Out In The Lovelorn 1950s Night-For Margaret Gilbert-In Lieu Of A Letter

For The Adamsville South Elementary Class of 1958

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

Sorry, the Mayakovsky poem that I followed in writing the post below is not available in English on the Internet. Poe's poem gives the dreamy mood I [Markin] was trying to evoke, though.

Ulalume (1847)
by Edgar Allan Poe

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll—
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere,—
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)—
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here)—
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn—
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs—
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies—
To the Lethean peace of the skies—
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes—
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust—
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty tonight!—
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright—
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom—
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied: "Ulalume -Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere—
As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed -I journeyed down here!—
That I brought a dread burden down here—
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—
This misty mid region of Weir—
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

{Said we, then — the two, then —" Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls —
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls —
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds —
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds —
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls —
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls ?")

********
Johnny Silver comment:

My old pal from North Adamsville high school days and before that down in the old- time Adamsville housing project (the infamous “projects”) where we went to elementary school together, Peter Paul Markin, recently asked me to write about my take on his “love affair,” his first time puppy-love affair (from afar to boot) with Margaret Gilbert in fourth grade down at Adamsville South Elementary School. I accepted with the proviso that whatever I wrote was not to be “edited” by him. See, I know he is a fast man with the delete button when things don’t come out just right in his rose-colored glasses world. So I am “trusting” him, as a man of honor, some old-time corner boy man of honor anyway, or rather I am holding certain information that he would no like to see in the public eye to make sure I get my say.


Why he is suddenly inflamed by the desire to stir the ashes of the past is beyond me. What he asked me is anybody’s guess. We hadn’t seen each for years until several years ago and I had, almost, well kind of almost, forgotten her name when he mentioned it. I guess he figured that since I went through the experience with him that I would tell the truth. Well, the truth of the matter was that while he was doing his mooning act, getting all misty-eyed every time she came within fifty yards of us, and endlessly “crying” on my shoulder about whether he should approach her, you know boy meets girl stuff that has been going on since Adam tried to date up Eve, I was holding the “torch” for her myself.

As was true of every non- juvenile delinquent guy in the school with enough sense to come in out of the rain on Tuesdays (jesus, I haven’t said that old-time schoolboy expression in ages, well since elementary school). Yah, she was like that, ten-years old like that, with that what was it, damn, gardenia scent or some exotic soap thing that drove me crazy any time she came within fifty yards of me. Had me mumbling to myself, mumbling distractedly. But see Markin, sweet old goof Peter Paul, couldn’t see I was hurting, hurting bad myself. Now some fifty years later turnabout is far play so I am just going to turn his little “in lieu of” around as my own valentine to Margaret Gilbert. Margaret, did you later drive half the men who came within fifty yards of you to distraction without even meaning too. The worst part not even aware of it. Lordy, lordy.

The best way to read, really read Peter Paul’s screed is wherever the idea seems to suggest some action (or inaction) by him just think old Johnny Silver. You too, Margaret Gilbert if you every see this. The asides “speak" for themselves:


“I make no claim to any literary originality [christ, the guy use to carry around index cards all through school with ideas on them, all unattributed, although none of us knew that at the time we just though they were all his ideas. It was not until later when I started to get serious about reading and would run across certain Markinisms I got hip to what he had done.] I will shamelessly ‘steal’ any idea, or half-idea that catches my fancy in order to make my point. [See aside above.] That is the case today, as I go back in time to my elementary school days down at the old Adamsville South Elementary School in the Adamsville projects. Part of the title for today’s entry and the central idea that I want to express is taken from a poem by the great Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. [Everybody and his brother knew Markin was crazy for Russian writers like Dostoevsky and poets like Pushkin in high school. We just thought he was a “red,” some kind of bolshevik creep who would get caught by the FBI soon enough. They never got him, I guess, and I ain’t a squealer, no way. Old Coach Duffy had his number in high school though. He called him a Bolshevik with a capital B right in front of the whole history class one day.]

