Out In The Be-Bop, Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Great San Francisco Summer Of 1967 Love Explosion

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jim Morrison and The Doors performing their signature “acid” rock classic, The End.

Phil Larkin, just then road-weary “Far-Out” Phil Larkin, for those who want to trace his evolution from North Adamsville early 1960s be-bop night “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the vocal terror of every mother’s daughter from six to sixty to full-fledged merry prankster, sat on a June such-and-such a 1967 be-bop night a nameless San Francisco. [Markin: And, occasionally, secret delight of some girls, secret delight of one Minnie Callahan, damns him, for just one example of such girl classmates with his foul mouth back in that North Adamsville night.] Along side him sat new conquest, not conquered with his old time wicked corner boy devil-inspired charm but with mere patter (and dope), new flame Butterfly Swirl met on a La Jolla beach a month or so back, not entirely by accident. And next to her his old flame, old in that quickly met moment, this merry prankster bus flame met in Ames, Iowa last year, accidentally except to those cosmically inclined, and Phil was not one of them not one bit, Luscious Lois. Lois, however, now transformed into Lilly Rose, transformed at the flip of a switch, as was her way when some whim, or some word in the air, hit her dead center. Along the road west, again by whimsy she had been variously, Lupe Matin, Loretta Nova, Lance (figure that one) Opal, and so on. (Phil just got to calling her honey, or sweet pea, and left it at that)

[Markin: Sometime, but not now, remind me to give you my take on this name-changing epidemic. Not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. Hell, I got caught up in it myself, and was, for a time, Blackie Saint James. Yes, remind me.]

Yes, it had been one long roller coaster year for Foul-Mouth. [Markin: Alright, let’s split the difference since I knew him way back when in that weird early 1960s corner boy night when he didn’t know from nothing about which way the winds were blowin’, could have cared less which way they were blowin’, or if they were, and made fun of me, as did Frankie Riley, and a couple of others, although not Sammy Russo, when I said some big changes were coming that would throw off our school, work, green lawn little white house with picket fence, two point four children, mongrel dog futures, and call him Phil from here on in. Foul-mouthed or far out he was some hell-bound character then.) From the bowels of despair rank and file no serious future retail clerk hustling mens’ apparel up at Raymond’s Department Store in slowing dying (dying from suburban mall-itis, then all the rage) Adamsville Center, harassed beyond endurance at home for lacking some unfathomable ambition from dear mother, with an occasional assist from dad (that ambition entailing pursuing some low-rent, GS-10, government job with security unto the grave, egad), and a late sniffing of that wind that this fellow corner boy had predicted was coming although he, this corner boy, was vague on the contours of that change Phil broke out one night.

Literally late one night, one May 1966 night. Around two in the morning, with his earthy belongings on his back in a old time World War II army knapsack picked up at Bill’s Army &Navy Store Phil lit out like Walt Whitman way back when, 19th century when, to places unknown and Jack Kerouac and his gang just a few years, late 1940s when, before for the coast, although if you had mentioned those names to him then he would have stared blankly back at you. Maybe now too. But here, let’s let Phil tell the story for a while about how he got to ‘Frisco and then we’ll see what is up with him and his “family” (okay, okay, Butterfly Swirl and Lilly Rose, if that is her name by the time we back) on that nameless 1967 San Francisco hill:

“Hey, I am no slave to convention, whatever the conventions are, but in those days I looked like a lot of young guys. Longish hair, a beard, a light beard at the time, blue jeans, an army jacket, sunglasses, a knapsack over my shoulder, and work boots on my feet. Sandals would not come until later when I got off the road and was settled in a “pad” [Markin: house, rented or maybe abandoned, apartment, hovel, back of a “free” church, back of a store, whatever, a place to rest those weary bones, or “crash”] in La Jolla and were, in any case, not the kind of footwear that would carry you through on those back road places you might find yourself in, places like Deadwood, Nevada at three in the morning with a ten mile walk to the nearest town in front of you. I mention all this because that “look” gave me the cache to make it on the road when I headed out of the house that Spring 1966 be-bop night after one final argument with dear mother about where I was going, what was I going to do when I got there, and what was I going to do for money. Standard mother fare then, and now I suppose.

So short on dough, and long on nerve and fearlessness then, I started to hitchhike with the idea of heading west to California like about eight million people, for about that same number of reasons, have been heading there since the Spanish, or one of those old time traveling by boat nations, heard about the place. Of course, nowadays I would not think to do such a thing in such a dangerous world, unless I was armed to the teeth and that would take a little edge off that “seeking the newer world” Markin has been blabbing about since about 1960. But then, no problem, let’s get going. Especially no problem when just a few miles into my journey a Volkswagen mini-bus (or van, neither in the same league as the yellow brick road school bus, no way, that I will tell you about later but okay for a long ride, and definitely okay when you are in some nowhere, nowhere Nebraska maybe, back road, hostile territory dominate by squares, squares with guns and other evil implements and they, the VW-ites, stoned, stoned to the heavens stop to ask you directions because they are “lost” and invite you on board) stopped on Route 128, backed up, and a guy who looked a lot like me, along with two pretty young girls said, “where are you heading?” (Okay, okay, Markin, young women, alright.) West, just west. And then the beatified words, “Hop in.”

Most of the road until the Midwest, Iowa is the Midwest, right, was filled with short little adventures like that. A mini-bus frolic for a few hours, or a few days. Maybe a few short twenty miles non-descript square Chevy rides in between but heading west by hook or by crook. Did I like it? Sure I did although I was pretty much an up-tight working class guy (that was what one of those pretty girls I just mentioned called me when I “passed” on smoking a joint and, hell, she was from next door Clintondale for chrissakes) who liked his booze, a little sex [Markin: Phil, come on now, a little?], and just hanging around the old town waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I could see, after a few drug experiences, no, not LSD, that I was starting to dig the scene. And I felt every day that I was out of North Adamsville that I was finally shaking off the layers of dust that I had acquired from that place.

Then one night, sitting in the front seat of a big old Pontiac (not everybody, not every “hip” everybody had the mini-bus, van, or school bus handy for their “search” for the great American night), Big Bang Jane between us, the Flip-Flop Kid driving like god’s own mad driver, smoking a joint, laughing with the couple in back, Bopper Billy and Sweet Pea, we headed into a pay-as-you go roadside camp near Ames out in Iowa. And at that campsite parked maybe five or six places over from where we planted ourselves was god’s own copy of that day-glo merry prankster bus I mentioned before. I flipped out because while I had hear about, and seen from a distance, such contraptions I hadn’t been up close to one before. Wow!

