In Honor Of Jack Kerouac’s Birthday-It Must Have Been Something In The Water- Old Textile Mill Town Along The Merrimack Lowell-The Strange Combination of James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Bette Davis And Jack Kerouac

By Bart Webber

This is what Laura Perkins learned as she did what she calls research in her on-going self-selected art works series called Traipsing Through The Arts while she was researching various 19^th century artists for precedent for her general theory that sex and erotica in all its forms is what drove all serious 20^th century art. (21^st century art is an open question but check her series for that since that is beyond what I want to discuss.) One James Abbott McNeil Whistler, the butterfly-drenched guy who embarrassed his mother by fobbing her off as a study in black and white, or gray or whatever color he was able to purchase on credit in London when he short of cash and had tapped out with his friends who he in any case never paid back. As it turned out Whistler at least, if not his as all mothers are sainted mother whatever color he painted her, who Laura was not able to find out her place of birth in time for the publication of this piece was born in Lowell, Massachusetts along the path of the Merrimack River at a time when the Lowell boys were starting to crank out their red brick mills and con red-cheeked farm girls into sweated labor for little wages.

Now Laura has been pounding on Whistler’s reputation as a philandering and no-account deadbeat who when short of cash would hustle his mistress of the moment (what in those quaint days they called whatever his favorite at the time  “living without benefit of clergy”) either out onto the cold and foggy London streets or when times permitted some leeway would procure (read: pimp) that mistress by way of one of his painting to some Mayfair swell and he, they were able to paint, break bread for a few more days. His most notorious example was his bold and brash “advertisement” called The White Girl” (latter when he had run her into the T.B. ground and abandoned her for the next best thing he would name it a study in white or symphony in white or some such bull but I have insisted on the original title). See he put the poor girl all in high collar long dress white like some innocence virgin which would spark the interest of some lustful Mayfair youth. Such a youth or whoever was willing to pay the freight would know she was available after Whistler placed the work at his dealer’s gallery by a very usual coded method-the wolf’s head and fur that she was standing on. After serious research by her “ghost” adviser (Sam Lowell who works here as well mainly doing film reviews) in ancient procuring traditions it was found out that the wolf’s head and as importantly the fur signified she was “available,” a tradition started in the time of the Whore of Babylon.

There was plenty of other negative energy around the name of the nefarious Whistler including full scaled orgies and the like but mainly it was about his silly notion that he was doing everything according to the principle of “art for art’s sake.” Everybody at the water cooler laughed at that lame excuse for a theory, art aficionado or not, knowing that was a total fraud. Knowing that was the last refuse of the scoundrel, the fallback position for any number of artistic swindles and theories making Laura’s sex theory seem very respectable and germane.

In a way the less said about Whistler and his Lowell connection the better since he, wisely, early in life fled the town (after some scandal with one of the Lowell mill owner’s daughters) and headed for fresh start England where he proceeded to foul the air there as well. Needless to say, nobody unlike with Kerouac is hyping his relationship to the city with parks and yearly festivals. Still there is that artistic, creative root that I want to deal with to connect him in the long chain with actress Bette Davis and writer Jack Kerouac the other two Lowell born personalities in the triad. (Sally Hansen, the poet, also Lowell born while worthy of some monogram did not fit in easily with the trio I have projected and will get a separate piece later.)            

I was driven by two factors in putting this piece together. Si Lannon’s   2017 piece in American Film Gazette and republished in American Left History when he went that publication to sit on the newly created Editorial Board in discussing Bette Davis, Jack Kerouac and the symbolic Lowell connection and this year’s on-going pieces by Seth Garth commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the too young death of Jack Kerouac. Along the way the Whistler factor kind of dove-tailed to show that the town produced more than sweated textiles to the world at one time (although by Jack’s growing up time the signs were clear that the mills were “running south” for cheaper labor and eventually off-shore).

A little more is in order about Si Lannon, a writer well known to me for his articles on his and others experiences in the devil’s war, the Vietnam War, that carved a nation in two, maybe more and from which at least culturally it has never recovered mentioned to me one day when he was getting ready to review an old time black and white movie Of Human Bondage for the American Film Gazette for which he still writes occasionally that the female star Bette Davis had been born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Something that he did not know although before moving to North Adamsville about thirty miles south of Boston his early years were spent a few towns over in leafy suburban Westford. Si has been a longtime admirer of another Lowell native Jack Kerouac who torched a placid post-World War II world with his On The Road some sixty years ago (and which we have as Seth Garth mentioned “seemingly endlessly” and he may be right commemorated in this space recently on the sixtieth anniversary of its publication). That got Si thinking that there must be some connection that he could draw between two such iconic celebrities from an old dying mill-town (dying even back then as the mills headed cheap textile labor south and then cheaper foreign shorts worldwide-in their respective birth times 1908 and 1922) that had seen better days beside the inevitable “there must be something in the water” theory.            

