Fragment Of A Fragment Of A Teenage Dream-In Honor Of The “Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flaked Streamline Baby” World -The 1950s

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip from the movie American Graffiti to set the mood for the piece below.

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:

A Fragment Of A Fragment Of A Teenage Dream-In Honor Of Tom Wolfe's “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flaked Streamline Baby.”

There was a madness in this country in the 1950s. No, not the hoary Cold War the- atomic-bomb-is-going-to-get-us-and-we-are-all-going-to-be-dead-next-week or “better dead than red” kind of madness although there was plenty of that around. Some people, mostly older, whom I knew along the way in my life, while I was doing one thing or another, got caught up in that dragnet, that “red scare” dragnet, and took a beating over it, sometimes a physical beating but definitely a beating of their psyche, with or without the physical part. All for the simple proposition, when you think about it, that working people, and the people I am talking about to a person were working people not the high-flown intellectuals who abandoned ship when things got too hot, that those who make the goods of this sad old world, I mean really make the widget gismo stuff, should make the rules. I’ll tell you more on that some other time but today I want to about cars, just about cars, about guys crazy about them and the girls crazy about the guys crazy about them, and about what they meant, no, what they really meant back then.

Like I say there was a madness for the automobile, the sleeker, the more aerodynamically-refined, more powerfully-engined, especially the powerfully-engined part but also with a classy chassis, the better. Some people who ought to know, like wannabe “gonzo” journalist Tom Wolfe who got me started on this screed from an old article that I have used as part of the title here that he wrote in “Esquire” magazine in 1963 or a real “gonzo” journalist like Hunter Thompson, except it was motorcycles too, or maybe James Dean himself who knows, say the madness started even before then, the fifties that is, back at the tail end of the Second World War. Their idea is that there was so much money around, war boom production government dough, especially so much dough around for Depression-raised “no dough” kids that the kids, if you can believe this, started going after cars and, as kids will, taking the old-fashioned ones like Hudsons, Studebakers and old time Fords and “souping” them up. That is once cars started being produced again, instead of tanks, lots of tanks, in Detroit.

Not only that, according to the stories, the kids started to get a little whacky about it. Like spending all their time hammering down heavy chrome fender and bopping to get it just right, eternally , oil-drenched, grease-monkeyed engine-tweaking, forever high-end rear axle-lifting, and, don’t forget, applying rainbow color-coded flash-painting (and, maybe, decaling). And trying to look cool while doing it and…well, and trying to impress the be-bop, short shorts wearing, slinky, saucy, sultry (did I leave anything out) tweeny-teeny girls who just happened to be walking by.

And once you start trying to impress girls, or once you actually did impress them, then the only thing left was how you were going to feed them. I mean the girls not the cars, although come to think of it maybe I am thinking of the cars. Nah. Well, sure what else is a guy to do but run down to the ubiquitous now slice-of-nostalgic- Americana, save it for “American Graffiti” drive-in food shack, complete with short-skirted bunny hoppers waiting on you and your cravings, natch. And then you were up against how you were going to excite them, the girls that is, with all that power, car power that is, natch again, on those barely asphalt ,one lane, lonesome road Saturday night “chicken” runs out on the edge of the universe, at least it seemed like that on star-studded nights. So, the long and short of it is that a little cult kind of thing got going, or maybe it was just teenagers being teenagers. I don’t know but it sounds real good, doesn’t it.

Still I don’t really know about that story, good as it sounds, because it was suppose to be kind of a West Coast kid thing. Figures, right? You know, all those guys who couldn’t get close enough, or want to get close enough, to the water to be surfer guys, or just didn’t know what the heck “hanging ten” was all about, or didn’t care. Or, maybe, from another angle, because I have heard these kinds of stories too, just Southern good old boys running white liquor through the hollows and back roads of some woe begotten mountain valley beating hell out of the revenue agents. The easy part is beating those revenue guys but you need serious wheels to beat through muddy-encrusted back roads and hollows down Appalachia way and you had better have that big old V-8 “souped-up,” I don’t think a Super 6 would do it, to beat the band if you did not want to spent your sweet roll, high-kicking young life in some old jail, state or federal, take your pick. I am closer to the nut on that story seeing as my father came from there, down in those hollows and those winding roads and those mountain mists and breezes, but still it just ain’t my madness story.