Markin had it just about right when he described that old bus after I told him about it so let me crib what he said:

“A rickety, ticky-tack, bounce over every bump in the road to high heaven, gear-shrieking school bus. But not just any yellow brick road school bus that you rode to various educationally good for you locations like movie houses, half yawn, science museums, yawn, art museums, yawn, yawn, or wind-swept picnic areas for some fool weenie roast, two yawns there too, when you were a school kid. And certainly not your hour to get home daily grind school bus, complete with surly driver (male or female, although truth to tell the females were worst since they acted just like your mother, and maybe were acting on orders from her) that got you through K-12 in one piece, and you even got to not notice the bounces to high heaven over every bump of burp in the road. No, my friends, my comrades, my brethren this is god’s own bus commandeered to navigate the highways and by-ways of the 1960s, come flame or flash-out. Yes, it is rickety, and all those other descriptive words mentioned above in regard to school day buses. That is the nature of such ill-meant mechanical contraptions after all. But this one is custom-ordered, no, maybe that is the wrong way to put it, this is “karma”-ordered to take a motley crew of free-spirits on the roads to seek a “newer world,” to seek the meaning of what one persistent blogger on the subject has described as the search for the great blue-pink American Western night.”

“Naturally to keep its first purpose intact this heaven-bound vehicle is left with its mustard yellow body surface underneath but over that primer the surface has been transformed by generations (generations here signifying not twenty-year cycles but trips west, and east) of, well, folk art, said folk art being heavily weighted toward graffiti, toward psychedelic day-glo splashes and zodiacally meaningful symbols. And the interior. Most of those hardback seats that captured every bounce of childhood have been ripped out and discarded who knows where and replaced by mattresses, many layers of mattresses for this bus is not merely for travel but for home. To complete the “homey” effect there are stored, helter-skelter, in the back coolers, assorted pots and pans, mismatched dishware and nobody’s idea of the family heirloom china, boxes of dried foods and condiments, duffle bags full of clothes, clean and unclean, blankets, sheets, and pillows, again clean and unclean. Let’s put it this way, if someone wants to make a family hell-broth stew or a made-up bed there is nothing in the way to stop them. But also know this, and know it now, as we start to focus on this journey that food, the preparation of food, and the desire, except in the wee hours when the body craves something inside, is a very distant concern for these “campers.” If food was what you desired in the foreboding 1960s be-bop traveling night you took a cruise ship to nowhere or a train (if you could find one), some southern pacific, great northern, union pacific, and worked out your dilemma in the dining car. Of course, no heaven-send, merry prankster-ish yellow brick road school bus would be complete without a high- grade stereo system to blast the now obligatory “acid rock” coming through the radiator practically.”

After we settled in at our campsite, the Flip-Flop Kid (and the guy really could never make up his mind about anything, anything except don’t go too close to Big Bang Jane, no kidding around on that), Bopper Billy (who really thought he was king of the be-bop night, but, hell in the North Adamsville corner boy night Frankie Riley, hell, maybe even Markin, would have out be-bopped him for lunch and had time for a nap), Big Bang Jane (guess what that referred to, and she gave herself that nickname, but I never tried to make a move on her because she was just a little too wild, a little too I would have to keeping looking over my shoulder for me then, probably later too when things got even looser. And then there was the Flip-Flop Kid’s warning ), and Sweet Pea (and she was a sweet pea, if Bopper Billy, wasn’t around, well we both agreed there was something there but in those 1966 days we were still half tied up with the old conventions of not breaking in between a guy and his girl, well that was the convention anyway and whether it was generally honored or not, I did honor it) we headed over once we heard the vibes from the sound system churning out some weird sounds, something like we had never heard before. (Weird then, little did we know that this was the wave of the future, for a few years anyway).

Naturally, well naturally after the fact, once we learned what the inhabitants of the bus were about, they invited us for supper, or really to have some stew from a big old pot cooking on a fireplace that came with the place. And if you didn’t want the hell-broth stew then you could partake of some rarefied dope. No, again, no on the LSD thing. It was around, it was around on the bus too, among its various denizens, but mainly it was a rumor, and more of a West Coast thing. In the self-proclaimed, tribal self-proclaimed Summer of Love and after that is when the acid hit, and when I tried it, but not on this trip. This trip was strictly weed, hemp, joint, mary jane, marijuana, herb, whatever you wanted to called that stuff that got you high, got you out of yourself, and got you away from what you were in North Adamsville, Mechanicsville or whatever ville you were from, for a while.

So that night was the introduction to the large economy size search for the freedom we all, as it turned out, were looking for. I remember saying to Sweet Pea as we went back to our campsite (and wishing I wasn’t so square about messing with another guy’s girl, and maybe she was too, maybe wishing I wasn’t so square about it) that we had turned a corner that night and that we had best play it out right then for the chance might not come again.

The next day, no, the next night because I had spent the day working up to it, I became “Far-Out” Phil, or the start of that Phil. Frankly, to not bore you with a pipe by pipe description of the quantity of dope that I smoked (herb, hashish, a little cocaine, more exotic and hard to get then than it became later) or ingested (a tab of mescaline) that day, I was “wasted.” Hell I am getting “high” now just thinking about how high I was that day. By nightfall I was ready for almost anything as that weird music that crept up your spine got hold of me. I just, as somebody put a match to the wood to start the cooking of a tonight pot of stew to keep us from malnutrition, started dancing by myself. Phil Larkin, formerly foul-mouthed Phil, a cagey, edgy guy from deep in corner boy, wise guy, hang-out guy, never ask a girl to dance but just kind of mosey up world started dancing by myself. But not for long because then he, me, took that dance to some other level, some level that I can only explain by example. Have you ever seen Oliver Stone’s film, The Doors, the one that traces the max-daddy rocker of the late 1960s night, Jim Morrison’s career from garage band leader to guru? One of the scenes at one of the outdoor concerts, in a canyon somewhere I think, had him, head full of dope, practically transformed into a shaman. Ya, one of those Indian (Markin: Native American, Phil] religious leaders who did a trance-dance. That was me in late May of 1966, if you can believe that.

And see, although I wasn’t conscious of it first I was being joined by one of the women on the bus, Luscious Lois, whom I had met, in passing, the night before. This Lois, not her real name, as you can tell not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. [Markin: Nice point, Phil, although I already ‘stole’ that point from you before.] Her real name was Sandra Sharp, a college girl from Vassar who, taking some time off from school, was “on the bus” trying to find herself. She was like some delicate flower, a dahlia maybe, like I had never encountered before. I won’t bore you with the forever have to tell what she looked like thing because that is not what made her, well, intriguing, maddeningly intriguing, like some femme fatale in a crime noir film that Markin, from what I can gather, is always running on about. She was pretty, no question, maybe even a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty if it came to a fair description in the light of day but what made her fetching, enchanting, if that is a different way to say it, was the changes in her facial expressions as she danced, and danced provocatively, dance half-nakedly, around my desire. And I danced, shedding my shirt although I do not remember doing so, and danced half-naked around her desire. Then, faintly like a buzz from some hovering insects, maybe bees, and then more loudly I kept hearing the on-lookers, half-mad with dope and with desire themselves, yelling far out, far out. And Far-Out Phil was born.

Oh, as for Luscious Lois and her desire, well, you figure it out. I might not have been wise to the ways of the Vassar world in those days when such places were bastions to place the young women of the elite and keep them away from clawing upstarts from the corner boy night as I should have been but the rest of my time on the bus was spend hovering around Lois, and keeping other guys away. I even worked some plebeian “magic” on her one night when I started using certain swear words in her ear that worked for me with every Sunday after Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Millie Callahan, back in the day. Far-Out Phil got a little something extra that night, proper Vassar girl or not.