So what do a poet who died in 1930 and a moonstruck kid from the Adamsville projects, growing up haphazardly in 1950s have in common? We have both been thrown back, unexpectedly, to childhood romantic fantasies of the “girl who got away.” [I already mentioned that I was clueless about why he is in a craze mode now about it so that covers me on this.] In my case, Margaret G. [nee Gilbert], as the title to this entry indicates. [See, that is where Markin’s weird sense of honor, romance, or just plain fear of girls got him nowhere. Fifty years later he is playing the gallant by not divulging her name like it was some state secret or like she hadn’t gotten married (if some guy was brave enough to get within fifty yards of her and survived the enveloping fragrances, lucky guy) or something.] I do not remember what triggered Mayakovsky’s memories but mine have been produced via an indirect North Adamsville Internet connection seeing her last name mentioned on a profile page. In this instance, damn the Internet. I do not know the fate of Margaret G., [Gilbert, okay for the slow-witted] although I fervently hope that life has worked out well for her. This I do know. For the time that it will take to write this entry I return to being a smitten, unhappy boy. [Yah, sometimes, every once in a blue moon, Markin catches a hold on the truth, the bone-dry truth. Margaret G., ah, nee Gilbert, Johnny Silver wishes you well too. Yah, he is a little unhappy too]

Mayakovsky would, of course, now dazzle us with his intoxicating use of language, stirring deep thoughts in us about his unhappy fate. I will plod along prosaically, as is my fate. Through the dust of time, sparked by that Internet prod, I have hazy, dreamy memories of the demure Margaret G., mainly as seemed from afar through furtive glances in the old schoolyard at Adamsville South (which is today in very much the same condition as back then) . This is a very appealing memory, to be sure, of a fresh, young girl full of hopes and dreams, and who knows what else. [Yah, Markin is on fire here, go brother speak some truth, speak some Margaret Gilbert truth.]

But a more physical description is in order that befits the “real time” of my young ‘romance’ fantasies. Margaret G. strongly evoked in me a feeling of softness, soft as the cashmere sweaters that she wore and that reflected the schoolgirl fashion of those seemingly sunnier days. And she almost always wore a slight suggestion of a smile, working its way through a full-lipped mouth. And had a voice, just turning away from girlishness to womanhood, which spoke of future conquests. I should also say that her hair… But enough of this. [Thanks, for stopping, stopping right there Brother Markin] This is now getting all mixed up with adult dreams of childhood. Let the fact of fifty plus years remembrances speak to her charms.

Did I ‘love’ Margaret G.? [Did you love her more than me, Peter Paul?]That is a silly thought for a bashful, ill-at-ease, ragamuffin of a project boy and a ‘princess’ who never uttered two words, if that, to each other, ever. Did I ‘want’ Margaret G.? Come on now, that is the stuff of adult dreams. Did Margaret G. disturb my sleep? Well, yes, she was undoubtedly the subject of more than one chaste dream, although perhaps not so innocent at that. But know this. Time may bury many childhood wounds but there are not enough medicines, not enough bandages on this good, green earth to stanch some of them. So let’s just leave it at that. Or rather, as this. For the moment it takes to finish this note I am an unhappy man and… maybe, for longer. [Ditto, Brother].”

I guess I didn’t turn the tables on Markin after all. Sweet dreams, Margaret Gilbert wherever you landed. Johnny Silver blows you a kiss.

***Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- The Times Were Out Of Joint

Susie Roberts, Rick’s youngest sister, Rick Roberts the legendary Clintondale High School football and almost as legendary “lady’s man,” was stuck. No, not stuck in some car stuck place on some desolate road looking for Sir Galahad to show up and rescue the fair damsel, pulling might and main to win her favors after she had stalled out forgetting to put the clutch of her father’s Dodge in at the appropriate time, a task that she had not quite mastered yet. Or car stuck down in some Adamsville Beach parking lot late at night in some other father’s car, maybe a borrowed Buick, holding off some eager, too eager, non-Galahad looking for more than to win her favors. And decidedly not stuck on some Clintondale High Math Class Pythagorean Theorem problem looking for the square root of some distance from point A to point B. She had Lenny Linsky for that, and for any other mathsciencehistoryenglish problem that she needed resolved. Yes, Lenny was that way about her. Had been since about seventh grade when they had worked on a science project together and she nearly blew the chemistry lab where they were working up and he decided then and there that she needed some protection, and some study help as little good as it did him except a seventh grade midnight kiss.

And she had a few others on her string as well, a few hopeless others, not hopelessly willing however to join Lenny in the slave- quarters. Everyone, hopeless or hopeful, agreed that while Susie was not up to speed in the mechanical or smarts departments she was cute (no knock-down drag-out beautiful but pretty enough, pretty enough not to have to worry about mechanics or math now, and probably ever), tall, blonde, real blonde if you can believe that in this day, this 1966 day in age, pert, and Miss Personality. And in the final analysis isn’t that what you wanted in a high school honey?

