Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Night-I’ll Get By As Long As I Have You-For Prescott And Delores Breslin
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Probably anytime was, is, a tough time for a kid, an American kid, to grow in what with his or her outlandish share of expectations about what the world had, or had not, to offer but Josh Breslin, Joshua Lawrence Breslin to give his full moniker although Josh sufficed among his friends seemed to have had more his share growing up in the hardscrabble Olde Saco, Maine 1950s while all around him others were partaking of the “Golden Age” of the American good time night. It wasn’t that others, other kids, and that was all that counted in Josh’s world then (or any kid’s when the deal went down) at least in Olde Saco, had more of the world’s goods that he did, although some did like his cousins, his mother’s sister’s children, whose father, Rene Dubois, an engineer who had taken serious advantage of the GI Bill that gave a leg up to many returning veterans in order to piggyback on the engineering skills he had first picked up in the Army’s 18th Engineers in the European Theater, had gotten in early on the big electronics boom in the post-World War II period had shaken the dust of the old town off and lived like Mayfair swells in Kennebunk with the old Yankees, swamp Yankees who controlled the power structure of the state. That status meaning the Dubois family had arrived complete with small but homey house, the latest automobile from out of Detroit traded in every three years to show that the owners had the wherewithal to do so, and a television all paid for or close to it.
No, at least among his friends, at least among those who resided in the streets of Frenchtown, almost all who could trace their roots back to the old country, Quebec, who were various generations of French-Canadians, bound together by religion, Roman Catholic (although as filtered through the Gallic sauce of that religion which could be more conservative that other national churches and strangely by turn more heretical and socially progressive than Rome itself in those days), by the small villages and rural agricultural values along the blessed Saint Lawrence River from which they fled to hug the factories of upper New England where they could make a living, a decent living, and the French which united them with Mother France and all the history, arrogance and hubris that entailed, that sense that they should be showered with the plenty of the Golden Age seemed to have passed them by. A lot of it had to do with a studied indifference to getting
too far ahead in the American lot they thrived in, a lot had to do with a studied indifference to seeing their children get ahead like their Yankee neighbors who seemed hell-bent on their kids getting more than they who grew up in the benighted Great Depression of the 1930s where their work ethos had been first fired-up and later survived the hell-fires of wanting and waiting in the rationed wartime 1940s and a studied indifference to their fate once the great textile mills that had provided much work for many during the war began their ugly trek south and out of country in search of cheaper labor. Not every French-Canadian family had succumbed to such downward mobility but enough had to have affected Josh and plenty of other Joshes growing up in the Olde Sacos of that time.
Josh who would later claim, not without some truth, that the 1960s counter-cultural “revolution” (we will not quibble over what that social explosion’s effect was but putting the term revolution in quotation marks accurately reflects the ambiguity of what happened, what lasted, and what the people involved in that brief movement’s moment thought happened) was the only thing that had saved him from winding up like Jean, Sean, Jacques, Lenny, Pierre La Rue, Pierre D’Amboise, and Henri LaCroix, guys who he knew in the 1950s who went off to war, to the factories in town and later down south and to the jails had been a restless feeling, something he could not put his finger on but which gnawed at him to shake the dust from his own shoes and get out of town. That has happened one day in the summer after high school when Josh decided he would head west before he went up to State U, the first in his whole frisking family going back generations who would go as far as Freshman year in college, in the fall and met up with the late Peter Paul Markin out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 and never looked back (went west and in the process driving his father, Prescott, to one of his few rages, public rages anyway, since he had procured a job for him not without calling in a few favors in the MacAdams Textile Mills where he worked).