No offense against Iowa, well only a little offense for not being near an ocean, I think. No offense against the university there, well only a little offense for not being Berkeley, but after about a week of that campsite and its environs I was ready to move on and it did not matter if it was with Flip-Flop and his crowd or with Captain Crunch (the guy who “led” his merry pranksters, real name, Samuel Jackman, Columbia, Class of 1958 who long ago gave up searching, searching for anything, and just hooked into the idea of taking the ride). Captain Crunch, as befitted his dignity (and since it was “his” bus paid for out of some murky deal, probably a youthful drug deal, from what I heard), was merely the “leader” here.

The driving was left to another guy. This driver was not your mother-sent, mother-agent, old Mrs. Henderson, who prattled on about keep in your seats and be quiet while she was driving (maybe that, subconsciously, is why the seats were ripped out long ago on the very first “voyage” west) but a very, very close imitation of the god-like prince-driver of the road, the "on the road” pioneer, Neal Cassady, shifting those gears very gently but also very sure-handedly so no one noticed those bumps (or else was so stoned, drug or music-stoned, that those things passed like so much wind). His name: Cruising Casey (real name, Charles Kendall, Haverford College Class of ’64, but just this minute, Cruising Casey, mad man searching for the great American be-bop night under the extreme influence of one Ken Kesey, the max-daddy mad man of the great search just then). And Cruising was, being just a little older, and about one hundred years more experienced, was also weary, very weary of co-eds, copping dope and, frankly, staying in one place for so long. He also wanted to see his girlfriend or his wife, I am not sure which, in Denver so I knew that was where we were heading. So off we go, let’s get going.

And the passengers. Nobody from the Flip-Flop Express (although Flip-Flop, as usual lived up to his name and hemmed and hawed about it), they were heading back east, back into the dark Mechanicsville night. I tried, tried like hell, to get Sweet Pea to come along just in case the thing with Lois fell apart or she took some other whim into her head. See, re-invented or not, I still had some all-the-angles boyhood rust hanging on me. We knew for sure that Casey was driving, and was still driving effortlessly so the harsh realities of his massive drug intake had not hit yet, or maybe he really was superman. Others whose names I remember: Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Michigan, Class of 1959, ditto on the searching thing), Captain Crunch’s girl friend, (although not exclusively, not exclusively by her choice, not his, and he was not happy about it for lots of reasons which need not detain us here). Most of the rest of the “passengers” had monikers like Silver City Slim, Penny Pot (guess why), Moon Man, Flash Gordon (from out in space somewhere, literally, as he told it), Denver Dennis (from New York City, go figure), and the like. They also had real names that indicated that they were from somewhere that had nothing to do with public housing projects, ghettos or barrios. They were also, or almost all were, twenty-somethings that had some highly-rated college years after their names, graduated or not. And they were all either searching or, like the Captain, were at a stage where they were just hooked into taking the ride.

As for the rest. Well, no one could be exactly sure, by the time the bus approached the outskirts of Denver, as this was strictly a revolving cast of characters depending on who was hitchhiking on that desolate back road State Route 5 in Iowa, or County Road 16 in Wyoming, and desperately needed to be picked up, or face time, and not nice time with a buzz on, in some small town pokey. Or it might depend on who decided to pull up stakes at some outback campsite and get on the bus for a spell, and decide if they were, or were not, on the bus. After all even all-day highs, all-night sex, and 24/7 just hanging around listening to the music is not for everyone. And while we had plenty of adventures on those strange day roads winding up the crest of the rockies to Denver, thinking back on it now, they all came down to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, with a little food on the side.

Well, except that one time, camping on a primitive clearing, not really a campsite, not a commercial site, no way, near ranch land in some Wyoming Podunk we got the hell scared out of us by some ranchers, some nasty-looking cowboys. Three or four but that was all it took, if you to want to know the truth, who moseyed (and that is exactly the right word because this was THEIR god’s country and moseying was just exactly the way you moved when that hard fact was involved. No city scratching and scrambling to claim your little corner, not for these boys). We could see they were armed, armed to the teeth, not on the off-hand chance they would run into some merry prankster dangers, but carrying that full array of armament was just their normal work conditions, god’s country or not.

This is one time that Captain Crunch really showed his mettle, and acted as an upfront leader. Most of the time he was in a running battle with Mustang Sally over who she was, or was not, sleeping with or he was just controlling the action of the bus indirectly. One maneuver was to always, always, slip off to Cruising any questions about where we were headed or could we stop here or there to see some long lost friend, some scenic view, or any one of a thousand things that come up on a prankster trip, or as I found out later even a square’s kiddies–laden family trip. Straight up Captain, who was not skinny guy and was probably pretty well built before he started his prankster gig although there was some sag now, yelled at the top of his lungs, “You, boys hungry?, We’ve got plenty of stew if you are.” Well, for always lean times, eating from the hip cowboys the idea of having plenty to eat right there in front of you must have been appealing. But the lead cowboy, Joe Bob Buck, was his name, I swear, said in that slow drawl Sam Shepard way, “Nope, but we heard that you guys had some decent dope. Is that straight?” Well, of course that was straight. And in a flash a big pipe of the Captain’s finest was heading Joe Bob’s way. Hey, I guess this was a dope story after all so, ya, I guess it did all come down to just drugs, sex, and rock and roll. But if you want to know what the sixties were about a little if you just think about a clan of hippies sharing a pipe of high-grade Panama with some lonesome cowboys out in Podunk Wyoming and thought nothing of it then you have got the idea.

Oh, sure, we also had our share of “casualties” of war and basket-cases on that trip. It wasn’t all cowboy peace and rockies vistas. I remember, more than once, we had to leave people behind in various emergency rooms suffering from anything from a “bad trip” to normal medical problems or make that call home that spelled the end of the road for some half-dazed kid. Come pick up the wreckage, mom and dad. The worst was some poor bedraggled girl, who probably should not have been allowed to stay because she was a little wacky coming in, who we picked up near some rural bus stop. Captain had a big heart on this “on the bus” question, and unless you proved to be some kind of thief, or something like that you stayed if you wanted to. Anyway this young woman, hardly more than a girl, just started screaming one day, no drugs involved that we knew of , just started creaming and even Captain and Sally couldn’t stop her. We left her in Cheyenne but like a lot of things from that transient time I never did find out what happened to her. Just like some people can’t live in the high altitudes not everybody could survive on the bus. Living out on edge city, and no question we all were, maybe not 24/7 but enough to know that city was our home, is a high wire act and not for the faint of heart.

We, the core of Captain Crunch’s crew anyway, stayed in Denver for a while, for as long as it took Cruising to have his "fill" (his word) of his wife, or girlfriend, or maybe both and was ready to hit the road again. As fall approached the time was the time and we started heading west again, well southwest because Cruising did not want to get catch up in some rockies October whiteout and the rest of us wanted to get the warmth of some desert sun under our skins. Most of us, including me who had never been west of New York City and then just for a moment, had never seen the desert although we all, children of the television 1950s, had ‘seen’ it on the screen in the Westerns. So we were all pumped for desert stones, desert “stones,” and seeking the ghost of the lost tribes, the lost tribes whose shamanic powers has us in thrall. I, personally, was looking forward to investigating some ghost-dancing that I had heard about in Denver and which, as I became more drug-steady, I was dying to “see” a vision of off some wayward canyon wall before some blazing fire evoking dream-trance images.