Taking a tip from Si I have taken my own view on what beside the “water” drove these talents writing in the free-flowing irreverent and shoot from the hip manner of Jack Kerouac who influenced many writers who came of age in the 1960s despite the fact that he “disowned” our hippie lifestyles which drove our narratives.

A river runs through it. The great rushing splurge from the New Hampshire mountains, at least that is what I have been told is source ground zero of the broken- down millwheel towns to the seas and unto the great cold wash Atlantic and there to homeland Europe left behind from desolation days Merrimack (homeland before Lowell migration and Quebec flee failing farms up north looking for factory river work and before them first rosy-cheeked farm girls bringing a little, very little extra cash for bad time harvest insurance and then sullen Irish immigrants from hungry famine ships before the figured out and controlled town politics in the ward-heeler tradition). Merrimack some potent Indian signifier (excuse me Indian when Indian was the name spoken and not the correct Native American or even better indigenous peoples who can  stake serious and legitimate claim to sacred ground now ill-trodden over by umpteen colonial generations from frosty mill owners and those rosy-cheeked farm girls and sullen Irishmen as well and no reparations in sight) long before the devils came in their blasted wooden hull ships from across that briny North Atlantic no high note in sight unlike the great big blow out in Frisco town when a skinny black kid blew that one to perdition. (That kid once one checked the genealogy in need of his own reparations from West Coast Africa slave Middle Passage days but he sure could blow that skinny boy sexy sax like some second coming of Johnny Hodges in his Billie Holiday prime and when he saved Duke’s ass more than one time in that corner called a bandstand, a stage with smoked filled room and small café tables filled with changing drinks and undertone sex in the air directly attributable to that phallic sax and player.)    

Great rushing river dividing the town between the remember “fake natives,” fake natives the right term having just explained true Natives and a miniature “class” in colonial grab culture, and the on-coming foreigners come to pick up the slack in the bottomless spinning wheel pits (the noise drowning out sing-song voices and whiskey hoarse alike and maybe that is where the sober siren sought his Jack strange mystifying voice and he his throbbing pace that in the end wound up like whiskey breath but that mere speculation since cocaine sister junkie fits or opium bong pipe back room sleeping bag dreams in shady off-beat rooming houses filled with rum-dums and grifters could have played the scene out).        

River, two forked river making everybody think without reflection about Hemingway’s two-fisted big hearted river divine forgetting he drew from sparse languages and Jack, come to think of it Bette too, drew from endless chatter and write-downs, come flowing from the great ices of New Hampshire hills laying down sediments (and sentiments, cute and quaint but don’t get too much of either in the post-World War II period when everything came asunder) along a path unto the great turn and ageless rock formation by Pawtucketville Bridge-dividing that town even further (or is it farther) pushing out Highland visions of august majesty not looking at the small stucco-roofed houses the dream of every farm Quebec traveler south to tell the tale of making it in golden streets America.

Ready for a switch up now to tell the female river rush side of the story. Then a poor besotted girl emerges, emerges out of the dust hitting the high trail west landing forlorn and mystified in some fallen angel diner and a gas station town near the Petrified Forest in the Arizona (trees so ancient, think about it, that they have turned to stone some kind of metaphor there-something about staying in one place too long), breaking out from Great Depression hungers side saddle on the golden trains west keeping out of the wrath of the railroad bulls ready to jack club you for your now smelly existence like they were not made of the same clay. Off, way off of, Route 66 heavy-travelled by wandering hobos with not a dime their pockets but some wicked Villon poetry to whip by the pretty girls, even the ones protectively hiding it with jeans, then called no chic dungarees, flannel no shape shirts, work boots and sailor’s cap from some minute on the road love for a square meal. Off way off of Route 66 to be well-travelled in the next generation by hungry guys tired of lunch pail diners off Merrimack Street running hard by the same-named river and dirty grease-spun Esso gas stations at home drift to the cities but need to catch some dust and grit although what they thought of benighted stone trees who knows in between those expansive cities. Strangely that next generation embodied by that Frenchie guy who shared main billing when guys wrote about break outs of broken-down mill towns. But back in sandy wind-driven deserts filled with souvenir rocks (2for $3 the last anybody heard). There some Papa generation before her came out looking for El Dorado or gold something different and landed in two- bit desert stretches and kind of got stuck, got good and stuck there. (Not everybody made it as the skeletons along the way of cattle, horse, and human set among the bramble and down some aching arroyo tell every daredevil passer-by and every sensational dime store penny a word novelist in the days when that “contract” ruled writers on “spec” too just like hobo intellectual and enraptured million word Jacks notebook in his own wear-worthy flannel shirt.)