That fateful trip which actually lasted two or three years provided much literary fodder for the aspiring writer in Josh, although it alienated him from parents for about a decade until he won his first journalism award (the coveted Globe for outstanding social commentary in 1979). He would go on to write in many of the small alterative journal and magazines of the time, mostly free-lancing, before settling in to the East Bay Gazette from which he had recently retired after some thirty years on the editorial staff including several years as chief editor. That retirement had allowed him to reflect on what had happened to his crowd, his family, back in the 1950s, allowed him time to reflect on how important his late parents were in making a decent human being out of him, and of how their own dreams had been severely thwarted trying to raise five children on air. The direct catalyst for those reflections had been a trip up into his attic in his house in Cambridge where he was searching for old photographs of him and his friend Markin for a sketch he was doing on that mad man saint bastard when he found a photograph of his late mother Delores and late father Prescott at some dance they attended at the Stardust Ballroom in Old Orchard Beach during World War II, the time of their time, the sunny times before the whole world fell in on them.
That photograph brought back to mind how much his older brother Prescott, Junior, had hated to have to listen to their music as a youngster, almost like he had to hate it to create his own space, his own way in the world. That stubborn thought brought back to Josh the one day when the whole musical conflict reached a fever pitch when Prescott had exploded. Prescott not around to now to tell his part in the story having gone off the deep end and committed himself to a life on the wild side as a career criminal, armed robbery division, serving a nickel to a dime up in Shawshank just now. Josh blushed as he thought about those other recent reflections which outweighed a confused soul’s nervousness about his place, his or his damn brother’s, in the world. Oddly he could remember the episode almost word for word in his memory’s eye:
“Prescott James Breslin get your dirty hands off that wall this minute, yelled Delores Breslin (nee Leclerc), Mother Breslin to some, including the yelled at Prescott, honey, to Prescott Breslin, Senior, Father Breslin to the junior one being yelled at just this minute. Just as Mother Breslin, hell, let’s call her Delores, was getting ready for cascade rant number two aimed in Prescott, Junior’s direction wafting through the air, the radio WJDA air, came the melodious voice of Bing Crosby singing in that sweet, nuanced voice of his, Far Away Places. Their song. Their Delores and Prescott, Senior forever memory song.
Delores in a quick turn began to talk almost trance-like as she flashed back to the night in 1943 over at the Stardust Ballroom on East Grand in Old Orchard Beach that she, then a typist for the State Insurance Company right there in Olde Saco (and making good money for a single, no high maintenance girl, never a high maintenance girl, women, mother, grandmother, not in hard-nosed working class make your own way or else Olde Saco’s French Town) and Marine PFC Prescott Breslin, stationed after serious service in the Pacific wars (Guadalcanal, etc.) at the Portsmouth Naval Base met while they were playing that song on the jukebox between sets. Sets being performed by the Be-Bop Sextet, a hot, well, be-bop band that was making a national tour to boost civilian morale while the boys were off fighting. They hit it off right away, made Far Away Places their song, and prepared for a future, a joint future, once the war was over, and they could get their dream, shared dream, little white house, with or without picket fence, maybe a dog, and definitely kids, a few although they never specified a number. The perfect dream to chase the old Great Depression no dough blues and World War II fighting dust away, far away. And to be able to breath a decent breathe, a breathe drawn without fear of the jack boots of the world knocking at the doors once the dirty bastards had been vanquished, a not from hunger breathe too if anybody was asking.
Just then Delores snapped back into the reality, the two by four reality, of their made due, temporary veterans’ housing set up by the Olde Saco Housing Authority (at the request of and funded by the War Department) to house the housing-hungry returning vets and give them a leg up. Add on the further reality that Prescott’s job at the Macadam’s Textile Mill was none too sure now that rumors were circulating around town that the mill-owners were thinking of relocating to North Carolina. And the biggest reality of all: well, Prescott, Junior, Kendrick, Lawrence, Jean Paul and lastly Joshua. And five is enough, more than enough thank you (that sentiment directed toward Prescott although not picked up by the boys at the time only later when they too saw that seven could not live as cheaply as two, that modern society’s hand dealt to the Breslin could not sustain such weight. But as that terrific tenor of Dick Haymes singing Little White Lies was making its way into her air space she fell back to thinking about that now old dream of the little white house, with or without picket fence, a dog and a few kids (exactly three, thank you) that was coming just around next corner. And just as she was winding up to blast young Prescott, his dirty hands, and that wall, maybe a little less furiously that she intended before, her thoughts returned to her Prince Charming, Starlight Ballroom1943, and their song. Their forever memory song. Yes, she would get by.