And so Cruising did his merry prankster bus magic (he really was some zen master with that damn bus, especially for a college guy, and especially when we hit some tough spots where the damn thing would give out and he would “breathe” live back into the thing, like, well, like some zen master). A one time example will suffice. We were heading to Gallup, New Mexico in the heart of Indian country [Markin; Native American, Phil], maybe fifty miles away and not really close to anything like a full-service gas station, when the clutch seized, just seized. Nada, nunca, nada, nothing as we used to say in our corner boy days. Cruising gets out, opens the hood, fools around with this and that and maybe forty-five minutes later we are on the road again. And whatever he did, whatever zen thing he had with that fickle bus, lasted all the way until we hit La Jolla and he had the whole thing worked on. Magic. Captain Crunch mapped out our itinerary and the rest of us got the bus travel-ready, travel-ready being a good cleaning, a re-ordering of the mattresses, and a checking out (and chucking off) of what was necessary and what was not for the trip westward, westward down to New Mexico first.

The desert was all that it was cracked up to be except, being the fall it wasn’t as hot as Cruising said it was when he went through various times in the early or late summer (mid-summer, as I later found out, forget about even in the cooler high desert, low desert, Death Valley desert, forget about you, abandon all ye who enter), the Grand Canyon magnificent, if overused even then, and after that the high desert in California. By then I was getting homesick, no, not homesick for North Adamsville (that would not come until many, many years later), but for my homeland, the sea. I hadn’t been away from an ocean breeze for that long ever and so I missed it. And out in that high desert, high Joshua Tree, Twenty-Nine Palms desert I started to “smell” the ocean. I now had some “rank” on the bus, some say in what we did, or didn’t do, and the Captain liked me, or liked the idea that a working-class kid with some brains and some thoughts (mostly stuff “cribbed” from what Markin use to talk about in those sometimes long, seemingly boring Salducci’s Pizza parlor corner boy nights but it went over, if you can believe that) was traveling along side him. So when I started my “campaign” to head to the ocean, and gained some allies, especially Lois, just then, going under the name Lupe Matin, I think, and Mustang Sally and, most importantly, Cruising didn’t raise an objection I was home free. Come on, let’s get moving.

We wound up in La Jolla, after a few weeks of stopping here and there to see people the Captain (or Sally) wanted to see in Los Angeles ( I never called it LA or La-La Land then just Los Angeles, city of angels) and down in Laguna. Needless to say the Pacific Ocean around La Jolla, and places like that, made our East Coast puddles look sick. La Jolla- English translation, surfers’ paradise, says it all. But the two most important things about La Jolla were that, after months of bus life, we finally were settled in a “pad.” [Markin: house, in this case, or rather something like an ocean view semi-estate owned by some wealthy drug lord known to the Captain, according to the way Phil told it.] Real toilets, real showers, real fireplaces, real everything. Nice, very nice for a poor old working- class boy who a few months earlier was scratching for change to give dear mother some rent for his two by four room. This was to be our winter quarters (and as it turned out spring one as well) and all we had to do was act as caretakers, not real caretakers, like servants, but just make sure nobody stole the family silverware, stole the place, or decided to “squat” there.

This was also where important thing number two came in. Walking along the rock-strewn cove in front of downtown La Jolla, is where I met Butterfly Swirl, my blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel who was just sixteen at the time, a high school student from up in Carlsbad. She was down in La Jolla trying to “find” herself while tagging along with her boyfriend, some eternally blonde, blue-eyed surfer guy from Del Mar, christ. Just then said surfer boy was out looking for the perfect wave, or something, and so I invited Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968) over to La Grande (the name of the estate, hell, they all had names like that) to smoke a little dope. She brightened at that.

Well, of course, I could see where this was heading, if it was heading anywhere what with my one girl-one guy rule (although I admit, admit now not then, now that I think the statute of limitations is probably over on lying to 1967 girlfriends, I went astray a couple of times in Denver and Joshua Tree but those weren’t really girlfriend-worthy trysts). I brought her home, anyway. We had some dope, and had some sex. Simple. And just when I thought I had her safely out the door (literally and figuratively) Lupe stepped into the room. Instead of exploding though, after checking out Butterfly with a bemused look, she said, “Is she staying?” And before I could get word one out Butterfly chirped out, “Yes.” And Lupe said, “Good” in a kind of distracted way. The new age had dawned, praise be. But that was later. Then I just said out loud to no one in particular, “Damn women, I will never figure them out.” And I never have. [Markin: Brother Phil you are preaching to the choir on that one.] That is why, when we headed north for the rumored summer of love in San Francisco a month or so later, I had my angel-devil girlfriends, my “family” as Captain Crunch called them, with me."

Now you are filled in on the what and the why of Phil’s being on that nameless San Francisco hill mentioned a while back. A nameless hill, nameless to first time ‘Frisco Phil, although maybe not to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working it way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away. Right then though a tall young man, well taller than Phil, lanky, maybe not as lanky as Phil with his drug stews diet having taken some pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well, dressed in full “hippie” regalia (army jacket, blue jeans, bandanna headband to keep his head from exploding, striped flannel shirt against the cold bay winds, against the cold bay winds even in summer, and nighttime colds too, and now that we are on the West Coast, roman sandals) walked up the street that paralleled the hill the entourage was then planted on, cast a glance as that company, nodded slightly, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on Butterfly, “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have been Phil’s brother, biological brother.

That line, that single line, could have been echoed a thousand times, maybe ten thousand times, that day along a thousand hills (well maybe not that many in San Fran), aimed at any small clot of like minded spirits. And Phil sensing that just that one sentence spoke of kindred said, “Sure, a little Columbia Red for the head, okay?” And so started the long, well hippie long, 1960s long anyway, relationship between one Phillip Larkin and one Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love, although don’t hold it against him now if you know, or have seen, Josh lately). And the women, of course.

And, of course, as well was that sense that Far Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred was based on the way that the prince posed that first question. His accent spoke, spoke hard of New England, not Boston but farther north. And once the pipe had been passed a couple of times and the heat of day started getting everybody a little talkative then Josh spilled out his story. Yes, he was from Olde Saco, Maine, born and bred, a working class kid whose family had worked the town mills for a couple of generations, maybe more, but times were getting hard, real hard in those northern mill towns now that the mill-owners had got the big idea to head south and get some cheaper labor, real cheap. So Joshua, after he graduated from high school a few weeks before decided, on a whim (not really a whim though), to head west and check out prospects here on the coast. Josh finished up his story by saying, “And here I am a few weeks later sitting on Russian Hill smoking righteous dope and sitting with some sweet ladies. (Markin: Phil never said what his reaction to that last part was which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old corner boy Phil menace, hell Markin menace too, would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer it just passed by like so much air) Everybody else giggled now that they knew the name of this hill that they had been trying to guess the name of for the last half hour when he blurted that out. Naturally Phil, a kingly road warrior now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited Josh to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Josh was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.