Really, I want to tell you about what I know about the madness and so I have to go from the 1950s. Like I say I don’t know, first hand anyway, about those other locales, their ethos, their humors or their quirks. I just don’t. See I think, for one thing, that those guys telling those earlier stories are just piecing us off by making it a cult thing or a small sub-set of a subset of a cult, or maybe just trying to tell colorful stories to make up for that “red scare” stuff that doesn’t sound right about America. You know democracy and all that stuff while you are running people out of town on a rail for just talking “red talk”, or trying to.

Besides, this story wasn’t just about, deafeningly mad as they were, those guys in the now almost sepia-faded photographic images of tight T-shirt wearing, rolled sleeve cigarette-packed, greased Pompadour-haired, long side-burned, dangling-combed , engineer-booted, chain-wielding, side of the mouth butt-puffing , didn’t care if school kept or not types bent over the hood of some souped-up ’57 Chevy working, no sweating pools of sweat, sweating to get even more power out of that ferocious V-8 engine for the Saturday night “ chicken" run. No way, it wasn’t.

And it wasn’t even just those mad faux James Dean-sneered, "rebel without a cause"-posed, cooled-out, maybe hop-headed guys either. And it was always guys, who you swore you would beat down if they ever even looked at your sister, if you had a sister, and if you liked her enough to beat a guy down to defend her honor, or whatever drove your sense of right. And, of course she, your sister no less, is looking for all she is worth at this “James Dean” soda jerk (hey, what else could he be) because this guy is “cute”. Go figure, right? , Aw, maybe I don’t like her all that much anyway, and we all have to fend for ourselves when the deal goes down. Jesus, a monosyllabic (uh) soda jerk. Come on, sis.

No, and, by the way, forget all those stereotypes that they, the writers and film guys, like to roll out when they want to bring a little “color”, or tap into “baby-boomer” nostalgia, to the desperately color-craving 1950s. With their monotonous line-up of blond, slick-haired, California sun-drenched, devil may care, second generation “Okie” car jockeys. This car madness really was driven, driven hard, driven white-knuckled hard right to the edge, by East Coast non-blond, non-slick, non-“Okie” guys like Stu who lived down the end of my growing up street. Down the car-wreck-filled, oil-slick splashed, gas-fume-smelling dead-end of my run down old working class, edge of the working class getting poorer not richer, neighborhood ready for the bulldozer anytime street.

And Stu was the “king” there. If such a place could have a king he was it, no question, and nobody, not us kids anyway, questioned his lordship. Stu, kind of non-descript, pimply-faced, deceptively Saturday afternoon television wrestler overweight although we swore, or we would swear, that he was just big. Hands so permanently oil-stained, so deeply gritted, that no Borax could ever penetrate. Wearing some kind of grease-ladened denims to accompany those hands too, when denim meant Farmer Brown more than fashionista. Mussed–up hair unfurled at odd angles like maybe he had just enough time for a “bowl cut” from some younger brother or maybe his mother before he got back under the hood or under the body where he “breathed’ the rarified air that kept him going. And always, always a “what the hell” smirk like he knew, and knew for certain, about the nature of the universe, as the smoke from his ever-present cigarette wrapped around in rings his (and your) head, and seemed to tell of new techniques learned and just a little more power gotten out of that old ’57 Chevy primo boss wagon that had all us neighborhood kids on the prowl for a ride (that we never ever got, but that’s a different story and you can figure out why after what I tell you the next stuff).

Ya, but that is not all, no, not by a long shot. Here is where you got to figure something is awry in the universe, or at least you’ve got to think of that possibility. “Stew-ball” Stu (that’s what we called him, although not to his face), for there was always the faint smell, and sometimes not so faint smell, of liquor, hard liquor like whiskey or scotch or who knows, maybe, Southern Comfort, it was cheap enough then, coming out of that tobacco-infested mouth of his, always had “babes” around. Hell, there were always a ton of them fussing over him and I swear I am not exaggerating because I would have been happy, very happy, to have one of his cast-offs, if I had been just a little older, and a lot wiser. And these were not just some old mirror-image Stu babes. These girls were “hot”, 1950s “hot”, ya, but still hot. A more mysterious, secretive, selective, “I wonder what she really looks like underneath” hot than today when you know, and know for certain, who is hot without having to ask that question.