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Probably anytime was, is, a tough time for a kid, an American kid, to grow in what with his or her outlandish share of expectations about what the world had, or had not, to offer but Josh Breslin, Joshua Lawrence Breslin to give his full moniker although Josh sufficed among his friends seemed to have had more his share growing up in the hardscrabble Olde Saco, Maine 1950s while all around him others were partaking of the “Golden Age” of the American good time night. It wasn’t that others, other kids, and that was all that counted in Josh’s world then (or any kid’s when the deal went down) at least in Olde Saco, had more of the world’s goods that he did, although some did like his cousins, his mother’s sister’s children, whose father, Rene Dubois, an engineer who had taken serious advantage of the GI Bill that gave a leg up to many returning veterans in order to piggyback on the engineering skills he had first picked up in the Army’s 18th Engineers in the European Theater, had gotten in early on the big electronics boom in the post-World War II period had shaken the dust of the old town off and lived like Mayfair swells in Kennebunk with the old Yankees, swamp Yankees who controlled the power structure of the state. That status meaning the Dubois family had arrived complete with small but homey house, the latest automobile from out of Detroit traded in every three years to show that the owners had the wherewithal to do so, and a television all paid for or close to it.
No, at least among his friends, at least among those who resided in the streets of Frenchtown, almost all who could trace their roots back to the old country, Quebec, who were various generations of French-Canadians, bound together by religion, Roman Catholic (although as filtered through the Gallic sauce of that religion which could be more conservative that other national churches and strangely by turn more heretical and socially progressive than Rome itself in those days), by the small villages and rural agricultural values along the blessed Saint Lawrence River from which they fled to hug the factories of upper New England where they could make a living, a decent living, and the French which united them with Mother France and all the history, arrogance and hubris that entailed, that sense that they should be showered with the plenty of the Golden Age seemed to have passed them by. A lot of it had to do with a studied indifference to getting
too far ahead in the American lot they thrived in, a lot had to do with a studied indifference to seeing their children get ahead like their Yankee neighbors who seemed hell-bent on their kids getting more than they who grew up in the benighted Great Depression of the 1930s where their work ethos had been first fired-up and later survived the hell-fires of wanting and waiting in the rationed wartime 1940s and a studied indifference to their fate once the great textile mills that had provided much work for many during the war began their ugly trek south and out of country in search of cheaper labor. Not every French-Canadian family had succumbed to such downward mobility but enough had to have affected Josh and plenty of other Joshes growing up in the Olde Sacos of that time.
Josh who would later claim, not without some truth, that the 1960s counter-cultural “revolution” (we will not quibble over what that social explosion’s effect was but putting the term revolution in quotation marks accurately reflects the ambiguity of what happened, what lasted, and what the people involved in that brief movement’s moment thought happened) was the only thing that had saved him from winding up like Jean, Sean, Jacques, Lenny, Pierre La Rue, Pierre D’Amboise, and Henri LaCroix, guys who he knew in the 1950s who went off to war, to the factories in town and later down south and to the jails had been a restless feeling, something he could not put his finger on but which gnawed at him to shake the dust from his own shoes and get out of town. That has happened one day in the summer after high school when Josh decided he would head west before he went up to State U, the first in his whole frisking family going back generations who would go as far as Freshman year in college, in the fall and met up with the late Peter Paul Markin out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 and never looked back (went west and in the process driving his father, Prescott, to one of his few rages, public rages anyway, since he had procured a job for him not without calling in a few favors in the MacAdams Textile Mills where he worked).
That fateful trip which actually lasted two or three years provided much literary fodder for the aspiring writer in Josh, although it alienated him from parents for about a decade until he won his first journalism award (the coveted Globe for outstanding social commentary in 1979). He would go on to write in many of the small alterative journal and magazines of the time, mostly free-lancing, before settling in to the East Bay Gazette from which he had recently retired after some thirty years on the editorial staff including several years as chief editor. That retirement had allowed him to reflect on what had happened to his crowd, his family, back in the 1950s, allowed him time to reflect on how important his late parents were in making a decent human being out of him, and of how their own dreams had been severely thwarted trying to raise five children on air. The direct catalyst for those reflections had been a trip up into his attic in his house in Cambridge where he was searching for old photographs of him and his friend Markin for a sketch he was doing on that mad man saint bastard when he found a photograph of his late mother Delores and late father Prescott at some dance they attended at the Stardust Ballroom in Old Orchard Beach during World War II, the time of their time, the sunny times before the whole world fell in on them.