That though was exactly where Susie’s stuck problem came in. See she was stuck on a soda jerk over at Doc’s Drugstore in North Adamsville. And not just any of Doc’s five jerks (yes, I know soda jerks, but let’s just shorthand this thing as jerks, no slander intended, okay) but Jeff Brigham. Yes, Jeff Brigham the big time politico, student body version, who had his picture taken with Robert Kennedy at some Northeast anti-war student conference where they were mapping out ways to end the war in Vietnam. And that was really where the problem came in. Jeff, bright, agile, good-looking Jeff, those days has no time for Susie, well, Susie no brains, although not really no brains but more no political brains. And why Susie had continually asked herself should a sophomore, a good-looking sophomore girl in the year of our lord, 1966, have to care about war, a war in some place she could not locate on a map and couldn’t pronoun, about black civil rights in the far-off south (and which Mr. Roberts had decidedly retro positions on which he freely imparted over the dinner table about uppity n----rs), about whether Red China or some China, she never got that clear, should be in the United Nations or not, or about which way America should be going in the world just to keep up to speed with a jerk. Even Doc’s top jerk with that heavenly smile that he once sent her way. Once before he got the bug, before he wanted to tilt windmills for the world and not for her.

Something was out of whack and Susie couldn’t figure out an angle to get to Jeff. Hey, any other time, say a couple of years before in 1964 when he could hardly keep his eyes off of her, Jeff would be so much putty in her hands. Would have been jerk proud, like the others at Doc’s, just to have Susie come in and talk to him. But, damn, Susie muttered under her breath they weren’t Jeff. And as many signals as she had given Jeff when she played Doc’s juke box, played it to perdition, and tried to interest him in talking about songs like The Temptations’ crooning My Girl; Otis Redding’s be-bopping I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Barbara Lewis practically begging her man to take what he wants on Baby, I’m Yours; and when she turned the volume up for Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman he just smiled his non-committal smile and started talking about whether Robert Kennedy should, or should not, run for President in 1968, or some such thing. And then Susie fumed under her breath, the times were damn well out of joint.

***Plainsong For Private Bradley Manning-Take Three

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He came drowsily awake with a start at about 11:20 that night, that last day of May Friday night, of his long awaited journey, his journey to put paid to his past. He, Pete Markin (he had long ago, back in his late twenties after the hell of Vietnam, given up his appellation of choice, Peter Paul Markin, which he had used since childhood when he thought three name monikers were “cool” in his shabby growing up Adamsville “projects” working poor world), was within the hour to begin to make the journey south from Boston, south to Maryland, to Fort Meade, to stand in long awaited physical solidarity with Private Bradley Manning. Manning, the well-known whistle-blower soldier, was to stand on trial for his life the following Monday for what the government has charged were acts of aiding the enemy and giving indirect material support to terrorism by releasing a slew of documents under his control to Wikileaks. Just then though he was sleepy and a little cranky having caught just a cat nap of sleep during the evening to fend off the tiredness that would come early the next morning after a night of lonesome thought travel .

After washing his face, splashing some extra water to revive himself, he began to make some last minute adjustments to the luggage that he was to take with him, To fiddle with that luggage in order to stave off thinking about that other idea that was on his mind, that idea that had driven him to make this late hour trip south. To avoid that idea he also thought of other midnight trips down south to Washington, D.C. for some anti-war demonstration or other related cause in the early 1970s and about the ways he had gotten there after he had found “religion”on the war issue, after he had become a winter soldier. Thought about the times that he and his then new flame Joyell (whom he later married but that was not a story he was turning over just then) had hitchhiked down picking up rides from road-weary bennie-eating truckers looking for company on their lonesome long- haul runs, picking them up maybe just to hear the sound of human voices above the din of engines and highway noises. Of rides with assorted stoned mini-van freaks, Volkwagen denizens, that word really was the only way to describe the rainbow-etched hippie crowds riding the roads in those blessed days. And thought too of the occasional stray regular driver, usually male, who maybe had had some fantasy about taking Joyell off into the night leaving her scraggly bearded boyfriend behind to hitch himself to oblivion. Yah, she had that look about her then, not beautiful not in the classic way, but rather fetching, fetching in the classic way. Then those roads got too dangerous, too hitchhike dangerous, once the ardor of the new age a-borning had turned to dust and the creeps and cranks began to mess up the clanky roads. (And the bloom of Joyell love had been strewn as well along some dusty back road, although she still held her fetching fantasy sway.)

Sometimes there would be quick runs, almost as seamless as if taking their own car. Other times they were stuck on dusty, dirty roads as if there were no such thing as cars. Of course it wasn’t always the hitchhike road, sometimes it was cramped buses provided by some anti-war organization or coalition, cheap rented buses with poor shocks, poor restroom facilities, bad air and hubris. Other times, later times, flush times, it would be a quick flight airline (usually the Eastern shuttle), although then Joyell-less. As he thought about those long gone times he couldn’t though quite dismiss that gnawing feeling that had been eating at him since the Manning case came on his horizon in September 2010.