I can still picture those oceans of flowing hair, that sea of tight jeans and stretch pants and those cashmere sweaters and who knows what else underneath, and what do I know what else, or care, because all I know is that to a supposedly oblivious young buck that I still was back then they smelled nice and a boy/man can dream, can’t he? And high school dropout, couldn’t care less if school kept or not, getting grease all over him, and maybe all over them Stu just kind of ignoring them. Ignoring them! Can you beat that?

Ya, but see here is what I didn’t know. I didn’t know about the late night beach Stu. The Stu watching the “submarine” races down by the now tepid ocean shore, with the waves apologizing to the beach sand for splashing it, with some quick choice girl. And they, the girls that is, were standing in line, just to get in line. And who is to say, and at least who am I to say, that they were wrong. It was a ’57 Chevy, after all. Did you hear me? I said it was a ’57 Chevy that had all the girls trembling like Stu was Elvis or something.

Okay, okay I will come clean. Here is what burns me up even today. Those girls weren’t interested, weren’t interested in the least, in what old Stu had read lately, or whether he even read anything at all. See that thing, that reading thing, was my wobbly pitch to the frails, junior grade, back then. I was a ragamuffin of a boy what with coming from a nowhere family from the wrong side of the tracks, not much of a dresser, and not that “cute,” although better looking than damn Stewball. So to make things equal I read like crazy and what I read I used as my calling card to the dames (read: teenage age girls, some of who wanted to be dames and some not).

And sometimes it worked, kind of. And this is where Stu comes in. One summer night, maybe about 1961 or ’62, I was working my book “magic” down at the Adamsville Beach seawall where we all hung out, we guys hung out perfecting our come hither girls pitches. At this time I was crazy for this Lolita, all blond, fluffy fill out a sweater, and legs, Lolita was not her real name, and that doesn’t matter now, and moreover she was young, maybe too young, and how do I know that the statute of limitations hasn’t run out on even thinking about what I was thinking about doing with her so let’s just call her Lolita. Now she might have been young but she was no stick and from what I could see she was no prude either. I knew her from some odd-ball class at school where I spent half my time looking at her legs and the other half holding forth out loud on some book, probably Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy, something like that.

She stopped me one day after class and said she liked what I had to say. Well, thanks. And so we started not exactly dating but hanging out and that is why Lolita and were sitting kind of close talking, or I was talking she was listening, maybe half-listening a little distracted in the sultry night, about poetry, T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Then Stu pulled up from off the boulevard kind of slow in his very cherry Chevy and just kind of sat there, engine high-idling, not saying nothing but looking, looking kind of intensely at Lolita and she started to look back and not answering a question I asked her about what I had just said. Stu bent over and opened the passenger door side of the car and before I could even say, “what the hell” Lolita and Stu were long gone. Somebody said they saw Stewball’s Chevy down at the “parking” end of the beach as the sun was coming up. Damn.

Hell, and you wonder why I speak of madness. Let me out of this place.

***In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby-Boom Jail Break-Out- “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era- The 1960s: Rave On”- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Corvettes
CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: The ‘60s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990

I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. This The ‘60s: Rave On is a case of the latter, of the not fitting in. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had at least the feel of our generational breakout), a summer night scene, a lovers’ lane summer’s night scene, non-described as such but clearly “boss” Corvette car scene spells it all out for this car-less teen, no car soon in sight teen, and no gas money, etc., etc. even if I had as much as an old Nash Rambler junk car. But not to speak bitterness today, I do want to talk car dream, Corvette car dream, okay.

I have ranted endlessly about the 1950s as the “golden age of the automobile” and I am not alone. As perceptive a social critic and observer as Tom Wolfe, he of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and many other tribal gathering-type book screeds, did a whole book on the California car culture, the California post World War II teen car culture that drifted east and “infested” plenty of young working class kids in that time, the time of white tee-shirts, jeans, maybe a leather jacket against life’s storms, and of endless grease monkey tune-up to get that engine revved just right. Moreover, nostalgia-driven George Lucas’s American Graffiti of 1973 is nothing but an ode to that good-night teen life, again California-style.

Sure, and as it drifted back east Sammy the local wizard, car wizard, had all the girls, all the good-looking girls hanging around his home garage just waiting to be “selected” for a ride in Sammy’s latest effort, usually some variation off a ’57 Chevy. And Sammy, believe me, was nothing but very average for looks. But get this, old bookish reviewer, old two-thousand facts and don’t stop counting reviewer, got exactly nowhere even with the smart girls in Sammy-ruled land. Ya, get away kid, ‘cause Sammy is the be-bop daddy of the Eastern ocean night. And books and book-knowledge, well you have old age for books but a ’57 Chevy is now. And here is the unkindest cut of all-"go wait for the bus at the bus stop, boy. Sammy rules here."