And there abandoned by a big city dream mother, I’ll say Gay Paree big city just as World War I boomed it last illicit guns and she despite her Villon ways and Verlaine dreams of some Rimbaud needed to get out of town before the gendarmes got their hooks into her for their ten per cent graft, and an ill-defined no account wimp father she came of age dreaming the dreams, funny city girl dreams of faraway places away from the dust and those fucking stoned trees when the wind howls through the age-worn crevices (making one think of other social howls and wolves and Molochs and white-dressed nurses in mental wards for the cure as if some fucking mental hospital would cure what ailed some love-stuck felon and of cool jazz man hipsters grooving on Charlie riffs and be-bop coming of age in some dark night smoke-filled cafes then try it now brother and you will be tarred and feathers even famous Jack tarred for smoking on ill-light television sets and backroom dinosaur hustles   and Times Square con artists under the tough as nails Gregory now Saint Gregory but then just a shooting star wordy guy with a jack-roll for salvation which seemed to work since he got a heaven -sent honorific out of the deal hustling the rubes). Her father the king of the species all dressed up and cowardly when it came right down to it. Dreaming book dreams, small printed page books sent from far away by those who could not take the dust, the heat, those howls and once again those fucking night-blinding stone trees which tourists would pay a pretty penny for a chip, a sliver. Jesus. Dreamed fourteenth century or was fifteenth dreams of mad man con man rabble Villon out of some Balzac French novel but real enough speaking about how he could not stay with civil people but sought solace among the petty thieves, the cutthroats, the man murderers (little did she know who would come through door to marvel at her bug-eyes and blinkers making sorry Villon nothing but a second-rate Time Square hustler, hey, pacifist even) , the flotsam and jetsam among the people who lived outside the moat, who did not dream but planned and honest folk beware and watch out.         

          

“Hey there stranger” she spoke quickly to that stranger with the strange pale voice and the paler skin despite walking the sun-drenched walk of the tramp no better than Villon’s men outside the moat and who looked like he had not had three squares in many a moon so that is what she thought when he first came in, came in and recognized in that small book, that funny thought poem by mad monk gone astray Villon and thus was kindred against the Papa silliness and some gas station jockey who tried to make love to her before her time. He was vague, road-wise vague at first but loosened up when that beef stew sunk in and that coffee and cruller made him light-headed talk crazy (the road which do that after a few days on unfettered sun they call it and rightly, desert-addled). So they talked, he called it conversation, and told her that the night-takers descending on the flat land earth, what he meant by that she never figured out, even in the freaking (his term not hers) stone tree desert filled with arroyo-seized skeletons that the day for conversation was quickly coming to froth, which she did figure out, was dangerous beyond whatever small thoughts she had ever had out in that vast night sky thunder-blazed desert. Ditto on that figuring out too except she learned that one the hard way. Naïve kid she thought him the new Messiah come that she has heard about over the blaring radio that made the diner hours go by more quickly so she could retreat into Villon’s manly dreams without distraction. He, the stranger he, laughed and said no vagabond who was out filching (cadging in what he meant she thought) free eats in dust-bitten rocks could claim Messiah-hood, could survive the new age coming and coming quickly right through her door. Her bug-eyes blinkered at that, at her silly illusions when she thought about it later after he was gone, gone to who knows what savior-driven place.          

No sooner had the stranger taken his filched food (she still insisted it was cadged and would use that word telling her story whenever anybody asked her if she had actually seen the savior, had maybe slept with him for good measure or at least thought about it as chaste as she was then although filled with the normal young woman coming to terms with her sexuality longings and misconceptions) when the night-takers stormed in (stormed in more than one way bringing half the desert hell with them as boon companion) and made her savior stranger sit on his ass on the floor. Made hell come to pass before the night was through. All over the blighted world too where their brethren, they standing in for the lot just then, felt a fresh, no, a sickening breeze at their backs. (He, the stranger, would comment that the night-takers took their sweet-ass time whenever they descended on some unsuspecting crowd and that those descended upon took their sweet-ass time figuring out how to get rid of the bastards and the latter history would seem to have borne out that truth). Sweet manna.