That gnawing feeling had come to this- the accusations lodged against Private Manning concerning leaked information about American troop atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan had driven him back to his own soldier days, dog soldier days, dog soldier days in Vietnam and his own response to things he had witnessed, and later to information that he was privy to about American atrocities in that mist of war, that fog of war. He had dogged it, had kept his head down, had kept it way down. Then, in the back of his mind he heard, or half heard, the echo of some basic training drill sergeant telling his raw recruits to just follow orders and keep their heads down or else they would wind up doing some hard time in dreaded Fort Leavenworth. So he didn’t do a damn thing about what he knew and lived with that for a long time. It had taken a long time, too long, before he realized that there were worse fates than jail, than the Leavenworth’s of the world. Now he was to be redeemed, to settle accounts with his past, redeemed by a dog soldier two generation removed, a soldier who had held his head up high, had acted against the monster wars. Yah, his brother.

Pete once again thought back to those dark days when his unit spear-headed assaults on villages out in the Vietnam boondocks, mainly around Kontum, burned everything in sight, declared every villager an agent of Hanoi, declared that the proper role of a soldier was to let God separate out the innocent from the guilty and though nothing of it. Later he had seen official reports, classified, of fistfuls of atrocities against civilians, and kept his head down, kept it way down. Reliving those scenes in his head this night was too much and after a while he could not think more in that vein and switched his thoughts forward to the solidarity rally down at Fort Meade scheduled for early Saturday afternoon. He expected to be tired after the long ride, expected to be faded by the heat of the day which would be well up in the high numbers and would be nothing but a chore to survive. He thought too, as he chuckled about it to himself, that he would rather go to the gates of hell and back than not be there, not be there to stand with his newfound brother, not be there for redemption day.

As Pete heard the honk from a car outside his house that indicated that the young man and his other two passengers that would be his companions on the long ride had arrived he thought about his brother Bradley Manning, about how that young man’s life story on the face of it had been a very unlikely source to be the agent of his own fate, and that he would spent his energies, every energy to gain freedom for that valiant winter soldier. As he left the house he yelled up to his wife goodbye, and yelled too “Free Bradley Manning” and asked her if it sounded okay, sounded energetic enough. “Yah, it sounded just fine,” came the reply.

***Where The Dough Is- With The Film Noir Cash On Demand In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Frankly I always like my bank robbers straight up. You know guys like the famous Willie Sutton who when asked why he robbed banks stated the no-brainer obvious that that was where the money, kale, dinero, moola, or however you describe cash in your area was. Moreover I like my bank robbers working alone, working without an elaborate net, working without about fifteen guys who will rat you out for three bucks and a shortened jail sentence if things get dicey.

I remember once these guys, smart guys too, four or five of them, the mastermind who had the thing wired from jump street, had it worked up fine while he had time to while away in stir working off another matter, the fine-tooth safecracker, edgy and sharp, the whizz driver who was like some Indy racer behind the wheel, and the heavy work guy, the rootie-toot-toot guy, a little light upstairs but a stand-up guy and no snitch, no way, and maybe another guy, a lookout guy, I forget, for good luck planned this beautiful (on paper) caper of a high- end jewelry store. The night of the heist they were doing just fine, had it made until the last minute when one guy, maybe the look-out, accidently slipped since he had been sweating profusely in tight quarters and blew the whole caper to kingdom come. Blew some alarm and sent a covey of cops all over them in about two minutes flat. Naturally that crew, desperate at that point and not hip to any jail time, had to blast their way out killing a couple of off-hand coppers in the melee. After you waste a cop or two though you might as well walk to jail, walk to the big step off, after that since when a cop get killed in a caper then all bets are off, way off. Two and it is only fifty-fifty you will get to the big step off. You know the old “tried to escape” gag with about three slugs in your heart. So yah, I like my bank robbers to play it simple, play it by the numbers, and just take the money and run.

That is what bothered me about this guy Cecil I heard about recently, a sharp guy from all accounts over in England who had quite a record of success pulling off bank heists by himself, and without any bang-bang. A guy who took a big haul from some Bank of England vault while the clerk was making eyes at some dame (the dame proved to be his, the clerk’s, girlfriend so no foul on him, okay). Of course like every bank robber who has ever existed back to Adam and Eve time, maybe before, has done at least one jolt, done one stretch at uncle’s expense Or the queen’s). That comes with the territory. Cecil did his for an off-hand knockoff when he “forgot” that the alarm was reset after entry into some teller’s cage. He did a nickel for that one. They also say he never carried a gun, didn’t like them, didn’t know how to use one. That might have been an error on his last caper and as a general principle when you are in a tight spot in the bank robbery business, especially these days, but I will let the issue of guns pass. What bothered me was that his plan, and it was a good plan as far as such plans, go was kind of crazy, was way too wild in its application.