But a man can dream, can’t he? And even Sammy, greased up, dirty fingernails, blotched tee-shirt, admitted, freely admitted, that he wished, wished to high heaven that he had enough dough for the upkeep on a Corvette the ding-daddy (his word) “boss” (my word) car of the age and nothing but a magnet for even smarter and better looking girls than the neighborhood girls that “harassed” him. ( I found out later that this “harassed” was nothing but a nothing thing because come Friday or Saturday night he had more than his fair share of companions down by the seashore-every thing is alright night.) Still Corvette meant big dough and as the scene in this CD indicates, probably big “new money” California daddy rich kid dough to look out at the Hollywood Hills or Laguna Beach night. Ya, that’s the dream, and that window-fogged night part too.

And whether you were a slave to your car (or not as with this writer), be it ’57 Chevy, Corvette or just that old beat down, beat around Nash Rambler you had that radio glued, maybe literally, to the local rock station to hear the tunes on this CD. Although truth to tell this writer listening to his be-bop little transistor radio would not have gone crazy over the mix presented here. This is a second compilations of ‘60s hits but it seems to have run out of steam so the few stick-outs here include: Let’s Have a Party (a great rockabilly tune by one of the few woman in that genre, Wanda Jackson; Chains (great harmony by this group that also did backups on a ton of other material), The Cookies; and, If You Need Me (his heyday and much under-appreciated as an early soulful singer except, of course, when they played him as last dance and you got the courage to ask that certain she you had been eyeing all night to dance, thanks S.B.), Solomon Burke.

***In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby-Boom Jail Break-Out- “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era- 1963-Still Rocking”- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for drive-in movies

CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: 1963-Still Rocking, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989

I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. This 1963 CD is a case of the former, of the fitting in. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had at least the feel of our generational break-out) we are at the drive-in, the drive-in movies for those of the Internet/Netflicks/YouTube generations who have not gotten around to checking out this bit of Americana on Wikipedia, with the obligatory 1950s-early 1960s B-movie monster movie (outer space aliens, creatures from the black lagoon, blobs, DNA-damaged dinosaurs, foreign-bred behemoths a specialty) prominent on the screen.

Oh sure, everyone of a certain age, a certain baby-boomer age, a generation of ’68 age, has plenty of stories to tell of being bundled up as kids, maybe pre-set with full set pajamas on to defend against the late sleepy-eyed night, the sleepy-drowsy late movie night, placed in the car backseats and taken by adventurous parents (or so it seemed) to the local open air drive-in for the double feature. That usually also happened on a friendly summer night when school did not interfere with staying up late (hopefully through both films). And to top it all off you got to play in the inevitable jungle jim, see-saw, slide, swing set-ladened playground during intermission between the film while waiting, waiting against all hope, for that skewered, shriveled hot dog, rusty, dusty hamburger, or stale, over the top buttered pop corn that was the real reason that you “consented” to stay out late with the parents. Ya, we all have variations on that basic theme to tell, although I challenge anyone, seriously challenge anyone, to name five films that you saw at the drive-in that you remembered from then-especially those droopy-eyed second films.

In any case, frankly, I don’t give a damn about that kid stuff family adventure drive-in experience. Come on, that was all, well, just kids' stuff. The “real” drive-in, as pictured in the cover art here is what I want to address. The time of our time in that awkward teen alienation, teen angst thing that only got abated by things like a teenage night at the drive-in. Ya, that was not, or at least I hope it was not, you father’s drive-in. That might have been in the next planet over, for all I know. For starters our planet involved girls (girls, ah, women, just reverse the genders here to tell your side of the experience), looking for girls, or want to be looking for girls, preferably a stray car-full to compliment your guy car-full and let god sort it out at intermission.

Wait a minute. I am getting ahead of myself in this story. First you needed that car, because no walkers or bus riders need apply for the drive-in movies like this was some kind of lame, low-rent, downtown matinee last picture show adventure. For this writer that was a problem, a personal problem, as I had no car and my family had cars only sporadically. Fortunately we early baby-boomers lived in the golden age of the automobile and could depend on a friend to either have a car (praise be teenage disposable income/allowances) or could use the family car. Once the car issue was clarified then it was simply a matter of getting a car-full of guys (or sometimes guys and gals) in for the price of two (maybe three) admissions.