Then that forlorn stranger had an idea, a good one if somebody beside her thought about it later that he would go mano a mano with the night-takers, would play the gallant when all was said and done (giving lie to the idea that he didn’t have any ideas about defending against the surging night-takers except their time had come). Naturally he lost, better won/lost and left her with her book, her small Villon book, a guy from the fourteenth century or was it the fifteenth and her dreams kind of intact. A few years later some guys in a 1949 Hudson (or was the car a Studebaker) tired of the Route 66 road came by looking for grub, looking for free eats and some whiskey but by then she was long gone to some city that Papa and father could not fathom. Not realizing that young woman or not she was just following their youthful trails to break-out of the cloistered rut but that would be a later reflection when the fires next time (sorry James Baldwin the line was too good not to use for a break-out of a different kind).               

[On in the frozen Western night several years and ten thousand thoughts later the no longer girlish girl hung up on old time French bandit-poets, con men, desolation angels, and holy fools, and lost in thought time of the intellectuals far from the blessed stone trees, as far away as she could get to Southern California and so “frozen” ironic she picks up a book, a paperback left on the counter by a forgetful customer who after paying for his Woolworth-quality lunch must have given up all hope. She flips it into her pocketbook to either wait on his owner’s return or for something to read that night, that lonesome stone tree wilderness night that never left her thoughts. That guy, or whoever it was, never returned and so that night she read, read until the early morning hours and then read some more.          

Read about a guy, although in her mind it could have be a girl, who had the same wanderlust that drove her west, drove her to the great blue-pink American western night he called it looking for some father that he had never known, maybe if that was not mere metaphor just as she was looking as well although she left some reality time father behind in the rearview mirror, looking forlornly, for that father from some oil-spilled New Jersey shore river to the wind-swept China seas before the Golden Gate Bridge. Looked just like that skinny Negro kid (now Afro-American or black) with his grandmother bought attire was looking for that high white note blowing out of the bay to its own China seas. Looked high and low for the missing brethren who long ago had crossed her path out in the hard stone-tree night when everything was possible but the intellectuals then flabby and ill-disposed to fight the night-takers even to a draw abandoned all hope, decided that primitive man would take the day and crush any free spirits. This guy though flush with the expectations of many new adventures once the night-takers were put to the sword took to the road, took a chance that he could find that father some fucking place-maybe Latimer Street in Denver, maybe Neola, Grand Island, Reno, Winnemucca, Tulsa, Fargo (although give up all hope if you wind up in that locale). She wondered that maybe he had stolen her dreams. Maybe he had stared at the same rivers that drove her desires, yes, just maybe that was the case.]    

A young boy who only spoke patois, meaning that he only spoke mother tongue French via Quebec distillations, until he went to school played hooky one day and sat in the lost souls library hoping to find something that would challenge his fevered brain and slip-slopped over to the poetry section and found this guy Villon, a poet of the fourteenth or was it the fifteenth century, who spoke of dreams and crashing out (spoke too of ruffian petty larcenies outside the moat but the boy let it pass because he knew all about that, had passed that stage with his fevered corner boys too poor to do anything but dream of petty larcenies and charms, knew that poet kings only spoke of such to work up a sweat, to deal better with hipsters, con men, sullen fallen women, junkies and assorted felons riding on the railroad jungle tracks). Knew he had kindred in that long- ago poet king and sought out fellows who could understand such dreams, could understand too the patois that he thought in. Would find plenty of hipsters, cons, con men, Molochs, holy goofs, cowboy angels, a teenage Adonis to spar with his brethren soul. Find Moloch, insanity, the clap, jungle fever, whiskey shakes, penniless forsaken highways, lost boys, sullen youth, Zen, chicken shit and on some days, but only some days, he wished he never left that fucking river, that holy of holies Merrimack and had forgone those wistful eyes that he remembered out in cold Winnemucca, Neola, Grand Island, Big Sur nights. Oops, take away that Big Sur part for he learned much out in the wind-drenched barren cave-like rock strewn beaches wind blowing his black frugal hair every which way high as a kite, not whisky so much in those days but plentiful subterranean mary jane (his term other apply as well) to see visions like no other except once in Saint Joseph’s hunger Sunday morning before communion church.       