Cecil, who as a kid had been a carnival drifter, knew how to fake voices and that knowledge was the basis that he planned that last caper on. See what Cecil did was pick a Podunk branch of a big bank, something like Barclay’s, something like that and found out what the branch manager’s wife and kid’s voices sounded like and then he went into the branch and maneuvered his way into the manager’s office as an insurance inspector. Then he was off to the races. This manager, Basil I think his name was, a freaky kind of straight- laced, kind of a fussy sort, was afraid of losing his position, afraid of his own shadow really bought Cecil’s threat that he would kill his wife and child without compulsion if he didn’t follow his instructions to the letter. Cecil had faked the doom-struck wife and kid’s voices sending Basil into a panic. After that he was putty in Cecil’s hands. It must have been fun watching old Basil crack under the whip, carrying out each instruction, hell, begging to carry them out. Christ Cecil could have just sat in the manager’s office and let Basil pull the heist for him. Beautiful.

A great work of art, no question, as far it went. And that is my Cecil problem. He got too cute, had too many moving parts, had to ham it up a little too much like some low-rent midnight grafter rather than the potential hall of fame bank robber that he could have been. What happened was that one of the employees, a long- time employee sensed that old Mister Fussy boss wasn’t acting just right, seemed to be a little, well, nice, oh maybe not nice, but civil. That employee started to put two and two together with the combined actions of the two men not adding up and so he called the coppers and after some hi-jinx that doomed our man Cecil in the end. So he turned out to be just another number up in British stir, Darthmoor maybe. Just another of the endless examples that crime doesn’t pay. If he had only decide to just take the money and run ….

Plainsong For Private Bradley Manning-Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He came drowsily awake with a start at about 11:20 that night, that last day of May Friday night of his long awaited journey, his journey to put paid to his past. He, Pete Markin (he had long ago, back in his late twenties after the hell of Vietnam, given up his appellation of choice, Peter Paul Markin, used since childhood when he thought three name monikers were “cool” in his shabby working poor world), was within the hour to begin to make the journey south, south to Maryland, to Fort Meade, to stand in long delayed physical solidarity with Private Bradley Manning the well-known whistle-blower soldier who was to stand on trial for his life the following Monday for what the government has charged were acts of aiding the enemy and giving indirect material support to terrorism by releasing a slew of documents under his control to Wikileaks. Just then though he was sleepy and a little cranky having caught just a cat nap of sleep during the evening to fend off the tiredness that would come early the next morning after a night of lonesome thought travel .

After washing his face, splashing some extra water to revive himself, he began to make some last minute adjustments to the luggage that he was to take with him, To fiddle with that luggage in order to stave off thinking about that other idea that was on his mind, that idea that had driven him to make this late hour trip south. To avoid that idea he thought of other midnight trips down south to Washington, D.C. for some anti-war demonstration or other related cause in the early 1970s and about the ways he had gotten there after he had found “religion” on the war issue, after he had become a winter soldier. Thought about the times that he and his then new flame Joyell (whom he later married but that was not a story he was turning over just then) had hitchhiked down picking up rides from road-weary bennie-eating truckers looking for company on their lonesome long haul runs, picking them up maybe just to hear the sound of human voices above the din of engines and highway noises. Of rides with assorted stoned mini-van freaks, Volkwagen denizens, that really was the only way to describe the rainbow-etched hippie crowds riding the roads in those blessed days. And too of the occasional stray regular driver, usually male, who maybe had had some fantasy about taking Joyell off into the night leaving her scraggly bearded boyfriend behind to hitch himself to oblivion. Yah, she had that look about her then, not beautiful not in the classic way, but rather fetching, fetching in the classic way. Then those roads got too dangerous, too hitchhike dangerous, once the ardor of the new age had turned to dust and the creeps and cranks began to mess up the clanky roads. (And the bloom of Joyell love had been strewn as well along some dusty back road, although she still held her fetching fantasy sway.)

Sometimes there would be quick runs, almost as seamless as if taking their own car. Other times they were stuck on dusty, dirty roads as if there were no such thing as cars. Of course it wasn’t always the hitchhike road, sometimes it was cramped buses provided by some anti-war organization or coalition, cheap rented buses with poor shocks, poor restroom facilities, bad air and hubris. Other times, flush times, it would be a quick flight airline (usually the Eastern shuttle), although then Joyell-less. As he thought about those long gone times he couldn’t quite dismiss that gnawing feeling that had been eating at him since the Manning case came on his horizon in September 2010.