But enough of old-time visions, of old time rites of passage, and of foundling dreams. Phil, and his entourage (nice word, huh, no more girlfriend solo, or as here paired, lovingly paired, to be hung up about, just go with the flow). Phil, Butterfly, hell, even jaded Lilly Rose (formerly known as Luscious Lois in case you forgot, or we not paying attention), and now Prince Love, are a “family,” or rather part of the Captain Crunch extended intentional family of merry pranksters. [Markin: Small case, so as not to be confused with their namesakes and models legendary mad man writer Ken Kesey and his La Honda Merry Pranksters, okay] Just yesterday they hit ‘Frisco and had planted their de rigueur day-glo bus in the environs of Golden Gate Park after many months on the road west, and some sitting down time down south in La Jolla. Hearing the siren call buzzing all spring they have now advanced north to feast on the self-declared Summer of Love that is guaranteed to mend broken hearts, broken spirits, broken rainbows, broken china, and broken, well broken everything. The glue: drug, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll, although not just any old-timey be-bop fifties rock and roll but what everybody now calls “acid” rock. And acid, for the squares out there, is nothing but the tribal name for LSD that has every parent from the New York island to the Redwood forests, every public official from ‘Frisco to France, and every police officer (I am being nice here and will not use the oink word) from the Boston to Bombay and back, well, “freaked out” (and clueless). Yes, our Phil has come a long way from that snarly wise guy corner boy night of that old town he lammed out from (according to his told story) just about a year ago.

Or had he? Well, sure Phil’s hair was quite a bit longer, his beard less wispy and more manly, his tattered work boots and later Chuck Taylor sneakers transformed into sensible (West Coast ocean sensible) roman sandals and his weight, well, his weight was way down from those weekly bouts with three-day drug escape, and fearful barely eaten four-in-the-morning open hearth stews, and not much else. And as he sat on that Russian Hill looking out into that bay with his brood he could not even look forward, as he originally planned, to the expectation of just trying LSD for the hell of it in ‘Frisco, having licked it (off a blotter), or drank it (the famous, or infamous, kool-aid fix), several times down in La Jolla. In those lazy hazy days watching the surf (and surfers) splashing against the Pacific world with blond-haired, blue-eyed, bouncy Butterfly, and the raven-haired, dark as night-eyed Lilly Rose, or both listening to the music fill the night air. Not square music either (anything pre-1964 except maybe some be-bop wild piano man Jerry Lee Lewis, or some Chicago blues guitar fired by Muddy Waters or microphone-eating Howlin’ Wolf), but moog, boog, foog-filled music.

Just that Russian Hill minute though, and to be honest, while in the midst of another acid trip (LSD, for the squares just in case you forgot), Phil sensed that something had crested in the approaching blue-pink Pacific night and that just maybe this scene would not evolve into the “newer world” that everybody, especially Captain Crunch, kept expecting any day. Worst, now that he knew that he couldn’t, no way, go back to some department store clerk’s job, some picket-fenced white house with dog, two point three children, and a wife what was to happen to him when Butterfly, Lilly Rose, Joshua, and even Captain Crunch “find” themselves and go back to school, home, academic careers, or whatever. For now though he will just take it all.
***********
The End Lyrics
The Doors
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you

C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

***Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night-When Diana Nelson “Touched” The North Adamsville Night Away- With Peggy Lee In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Leslie Gore performing her classic teen dream theme That’s The Way Boys Are.

CD Review

The ‘60s: Jukebox Memories, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1992

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, Leslie Gore’s 1960s classic teen dream theme (girl division) song, That’s The Way Boys Are.

I, Diana Nelson, am going to be a big singing star just watch out, watch out and don’t blink because then you will miss it. Hey, it is written in the stars, my stars. Proof? I have just this spring won the 1962 edition of the annual Adamsville Female Vocalist Contest. Hands down! There was no way that any of those other girls could match (and one guy who dressed up as a girl, weird right, although he did a good job on Mary Wells’ Two Lovers and I was a little worried until they found out he was a guy and gave him the boot.) Even Emma Johns and her smoky version of old hat Peggy Lee’s Fever got left behind when I went deep, deep down almost to my soul on Brenda Lee’s I’m Sorry. See that is what the judges were looking for, not smoldering sexy stuff but act of contrition stuff. And the girls who filled up the audience seats and gave their thumbs up and down only wanted to hear stuff that they can listen too when they cry on their pillows after their Johnny doesn’t call, goes cheap on some corny date, or cheats on them, cheats on them with their best friend, usually. I’ve got it all figured out.

Sure, like I was telling my good friend, Peter Paul Markin, the other day during class I was glad to get the one thousand scholarship money that was one of the prizes offered. I can use it if I decide to go to college after we graduate next year. But the big thing for me is to get to sing, sing featured, along with the guys from the Rockin’ Ramrods to back me up, at the Falling Leaves Dance held late in September. That dance is always sponsored by the senior class and it will give me a thrill to go out to please that crowd of fellow seniors, especially Peter Paul, who shares my love of music (although he is not a very good singer, sorry if you see this P.P.) and likes to talk about politics and stuff like I do. The big, big thing though, and I haven’t even told Peter Paul about this is that a recording agent, Jerry Rice, yes, that Jerry Rice, from Ducca Records, the one that signed Connie what’s-her name, has promised to be there and if he likes what he hears, well, like I say it in my stars. Don’t blink, okay.

By the way don’t get thrown off by that good friend Peter Paul thing, especially if you know my own true love boy friend Bobby Swann. There’s nothing to it (sorry again, Peter). Bobby couldn’t be at the contest because he was studying for his finals at State University. He is finishing up his freshman year and so he had to study hard. Peter Paul and I met in ninth grade and we have been good friends ever since. Oh, I suppose I can tell you now, now that I have my handsome blue-eyed Bobby, that if he wasn't such a “stup” P.P could have had his chances with me but all he ever did was stare at my ass in class, and in the corridors. If you don’t believe me ask Emma Johns, she’s the one that noticed him doing it first, although I had an idea. Better yet, ask P.P. he’ll tell you, maybe. The thing was that I couldn’t wait forever for him to get up the nerve to ask me out and then Bobby came along and swooped me up in tenth grade and then I didn’t care for younger guys anymore, except as good friends.

I guess I should tell you since I am telling you everything else that I had a dream when I was very young, maybe seven or eight, that I was going to be a singing star. Maybe it was my mother always playing women singers on the family record like that Peggy Lee when she was young and sprightly with Benny Goodman, Teresa Brewer, and Billie Holiday that got me going because I would sing along all day with the radio on. Later ma had me take singing lessons and I have been going strong ever since. Peter Paul said he went crazy when he first heard me do Brenda’s I Want To Be Wanted and Patsy Cline’s Crazy, although she, Patsy, seemed a little to ah, shucks, countrified when I first heard her. She has gotten less so since she has started turning to more a more popular style. I sure wish I could hit her high notes but Miss French, my vocals teacher, says I will get there soon enough and then I will have to, get this word, “husband” my valuable resource. See, I am a cinch.