What? Okay, I think that I can safely tell the story now because the statute of limitations must have surely passed. See, what you did was put a couple (or three guys) in the trunk of that old car (or in a pinch one guy on the backseat floor) as you entered the drive-thru admissions booth. The driver paid for the two (or three tickets) and took off to your parking spot (complete with ramp speaker just in case you wanted to actually listen to the film shown on that big wide white screen). Neat trick, right?

Now, of course, the purpose of all of this, as mentioned above, was to get that convoy of guys, trunk guys, backseat guys, backseat floor guys, whatever, to mix and moon with that elusive car-full of girls who did the very same thing (except easier because they were smaller) at the intermission stand or maybe just hanging around the unofficially designated teen hang-out area. No family sedans with those pajama-clad kids need apply (nor any sane, responsible parent get within fifty paces of said teens). And occasionally, very occasionally as it turned out, some “boss” car would show up complete with one guy (the driver) and one honey (girl, ah, woman) closely seated beside him for what one and all knew was going to be a very window-fogged night. And that was, secretly thought or not, the guy drive-in dream. As for the movies. Did they show movies there? Enough said.

Oh, except that at said drive-in, before the first show started at dusk, between shows and on the way home, girl-matched or not, you were very liable to hear many of the songs in this CD on the old car radio. The stick outs here include: Heat Wave (not as good as Dancing In The Streets but good), Martha and the Vandellas; Just One Look (make that look my way, please, even if you are munching on pop corn) Doris Troy; Wild Weekend (just in case you wanted to dance during intermission rather than watch the screen clock ticking off the time until that next film began), The Rockin’ Rebels ; and, Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby (ya, you have got that right, sisters), The Cookies.

In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out- “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era- The ‘50s: Rave On”- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Eddie Cochran performing Somethin' Else.

CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990

I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. The former is the case here although the cover art is simplicity itself- the rear view of an aerodynamically-contoured rear fin (yes, fin) of a “boss” (yes, boss) 1950s automobile of unknown provenance (but we can guess, right?)

Yes, and that slight description is all that is needed here for those of us who came of age in the “golden age of the automobile” in the speed and thrills-craving aftermath of World War II when restless Americans, young and old, more young as it turned out, went into spasms over the latest “boss” (yes, boss) vehicle coming out of Detroit, the motor capital of the world then. Of course the cars kind of sorted themselves out- you wouldn’t, if you were young, dream of driving something that your father drove. So if you got his hand-me-down after he decided that he needed, just absolutely needed, that much more power in his automobile in order to keep up with the Joneses, you would move might and main in order to transform that old clunky dad car into a respectable too. A rocket-like tool to fit the age, to ride and to ride with some sweet honey at your side, on those hot sticky, sultry summer nights down by the seaside, or at the drive-in, movie or for food, your choice.

Yes, and this is why even a mainly no car boy, from a mainly no car family, could (and maybe still could) stare his eyes out over some boss of the bosses ’57 Chevy charging down the be-bop night boulevard, or a lanky turbo-driven long-line Lincoln, or a rebuilt Cadillac or a tear-up Thunderbird. Relics from a high cubic volume engine age when your twenty-nine cents a gallon gas took you about three feet per gallon. But still, come on now, they looked nice.

Oh, yes, and of course you needed to amp up that boss wagon car radio, booming out the latest hits about cars, especially West Coast car legends and their chicken runs, girls (east coast or west coast, hell, even the Mid-West), girls and boys in trouble, in love, out of love (ditto on that geography thing), chasing that sunset ocean-flecked dream. But mainly, when the dust settled, you had to worry about how and who was going to front that dough to get that new back chrome fender you just needed, absolutely needed, needed like crazy to keep up with the Jones’ son.

And on that boss car radio you were likely, very likely, to be cruising to many of the tunes here. Stick-outs on this CD include: For Your Love, Ed Townsend; Silhouettes, The Diamonds; Somethin’ Else, Eddie Cochran (totally underrated in the classic rock scheme of things after he died in a car accident, naturally, especially his classic Summertime Blues that was a rite of passage each summer vacation); and, as always when you talk 1950s rock, the serious stuff, the serious riffing guitar stuff from the place where rock met the blues, Chuck Berry on Almost Grown, not his number one, A-list material but good in this company.