      

[Weird thoughts along the Merrimack lifeline (remember like bodies made-up, filled with arteries and canals) a fervent solemnly disciplined fourteen year old boy armed with Woolworth’s ten-cent notepads and chewed raw No. 2 pencils, sits arms akimbo, strange gangling not yet athletic fourteen year old position like some latter day saint Buddha seeing all knowing all with hashish pipe tucked into some secret place sitting out with cans of beans and rat shit on desolation row waiting for fires and damnation, in a silent black back row orchestra seat (no red dress girl singing swinging Benny Goodman songs that night to come hither him to perdition and have to ask the eternal boy-girl question-orchestra or balcony-and he would know the answer always know the answer balcony of course she speaking of his silliness- why else would I come into the shadows with you) of the of long gone to condos or cute shops Majestic Theater off of Bridge Street staring intensely at the big white screen suddenly turned to magic motion pictures with a dust storm brewing out in some fucking petrified forest and some girl not his holding off some ragged sweater gas jockey, and having if you can believe this Villion-etched dreams, maybe not outside the moat larceny dreams but not belonging dreams about belonging too.   

That desert-bleached girl, young woman serving them off the arm before the break-out waiting, eternally waiting like that fervent fourteen-year old boy for something to happen, for some kicks, for something better than listening to the average swill the customers brought in the door, waiting she thought for culture, or her idea or culture anyway. What grabbed that poor boy though was that scene out of some latter day great American West night when he thought he would be able to choke the Eastern dust from off his shoes and live-and write, always write. So kindred, kindred too when some holy goof hobo, tramp, bum angel Buddha comes traipsing down the road looking for hand-outs and God Jesus that would be the life. He, she, they make small kindred talk and speak of that damn poet, that Villon who knew more than he should about the human condition, more than any fourteen-year old boy anyway (or coming of womanly age girl either). 

But before long the dream shattered, the night-takers released from their caves come swooping down like hell’s avenging angels, avenging the lost paradise that he had read a guy by the name of Milton, half-blind had gone on and on about in some heaven’s battle and they the losers-and what of it. But when you take on the night-takers you better realize that you will take some casualties, take some holy sacred blood from the holy earth returned and that ain’t fair, ain’t fair at all but who knows maybe Buddha, Rama. Zoroaster, Jehovah, the unnamed one, planned it out that way. Out the door of that no longer silent black back row orchestra seat he was glad that he had not had some red dress come hither girl to bother him. For he wondered, wondered as he sank his eyes into the white froth of the mighty Merrimack below whether she, that Western tableau desert girl who belatedly found his paperback book in some midnight ham and cheese on rye Woolworth’s and read bleary eyes into that good morning and then read some more would ever acknowledge him, ever read his mind like he read hers.]  

Ha, as he tried to climb Bear Mountain with a dollar and a quarter in his stained dungarees (not called jeans then, not around him anyway) splattered flannel shirt and broken toe boots looking for that father he never knew (although his own father had passed on before he knew that he was looking for another father somewhere along the wino camp tracks, some arroyo bush or in some county jail working out a scheme looking too for Adonis father’s sons and close howling friend looking just for Adonis and whatever he had to offer in the sex game-a coded reference then to homosexuality not a big thing in beat crowd circles). Had Route 66 cold because if he could search that highway he would miss some connection, some angst the shrinks called it among the hot rod car, surf board, motorcycle lost winding in stir and some rough trade honey to some beast, boys he would meet out in the great blue-pink American Western night. As he pulled his thumb out of his back pocket he finally relaxed and dug the scene.

Hit long rides and short, mostly lonely truckers looking for company and searching for the sons they had never known, tramp diner stops, railroad stews on nights so cold his broken toe boots seized up on him, grabbed a couple of big rides with big blondes looking for some max daddy to be-bop with and leave in Doc’s drugstore while they waited to be “found” by some Hollywood agent. Took tokay swigs with the best of them, met up with rabid New Jersey poets (already mentioned before in coded Adonis dreams and Father Death the father of us all), New York City Times Square gangster dope peddlers and sainted poets (funny always the poets driving him forward he would have to write that down, Ivy League junkies on the nod, and finally the Adonis of the western night whom he would be-bop with unto the San Francisco Bay dropped that high white note out in the China seas. Yeah, he had it all except maybe those bug eyes from childhood lost in some flophouse. Still on some days, and only on some days, he wished he never had left that fucking river, never that sacred ground river. He wondered if she though that same thought.

(And would have wondered, he always born to wonder if she thought of  the bastard symphony in white, in black in every dark color painter hustling his women in paint and if he would have known him as kindred too.)