Did I tell you that I told, no ordered (and I can do that to him, and he jumps like a puppy dog, sorry again P.P.) to be at the Falling Leaves Dance solo, so we can talk between sets. It looks like Bobby won’t be coming. According to him no big time State University sophomore would be caught dead at a high school dance and also his cross-country team is having a big meet in New York City that weekend. You know, and I hope you won’t tell Bobby, if you know him, because I do love him so, every once in a while I wish P. P. would have done more than just look at my ass in ninth grade.

***Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Rock: 1960-61, Take Two- In The Time Of Donna Blanchard’s Time- With Elvis Presley In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his 1960s teen angst classic, Teen Angel

CD Review

The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1960-61-Take Two, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1997

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the snapshot photos that grace each CD in this series. Doc’s Drugstore and Soda Foundation (not shown), located in the heart of the North Adamsville shopping streets, and most importantly, just a few minutes walk from North Adamsville High School. The soda fountain counter area is complete with a dozen single stools, a speckled faux-marble formica countertop with assorted pastry trays, candy boxes, pie cabinets and various condiment combinations for Doc’s ‘greasy spoon” hamburgers and hot dogs. Said single stools are strictly for losers, girl friend-less guys (or once in a great while a girl just trying catch a quick soda on the way home) or old people waiting for Doc to fill their ancient medicines prescriptions. They are no factor, no factor at all in this teen-worthy world. No, less than no factor. Every once in a while, however, one of Fritz Cullen’s corner boys takes his foot off the wall in front of Doc’s and enters to get a take out Cherry Coke, the de riguer drink of Fritz’s boyos.

But the fountain is strictly for food and drink, food and drink that is also strictly secondary to why Doc’s is a teen-worthy heaven. The real draw is the quiet booths that line both corner walls and are only for after school boy-girl couples, four-some girls looking for guys to dance with, and at night, mainly school year weekend and summer every nights, Fritz’s Cullen’s corner boys when they tire of holding up Doc’s wall out front (or more realistically when the hour is late and the girl prospects have dimmed). But the booths mean nothing by themselves except as “resting” areas after some fast dance coming from Doc’s super-charged juke box, complete with the very latest records straight from Pete’ Platters Record Shop so you know the are hot.

Right now, just this very teen ear minute, one can hear the sassy sound of The Drifters This Magic Moment in the background as we fix on a boy and girl taking a break from deep conversation (deep conversation related in teen world to either sex, setting up dates, analyzing the state of their eternal relationship, or some combination of all three) and taking a straw sip from their shared Cherry Coke. The Cherry Coke automatically means that rank and file Doc’s corner boy Harry “Red” Radley is present on one of the straws. On the other Donna Blanchard, one of the hottest sixteen year old sophomore girls at North Adamsville High, with a nice shape, a sweet smile, and a “come hither” look that has had more than one boy moony-eyed for her affections. But no dice, no dice at all. In this autumn of the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty Miss Donna Blanchard only has eyes, and whatever else she has to give, for one Red Radley. Let’s listen in as the eminently forgettable Booby Vee is droning on in the background about some lost love (and rightfully so, if the truth be known) on Take Good Care Of My Baby.
*********

“What the matter, honey, don’t you want me like that, “ murmered Donna Blanchard after being told for the fifth or sixth time by our corner boy Red Radley that, if you can believe this, no he was not ready for heavy sex (meaning of course, in the language of the young, some variety of “going all the way”). It seems that last Saturday night down at Adamsville Beach, the local “parking” heaven where one and all went to see the ”submarine races” in the local teen code parlance Donna, making no bones that she was ready, more than ready, to go all the way with Red got turned down. Turned down flat. Fortunately for Red Donna, embarrassed by such a fool for a boy friend, had “neglected” to mention this hard fact of life when the obligatory Monday morning Girls’ “Lav” talk got around to the subject of the weekend scorecard. In short, who did, and didn’t do it. Right now Red and Donna are trying to sort things out as a strangely ironic song by Cathy Jean and the Roommates, Please Love Me Forever, spins on the juke box.

What? A member in good standing of Fritz Cullen’s corner boys, corner boys who have, publicly anyway, notched up (went all they way with) more North Adamsville girls than maybe there were girls in North Adamsville turned down a chance at paradise. And turned down a certified fox like Donna Blanchard. No way. Moreover, Red, displaying he not uncommon teen male bravado had lied to his fellow corner boys and said that he had had already “gone all the way” with Donna. Jesus. Did our Red have a medical problem? No. Did he have some religious scruples about pre-martial sex? Hell, no. Our Red, as it turns out was a virgin and was terrified when Donna, a virgin herself but ready for the time of her time, came on so strong. Especially when she went wild on Saturday night when the local 24/7 rock and roll station, WMEX, played a medley of Elvis tunes including his latest, Surrender.

Some times things end right in the teen universe, sometimes they don’t. This time they didn’t. Well, at least for Red. After their little conversation at Doc’s Red and Donna agreed, but mostly Donna agreed, that they should see other people. That’s teen code, and maybe universal code, for “breaking up.” So now one sees the fetching Donna Blanchard riding around in Jimmy Jakes '59 cherry Chevy, and sitting very close indeed. Moreover she has that look, that certain look like she now knows a thing or two about ways of the world. Well, after all it was the time of her time, wasn’t it? As for Red, well, Red is seen more and more occupying one of those single stools at Doc’s counter sipping a Cherry Coke and endlessly throwing nickels, dimes and quarters in the juke box playing Elvis’ It’s Now or Never. Enough said.

***Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Rock: 1960-61- Take Three- When Sammy Russo Ran The Skee Ball Lanes- With Bo Diddley In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Shirelles performing their classic Tonight’s The Night
CD Review

The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1960-61, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1996

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the snapshot photos that grace each CD in this series. The then newly built Gloversville Amusement Park created out of farmland just west of the old home town, Clintondale. Of course it had all the latest rides, including two Ferris wheels, two different-sized roller coasters (one for the faint-hearted, the other for the brave, or fool-hearty) refreshment stands seemingly without end, and other refinements, including for our particular purposes not one by two game pavilions anchored by rows of skee lanes. Skee lanes that Sammy Russo ruled (that‘s the guy eating the proffered popcorn in the photo) claimed kingship over and over which Patty Smith (the popcorn profferee in said photo) sought to be his queen. If she could handle the gaffe.
***********

“Christ, Patty how many of these damn, god awful kewpie dolls do you need anyway?,” yelled Sammy Russo, the King Of The Skee Ball night at Gloversville Amusement Park and also a 1960s king hell king of a corner boy at Doc Sweeney’s Drugstore (complete with soda fountain, natch, and a juke box too else why be a corner boy there, or anything else) out in the Clintondale be-bop night to his wanna-be sweetie, Patty Smith. And it was a question that he expected an answer to, a prompt, no sass answer, newness wearing off or not, newness of their “steady” hood-ness, that is.

