaning no jock, of course), would know me. One summer I did that almost every day for at least part of the day. So there you have it. Well, not quite.

In recent perusals of our class yearbook I have been drawn continually to the page where the description of the Great Books Club is presented. I was unaware of this club, didn’t know it existed, at the time but, apparently, it met after school and discussed Plato, John Stuart Mill, Shakespeare, Karl Marx and others. (See below.) Sarah, Marilyn and  others were members. Hell, after I read the description of what went on there that club sounded like great fun. One of the defining characteristics of my life has been, not always to my benefit, an overweening attachment to books and ideas. So what was the problem? What didn't I hang with that group?

Well, uh..., you know, they were, uh, nerds, dweebs, squares, not cool (although we did not use some of those exact terms in those days). That, at least, was the public reason, but here are some other more valid possibilities. Coming from my “shanty” background, where the corner boys had a certain cachet, I was somewhat afraid of mixing in with the "smart kids." The corner boys counted, after school anyway, and if they didn’t count then it was better to keep a wide, down low berth from anything that looked like a book reader in their eyes. I, moreover, feared that I wouldn't measure up, that the intellectuals seemed more virtuous somehow. I might also add that a little religiously-driven plebeian Irish Catholic anti-intellectualism (you know, be “street” smart but not too “book” smart in order to get ahead in one version of that getting out from under graying working -class nowhere night my family kept harping on) might have entered into the mix as well.

But, damn, I sure could have used the discussions and fighting for ideas that such groups like that book club would have provided. I had to do it the hard way later. As for the jocks one should notice that I have not mentioned a thing about their long- term effects on me. And, in the scheme of things, that is about right. So now you know my belated choice, except to steal a phrase from something that I wrote recently honoring my senior English teacher, Miss Sonos-"Literature matters. Words matter." I would only add here that ideas matter as well. Hats Off to the North Adamsville  Class of 1964 intellectuals!

This list is from a letter written in the early 1950s by the late American writer, Norman Mailer, and printed in The New York Review Of Books a few years ago, detailing his choices for "must reads" in the American literary canon. What would your ten choices be?

 

Norman Mailer
Ten Favorite American Novels

U.S.A.- John Dos Passos

Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain

Studs Lonigan -James T. Farrell

Look Homeward, Angel- Thomas Wolfe

The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald-1^st on my list

The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway

Appointment in Samarra- John O'Hara

The Postman Always Rings Twice- James M. Cain

Moby-Dick- Herman Melville

This would be my list as well sticking to Mailer’s selection time period except instead of Moby Dick I would put Nelson Algren’s Walk On The Wild Side and instead of Huckleberry Finn I would put J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.