That photograph brought back to mind how much his older brother Prescott, Junior, had hated to have to listen to their music as a youngster, almost like he had to hate it to create his own space, his own way in the world. That stubborn thought brought back to Josh the one day when the whole musical conflict reached a fever pitch when Prescott had exploded. Prescott not around to now to tell his part in the story having gone off the deep end and committed himself to a life on the wild side as a career criminal, armed robbery division, serving a nickel to a dime up in Shawshank just now. Josh blushed as he thought about those other recent reflections which outweighed a confused soul’s nervousness about his place, his or his damn brother’s, in the world. Oddly he could remember the episode almost word for word in his memory’s eye:
“Prescott James Breslin get your dirty hands off that wall this minute, yelled Delores Breslin (nee Leclerc), Mother Breslin to some, including the yelled at Prescott, honey, to Prescott Breslin, Senior, Father Breslin to the junior one being yelled at just this minute. Just as Mother Breslin, hell, let’s call her Delores, was getting ready for cascade rant number two aimed in Prescott, Junior’s direction wafting through the air, the radio WJDA air, came the melodious voice of Bing Crosby singing in that sweet, nuanced voice of his, Far Away Places. Their song. Their Delores and Prescott, Senior forever memory song.
Delores in a quick turn began to talk almost trance-like as she flashed back to the night in 1943 over at the Stardust Ballroom on East Grand in Old Orchard Beach that she, then a typist for the State Insurance Company right there in Olde Saco (and making good money for a single, no high maintenance girl, never a high maintenance girl, women, mother, grandmother, not in hard-nosed working class make your own way or else Olde Saco’s French Town) and Marine PFC Prescott Breslin, stationed after serious service in the Pacific wars (Guadalcanal, etc.) at the Portsmouth Naval Base met while they were playing that song on the jukebox between sets. Sets being performed by the Be-Bop Sextet, a hot, well, be-bop band that was making a national tour to boost civilian morale while the boys were off fighting. They hit it off right away, made Far Away Places their song, and prepared for a future, a joint future, once the war was over, and they could get their dream, shared dream, little white house, with or without picket fence, maybe a dog, and definitely kids, a few although they never specified a number. The perfect dream to chase the old Great Depression no dough blues and World War II fighting dust away, far away. And to be able to breath a decent breathe, a breathe drawn without fear of the jack boots of the world knocking at the doors once the dirty bastards had been vanquished, a not from hunger breathe too if anybody was asking.
Just then Delores snapped back into the reality, the two by four reality, of their made due, temporary veterans’ housing set up by the Olde Saco Housing Authority (at the request of and funded by the War Department) to house the housing-hungry returning vets and give them a leg up. Add on the further reality that Prescott’s job at the Macadam’s Textile Mill was none too sure now that rumors were circulating around town that the mill-owners were thinking of relocating to North Carolina. And the biggest reality of all: well, Prescott, Junior, Kendrick, Lawrence, Jean Paul and lastly Joshua. And five is enough, more than enough thank you (that sentiment directed toward Prescott although not picked up by the boys at the time only later when they too saw that seven could not live as cheaply as two, that modern society’s hand dealt to the Breslin could not sustain such weight. But as that terrific tenor of Dick Haymes singing Little White Lies was making its way into her air space she fell back to thinking about that now old dream of the little white house, with or without picket fence, a dog and a few kids (exactly three, thank you) that was coming just around next corner. And just as she was winding up to blast young Prescott, his dirty hands, and that wall, maybe a little less furiously that she intended before, her thoughts returned to her Prince Charming, Starlight Ballroom1943, and their song. Their forever memory song. Yes, she would get by.
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