That gnawing feeling had come to this- the accusations lodged against Private Manning concerning leaked information about American troop atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan had driven him back to his own soldier days, dog soldier days, dog soldier days in Vietnam and his own response to things he had witnessed, and later to information that he was privy to about American atrocities in that mist of war, that fog of war. He had dogged it, had kept his head down, had kept it way down. In the back of his mind he heard, or half heard the echo of some basic training drill sergeant telling his raw recruits to just follow orders and keep their heads down or else they would wind up in dreaded Fort Leavenworth. So he didn’t do a damn thing about it and lived with that for a long time. It had taken a long time, too long, before he realized that there were worse fates than jail. Now he was to be redeemed, to settle accounts with his past, redeemed by a dog soldier two generation removed, a soldier who had held his head up high, had acted against the monster wars. Yah, his brother.

Pete thought back to those dark days when his unit spear-headed assaults on villages out in the Vietnam boondocks, mainly around Kontum, burned everything in sight, declared every villager an agent of Hanoi, declared that the proper role of a soldier was to let God separate out the innocent from the guilty and though nothing of it. Later he had seen official reports, classified, of fistfuls of atrocities against civilians, and kept his head down, kept it way down. Reliving those scenes in his head was too much and after a while he could not think more in that vein and switched his thoughts forward to the solidarity rally down at Fort Meade scheduled for early Saturday afternoon. He expected to be tired after the long ride, expected to be faded by the heat of the day which would be well up in the high numbers and would be nothing but a chore to survive. He thought too, as he chuckled about it to himself, that he would rather go to the gates of hell and back than not be there, not be there to stand with his newfound brother, not be there for redemption day.

As Pete heard the honk from a car outside his house that indicated that the young man and his other two passengers that would be his companions on the long ride had arrived he thought about his brother Bradley Manning, about how that young man’s life story on the face of it had been a very unlikely source to be the agent of his own fate, and that he would spent his energies, every energy to gain freedom for that valiant winter soldier. As he left the house he yelled up to his wife goodbye, and yelled too “Free Bradley Manning” and asked her if it sounded okay, sounded energetic enough. Yah, it sounded just fine came the reply.

Plainsong For Private Bradley Manning-Take One

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He came drowsily awake with a start at about 11:20 that night, that last day of May Friday night of his long awaited journey, his journey to put paid to his past. He, Pete Markin (he had long ago, back in his late twenties after the hell of Vietnam, given up his appellation of choice Peter Paul Markin used since childhood when he thought three name monikers were “cool” in his shabby working poor world), was to within the hour begin to make the journey south, south to Maryland, to Fort Meade, to stand in long delayed physical solidarity with Private Bradley Manning, the well-known whistle-blower soldier who was to stand on trial for his life the following Monday for what the government had charged was aiding the enemy and giving indirect material support to terrorism by releasing a slew of documents under his control to Wikileaks. Just then though he was sleepy and a little cranky having caught just a cat nap of sleep during the evening to fend off the tiredness that would come early the next morning after a night of lonesome thought travel .

After washing his face, splashing some extra water to revive himself, he began to make some last minute adjustments to the luggage that he was to take with him, To fiddle with that in order to stave off thinking about that other idea that was on his mind, that idea that had driven him to make this late hour trip south. To avoid that he thought of other midnight trips down south to Washington, D.C. for some anti-war demonstration or other related cause in the early 1970s and about the ways he had gotten there after he had found “religion” on the war issue, after he had become a winter soldier. About the times that he and his then new flame (whom he later married but that was not a story he was turning over just then ) Joyell had thumbed down picking up rides from road-weary bennie-eating truckers looking for company on their lonesome long haul runs, maybe just to hear the sound of human voices above the din of engines and highway noises, assorted stoned mini-van freaks, Volkwagen denizens, that really was the only way to describe the rainbow-etched hippie crowds riding the roads in those blessed days , and an occasional stray regular driver, usually male, who maybe had had some fantasy about taking Joyell off into the night leaving her scraggly bearded boyfriend behind to hitch himself to oblivion. Yah, she had that look about her then, not beautiful not in the classic way, but rather fetching, fetching in the classic way. Then those roads got too dangerous, too hitchhike dangerous, once the ardor of the new age had turned to dust and the creeps and cranks began to mess up the clanky roads. (And the bloom of Joyell love had been strewn as well along some dusty back road, although she still held her fetching fantasy sway.)