See, Patty got big eyes for Sammy right here at the FUNland game pavilion (no that is not a typo that is the way the name in front of the game pavilion read) at the beginning of summer, right after school let out. School, of course, being North Adamsville High in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty if anybody asks you, and they might. And, for that matter, how else would I know of the Sammy-Patty love story, I ask you, if that wasn’t so. I am one of Sammy’s Doc’s corner boy, uh, associates. Gloversville proper, by the way, is too new and rural raw to have its own high school so kids from Gloversville come over to North Clintondale where there is some extra room just now. But Gloversville kids, farm boys and girls mainly, are strictly squaresville. No dispute. The only reason that anybody from North Clintonville High, any corner boy (or his girl) would even set foot in Gloversville for one minute, no one second, was to pass ever-loving Main Street (really Route 16) through to the edge of town seeking the newly built Gloversville Amusement Park. And that is the reason why Sammy and Patty are standing here in front of the FUNland skee ball lanes having their first “argument.” Well, kind of an argument.

Patty was either in some high funk, or did not hear Sammy the first time over the din of the Gene Daniel’s A Hundred Pounds Of Clay followed immediately by The Chieftains Heart And Soul, blaring over the loudspeaker. A loudspeaker that we finally figured out was used by the management to juice up the pinball/skee ball/games atmosphere so no one could think so he repeated himself. And Patty faux-demurely answered (as was her way when Sammy got this, well, this Sammy Doc’s corner boy way)-“Until I get the whole set of twelve, and not before.” [Markin: For those who are breathlessly on the edge of their seats waiting to know why there are twelve it is simple. There are twelve kewpies representing twelve different nations/major ethnic groups, natch, they had that part of the soft sell down easy] “Christ,” said Sammy under his breathe, “We will be here all night.”

All night skee-ing when Sammy, king of the skees or not, had other things, other wrestling in some secluded spot out back by the artificial lake that formed one of the edges of the park things, on his mind. With one Patty Smith, of course. And that would not be the first time, the first wrestling time. Funny, just then the newest Shirelles' hit came over the speaker, Tonight’s The Night. But just now he knew deep in his bones, knew as if he had been married to Miss Smith for fifty years, that tonight was not going to be the night if she did not go home with not ten, not eleven, but exactly twelve f—king kewpie dolls.

Now this skee thing, on an average night is nothing but a sure thing when Sammy has his motor running. When his mind is on skees, okay. But playing enough games to “win” twelve dolls, or for that matter twelve rabbits’ feet or twelve leis (lesser prizes in the skee universe) requires a certain perseverance and good aim. [Markin: For those who do not know skee it is like bowling, candle-pin bowling (small balls for those not from New England) in that you roll the bowl up a short lane and like darts or rifle target shooting in that you have a target. The idea is to get as many points (and hence coupons) with nine balls as possible. The points convert to coupons which are dispensed near where you place your money to start a game . Get enough coupons and you win prizes from those lame leis to kewpie dolls. Simple.] But, like I said, Sammy’s mind had been elsewhere, especially when Patty, yes, Patty brought up the subject of wrestling down by that lake if things worked out at skee. And as if to punctuate her sentence Brenda Lee’s You Can Depend On Me came on while these “negotiations” were in progress.

But this night Sammy, king hell corner boy is whipped, just plain whipped by the task before him. It is almost closing time (11:00 PM) and Sammy has won exactly five dolls. And Sammy, while he can be as smooth as any Doc’s Drugstore corner boy, except maybe Fritz Gentry, or as cold as any hard-boiled Hell’s Angel motorcycle corner boy from the Blarney Bar&Grille in the hard-night part of Clintondale is ready to explode at Patty. Not for her foolish girl desire for the damn dolls. That is how girls are and what makes them tick. No, Sammy is fed up that his prowess at skee had to be put in play by Patty’s silly notions. So come eleven o'clock and defeat Sammy, cold as ice, says to Patty, “Okay, we are finished, I’ll take you home now but I have had it.” So they walked, walked pretty far apart for two people on the same planet, back to Sammy’s father’s car and he did not even open Patty’s door for her. Bad news, no question. She got in and as the car radio heated up wouldn’t you know in a night filled with omens and portents that just then the local all-night rock ‘n’ roll station would be playing Connie Francis’ Breakin’ In A Brand New Broken Heart. And both Sammy and Patty were absolutely quiet while that song was being played.

***Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Rock: 1960-61- When Love Blossomed In The Clintondale Memorial Park Night

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Shirelles performing their classic Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.

CD Review

The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1960-61, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1996

Scene: Brought to mind by the snapshot photos that grace each CD in this series. Clintondale Memorial Park, early 1960s, a traditional city-maintained park with the usual kiddies playgrounds, various sports fields, picnic and barbecue facilities, rest rooms and, most importantly, teenage most importantly, many off-the- beaten path secluded spots for teen night sports. Although by the 1960s it was suffering from some neglect since it has been at least a generation since it had been a “hot” spot for teenage love in the night. Those “hot” spots in this car-driven age are now down at Adamsville Beach a few towns over by the bay, and more recently the new rage at the Gloversville Amusement Park a few towns over going inland out toward farm country.

*******
Let me tell you about Clintondale Memorial park first, although that might seem funny for a guy who usually starts out describing all the gossip around town, or at least the North Clintondale part of town, about who at North Clintondale High is, or isn’t, trying to get some girl’s (or more rarely some guy’s) attention. Or about who broke up, or didn’t break up and I wish she would, with what overreaching guy after what he tried to do down at Adamsville Beach. Or about some other lovelorn bits of trivia that really, now with big issues like war and peace and black civil rights stuff down south staring us in the face, should take a back seat. But what are you going to do when you are stuck, stuck forever it seems, in the backwater of Squaresville, oops, Clintondale, the same thing.

I will get to the people part, the Jeannie Curran and Walter Pitts part, which fills out this saga as soon as I tell you about the park. See, for one thing, I actually had to go to the park in order to able to tell you about it. That may seem odd in a small town, a backwater square town like Clintondale, but I hadn’t personally been there since I was a kid, maybe seven or eight years ago. And ever since the Gloversville Amusement Park opened up around that same time there has been absolutely no reason to go there. Period. And when I got older, old enough to ride in a car cruising for girls and other stuff down at Adamsville Beach, which became even truer. This park, whatever it meant for my parents who kept going on and on about how much fun they had there as kids, was strictly nowhere. Or at least I thought so and my opinion didn’t change when I took the two mile walk across town to get over there.

Funny when I was a kid the place seemed like a huge primeval forest that a kid could get lost in pretty easily and we were reminded of that hard fact constantly when we played in the woods there. Now it seemed pretty small since I could walk around the whole thing in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Sure the old swings, seesaws and slides from childhood were still there, although they seemed to have a little rust on them and didn’t look like they had been repaired in a while. And the picnic tables, now a little weather-beaten and standing in serious need of some paint, were still tableau-like in the same places they were back then as were the barbecue pits. The rest rooms had seen better days, could have used a very thorough fumigation, and appeared to have become the “property” of the town’s increasing population of winos. For that matter the whole layout could have used some serious landscaping or at least something more than a quick summer job student mow and permanent city worker grim reaper swathing. But back in some corners, near the old granite rocks, and a couple of other places off the bridle paths I could see where there might be some very cozy places to bring a date for some serious workouts in the old days. So what my parents, although they neglected to mention that part of the old time teenage “fun” night, and Benny Rosen’s older brother, David, told us about when the place was a “hot” spot might have been true after all. Still this place ain’t coming back anytime soon as a serious teenage scene. No way.

Like I say this Clintondale Memorial Park was strictly from hunger. Except, and here you will have to take my word for it, maybe, just maybe, as a meeting place for those who could not meet in public any other place. And that is where Jeanie Curran and Walter Pitts finally get to enter this story. No, hell, no they didn’t do any wrong. Anything legally, morally, politically, economically, culturally, or socially wrong. Well, maybe they did on the last one come to think of it. Clintondale, now that people have started moving here from Boston in droves, has gotten over the past several years too big to have just one high school. So now there are two. Jeanie’s Clintondale High (the old high school) in the older part of town and Walter (and my) North Clintondale High in the newer section where the housing developments have sprung up. And that is where Jeanie and Walter’s “problem” takes center stage. See in Clintondale it is taboo, wrong, evil, or whatever you want to call it, but just don’t do it, for a student from one high school to date, hell maybe even to talk to, a student from the other high school. Oh sure they can ride on the same buses and stuff like that. It’s not like down South with one school riding in the back of the bus or anything like that but no dating. Not done, okay.

But Jeannie and Walter, are dating, definitely dating, as I will tell you about later. Now the reason I know this is that Walter is none other than a corner boy with me over at Doc Sprague’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain. So he kind of confided his story to me. Now every one in town, well in North Adamsville, well, okay at the high school, knows that once I get a story it is going to be around in nothing flat. So I think Walter’s idea was to tell it to me and then I would spread it around and then people (read: fellow teenage high school students) might learn to accept his (and Jeanie’s) status. And if that was his idea he was right because I am holding you to no vow of silence. Not only that but I half agree that Walter and Jeanie, although they attend those two antagonistic high schools, should have the right to date if they want to and let the town be damned. But I only half agree so far because I can see where these “mixed” relationships are hard on everybody and then again, as well, where do you draw the line.

Now this Jeannie Curran, if you know Walter as I do and his tastes in girls, is nothing but a fox. A sandy blonde, nice shape in all the right places, nice face and, so Walter tells me, someone you would never tire of talking to (a big plus, for sure). In other words someone the gods created on one of their good days. Thanks, gods. And Walter is a good-looking guy although not too bright if he both confided in me seriously and was bold enough to go against convention. How they met though will give you an idea as to their problem.

Pete’s Platters record Shop is the only place in town where kids can go to get rock ‘n’ roll music, the latest stuff anyway. So it is kind of “neutral” territory in the high school wars since every kid recognizes, like some Geneva Convention Accords protocol, that teenagers NEED their 45s and LPs and quick, quick as they come out sometimes. So one day, after school Walter was downtown at Pete’s looking for Ben E. King’s boss sound Spanish Harlem and Roy Orbison’s great crescendo-wave Running Scared when he spotted Jeannie. Like some primordial force he was “driven” to go over and ask her what she was looking for in records and she answered Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces and, almost like it was the power of suggestion, Elvis’ dreamy and sad Are You Lonesome Tonight? And that was that. Click. For one thing Walter has just recently broken up with Susie Riley and for another, well, like I said Jeannie was a fox. A fox who, by the way, was wearing front and center her Clintondale High School cheerleader sweater so Walter should have backed off immediately. But such is smitten-ness.

Well one thing led to another after Walter got Jeannie phone number at that first meeting. And as a symbol of friendship he bought her The Drifters’ Please Stay right there and then. But things for teenage romance, especially Clintondale never the twain shall meet teenage romance, are never easy. Part of the problem was that Walter did not then have a car and even if he used his father’s he couldn’t take Jeanie to the Adamsville Beach although she expressed extreme interest in “watching the submarine races.” With him. Nor could they go the Gloversville Amusement Park. Nobody from either high school would have stood for that. So Jeannie (like I said Walter is not too bright in the idea department) said why not meet at her house and walk over to the Clintondale Memorial Park and find some quiet spot to “make out.” Well, where there is a will there is a way. And so one fine early October night before it got too cold one Jeannie Curran of Clintondale High and one Walter Pitts of North Clintondale High found a nice spot near the old granite rocks and “did it.” Here is the funny thing; funny to Walter anyway, while they were “doing it” the ubiquitous WMEX rock ‘n’ roll station was playing The Shirelles Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. They both laughed about that one.

Now that I think of it I could see where “cruising” old Adamsville Beach is finally played out. And how many kewpie dolls, rabbits' feet, and leis can you win for your favorite girl over at the amusement park? Those granite rocks over at the memorial park sure were a quiet spot. Now if I could only find a Clintondale High girl to go there with me. And maybe, just maybe WMEX will be playing Brenda Lee’s I Want To Be Wanted and we can laugh over that.

In The Matter Of The Zen Western- Johnny Depp’s Dead Man- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Johnny Depp’s Dead Man.

DVD Review

Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, eerily edgy music by Neil Young, Miramax 1995

Sure, I have taken plenty of shots at variations on the great American West, past and present, from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove to The Last Picture Show from The Wild Bunch to Crazy Hearts and everything in between. As well, I have always been glad, glad as hell, to review any movie starring Johnny Depp that might come my way. So here we have the combination of Johnny Depp as, well, Johnny Depp as usual (except maybe for those seemingly endless Pirate sequels) taking on an edgy role that less talented or more timid male actors would have walked away from, way a way from.

No one doubts that the old Hollywood (and dime store novel) vision of the old John Wayne "howdy, partner" American West is long gone. And with the ground-breaking work of The Wild Bunch back in the 1970d we have seen, well we have seen, more plausibly views of that old time West, including some pretty unsavory characters in search of fame and fortune around the edges of the great frontier before it melted at the turn of the 20th century. That pasting of the frontier, of course, did not stop anybody with the least carefree spirit or who was just plain tired of the “civilized” East from heading by anyway they could to the great expanses of the old-time West. And that is where William Blake (played by Johnny Depp), no not the 18th century mad man English poet and supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution (although that mistake plays a part in the plot), but an accountant, for god’s sake, enters the story.

William Blake’s transformation into a man of the West complete with notches on his revolver, seemingly in slow-motion at times and all in black and white, is what drives this curious film. We have an educated “savage," Native American, savage white man bounty-hunters, a twisted rich land-owners (played by the late Robert Mitchum) and every mangy "old dog" who made it, or did not make it in the West. And every pathology known to humankind showed its face in this fierce portrayal of the West but also, a very surprising positive portrayal of Native American culture and its demise with the advance of the white man. William Blake, accountant, is one of Johnny Depp’s edgier performances, no question, and if you can stay with the zen aspect of the thing a very well done performance. Not for everyone, and certainly not for those who might still be clinging to some John Wayne idea of the West.