Sometimes there would be quick runs, almost as seamless as if taking their own car. Other times they were stuck on dusty, dirty roads as if there were no such thing as cars. Of course it wasn’t always the hitchhike road, sometimes it was cramped buses provided by some anti-war organization or coalition, cheap rented buses with poor shocks, poor restroom facilities, bad air and hubris. Other times, flush times, it would be a quick flight airline (usually the Eastern shuttle), although Joyell-less. As he thought about those long gone times he couldn’t quite dismiss that gnawing feeling that had been eating at him since the Manning case came on his horizon in September 2010. That gnawing feeling came to this- the accusations lodged against Private Manning concerning leaking information about American troop atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan had driven him back to his own soldier days, dog soldier days, dog soldier days in Vietnam and his own response to things he had witnessed, and later to information about American atrocities in that mist of war, that fog of war. He had dogged it, kept his head down, kept it way down, didn’t do a damn thing about it and lived in that sullen pose for a long time. Now he was to be redeemed, redeemed by a dog soldier two generation removed, a soldier who had held his head up, had acted against the monster war, yah, his brother.

He thought back to those dark days when his unit spear-headed assaults on villages out in the Vietnam boondocks, mainly around Kontum, burned everything in sight, declared every villager an agent of Hanoi, declared that the proper role of a soldier was to let God separate out the innocent from the guilty and though nothing of it. Later he had seen other official reports, classified, of fistfuls of atrocities against civilians, and kept his head down, kept it way down. Reliving those scenes in his head was too much and after a while he could not think more in that vein and thought forward to the solidarity rally down at Fort Meade scheduled for early Saturday afternoon. He expected to be tired after the long ride, expected to be faded by the heat of the day which would be well up in the high numbers and would be nothing but a chore to survive. He thought too, as he chuckled about it to himself, that he would rather go to the gates of hell and back than not be there, not be there to stand with his newfound brother, not be there for redemption day.

As Pete heard the honk outside his house that indicated that the young man and his other two passengers that would be his companions on the long ride had arrived he thought about his brother Bradley Manning, about how that young man’s life story on the face of it had been a very unlikely source to be the agent of his fate, and that he would spent his energies, every energy to gain freedom for that valiant winter soldier. As he left the house he yelled up to his wife goodbye, and yelled too Free Bradley Manning and asked her if it sounded okay, sounded energetic enough. Yah, it sounded just fine came the reply.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- With The Stones’ Back Street Girl In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

James Sweeny, Esquire, Jim, had to laugh, had to laugh right out loud about hi situation, as he drove home to his condo from her place. Her place being a small condo, what in his student days around that same area were called studios and rightly so, at the high end of Beacon Street toward Brookline. More sweet time importantly her being Susie, Susan Downing his latest paramour, although she was not the butt of his laughter even if it did concern her. Or rather how he had become they entangled concerned. “Jesus,” he said to himself as he drove down Boston’s famous green-ward walkway Commonwealth Avenue, “she chews gum, chews gum, Wrigley’s incessantly , and loves, really loves, bowling. How did I get myself involved with her?”

Hell, he knew exactly why he had gotten involved, had in the process taken a step back to his growing up days, his tough as nails growing up days. Jim was just going back to his roots, going back to his lonesome corner boy Adamsville projects days that he had thought were long gone. Thought he had left behind when he left the dust and oddball chaos of that place with its long list of social and economic pathologies (and the very close call of a gangster life and the face of hard time ,hard time in a hard place that many of his corner boy boyhood friends , including his two brothers had faced). See Susie, although almost a decade younger than he, a twenty- something to use the term of generational art, had grown up in the Gloversville projects about twenty miles from his own projects childhood and so they both bore the stigmata. Both had grown up on the back streets, had faced the endless wants that the projects life entailed, had faced the eternal nos (“no, you can’t do this, no, we have no money for that, no, we can’t go here or there because your father is out of work, no, well, just say no and that will cover a multitude of sins.”) So some mystical social DNA, some ten thousand years of wants, of nos, of hunger and not just food hunger, had been at work, had played their attractions. All he knew was that the hours they spent together (even while damn bowling, candle pin not ten pin by the way, no way with those freaking big ball ) were the happiest he had had in a while and so he was going to play the hand fate had dealt out.

Jim could just imagine what his wife, uh, ex-wife Lillian would say if she knew of his latest tryst. She would, addicted to the sociology jargon that she had been trained in some years back, spout forth that he was just seeking his natural level, was just “going home” like Telly’s theory projected. (She had studied with the well-known big man in sociology of the time back when they met, Professor John Telly, the guy who invented Quantum Sociology, the idea that all social phenomena were subject to some world-historic laws just like nature and so unraveling the key to those trends was the proper study for human-kind.) That despite the fact that he had dragged himself kicking and screaming from the projects, had become a fairly successful lawyer working for a firm that gave him more work than he needed, and which provided more income, hell, more alimony and child support money, in a month than his poor half –literate father had been able to provide his whole life practically. Yes, he could just see Lillian with that self-satisfied smirk learned from her very comfortable childhood in New York City, in Manhattan, the center of the universe according to her. And she would probably add to that smirk the comment that in “dumping” him (her word) she also had reverted to her natural level- aided by those nice monthly checks.

And maybe there was something to it, although most of Lillian’s sociological observations tended to the more mundane, to the less worthy world-historic observations. Things like what some friend, some Manhattan center-of-the universe friend that she had had gravitated back to when she “dumped” him was wearing, what some child, some wayward monster or angelic child as the designation warranted, did or did not do, for or against their son Ronald in the class room, in the very expensive Hunter Shores School classroom, or stuff like that to while away her time (and squeeze into that Telly-etched universe).

All Jim knew was that he was drawn to Susie ever since that first time they met a charity cocktail party, the big Jimmy Fund benefit that was obligatory for all Boston law firms and their associated lawyers to attend to show they knew about the plight, the heart-rending plight of some sick kids where she had been given one of her boss’ tickets so she could attend (and so he did not have). As she pointed out later all in a day’s work for the boss’ dutiful administrative assistant, although from her later description of that job she was more of a glorified secretary than a flack-catching. He was drawn first to her smile, a smile that he thought she had thrown his way when he had stepped up to the bar and she was sitting there sipping some exotic drink (an exotic pina colada, exotic in any case against his corner boy Canadian Club low- shelf whiskey learned in cheap bars before he mad enough money to purchase high-grade stuff, but passed on as a vestige of that old projects way). Okay, okay he was drawn to her long legs, her nice figure, her bedroom blues eyes, her long blondish hair but right after that the smile. Later she said that she had not thrown that smile at him personally, but rather it was her professional smile for the occasion. He, they, laughed at that one. That was their beginning.

While at the bar he asked her who she was representing and other small chitchat. Nothing heavy just normal social banter until they got to growing up information. That is when she told him that she had grown up in the Gloversville projects. In response to that he had first hesitated to mention his own Adamsville project roots. He usually kept that part of his life well on the backburner (he had not told Lillian of his roots, the projects part, shuffling over it with a generic poor but proud working- class sheen for public consumption, until they had started living together some time later) . For some reason he decided to speak of it that night, maybe because he sensed she would be non-plussed by the whole thing. She brightened a little at that, a little that they had some sense of social roots but maybe too that they could avoid some pretenses. Or maybe just feeling a little more secure with kindred. She had said in response maybe they could move from the bar to a table and they could talk, compare notes about what that whole experience was like. He agreed.

At the table he mainly listened, a professional habit, to her story, a story that sounded all too familiar. Her father, a welder, had abandoned the family after the local shipyard that was the life-line to any thought of getting out from under closed down and moved to southern Europe and he had followed his trade. That left her mother and three young daughters stranded, stranded in the projects. Susie related that she had not been much of a student, had like hanging around boys better as she came of age. She, when she thought about it later, was looking for a protector, or something, but she said kind of blew with the wind.

Her first boyfriend was a king hell biker, “Dirty Dog”, who took her virtue (her word, her quaint Roman Catholic Church -edged word rather than a more graphic sexual word) when she was thirteen. He also introduced her to drugs, lots of drugs, at first weed, then cocaine, then H, the big fix, the biggest kick of them all, eventually wound up pimping her off as nothing but trade on the streets (while, as she found out, he was actually married and had been when he seduced her). That lasted, street tramp lasted, for a while until she couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t take the guys, couldn’t take the occasional “cold turkey” when she was arrested, couldn’t take what she looked like then (as a junkie or while doing that cold turkey), got herself clean after developing a fair jones, and had been sober for a few years. She went back to school, finished up high school, went to a community college to get her administrative assistant training and landed a job with John Hancock. Sheepishly she mentioned that she had had a child (not with the biker) and had put it up for adoption. Later, once they trusted each other a little, she had told him she had also had a couple of abortions.

Her story got Jim to thinking about his own close call. His own corner boy existence and some of the stuff that he did including some midnight heists to get money, well, to get money to have money. That night, he, they, almost by osmosis decided to take a chance on each other. And so they had begun a very private affair. And that was the crux of his problem. Once he was hooked, hooked badly, on he wanted to stay with her. But he wasn’t sure how her gum chewing, her addiction to bowling (Jesus, bowling, and she beat him. beat him badly every time) and her remnant projects scars and off-beat (off-beat to the swells), manner would go in his world. All he knew was she made him laugh, made him feel okay around her, made him feel good about her simple ways of expressing things, made him glad that she didn’t Telly-ize everything . So, yah, he would play out that dealt hand and see where it led.