A 50^th Class Reunion Of The Mind-With Sam Lowell’s Trials And Tribulations In Mind-Take Two

A Sketch From Frank Jackman

Of course Jack Dawson attended the 50^th anniversary class reunion of his Class of 1964 at North Adamsville High, a school located some miles south of Boston for those who like to know geographic locations (although on this subject, this reunion thing, the location could have been anywhere since every high school has a graduated class each year and hence fodder for reunion memories because inevitably some energetic classmates will gather their forces and put one together). Now Jack was not much for such events, he had gone to his tenth reunion only because his first wife, Kathleen Clemens, had been a fellow classmate and insisted they go to show off the fact that class sweethearts could stay the course (they had been the subject of a photograph in the Magnet, the class yearbook, proclaiming them by vote of their fellows-class sweethearts). That did not stop her, them, before twenty rolled around from going her way, and he went his. He had failed to attend his fifth reunion which is the one that he really was interested in since he was pretty far away, out in an outpost near Pleiku up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Somehow Sam Lowell, his old corner boy hang-out friend from the corner at Jimmy Jack’s Diner, had convinced him that since this particular anniversary would be the last effective time that the old gang would be reasonably likely to get together short of assistance, short of having the thing in a nursing home or some such place that he needed to go. So Jack and his second wife, Natalie, not a fellow classmate but met at work in Hingham when he was working for General Dynamics went to the affair and according to Jack had a pretty good time. Had a good despite the fact that Sam Lowell did not attend, had as Jack did not find out until later not even been on the same coast having been lost in the rain in Big Sur at the time. But I am getting ahead of the story, Jack’s story of the reunion and a bit part for Sam and his trials and tribulations.           

Maybe the Sam part is not necessary to tell the reunion story but Jack, well, really Natalie, thought that the reunion part would not make sense without telling why Sam was not at the Marriot Courtyard Hotel in Rockland (the one fast by the Plymouth River not the one just off Route 3 which is just for tired travelers) on the night of September 27, 2014. See Sam back in the fall of 2013 got very North Adamsville High patriotic (that was the way that he put the matter) since he had been brought face to face with the old town after many years of statutory neglect (his term) due to a series of family-related deaths combined with a certain nostalgia for the old gang as he had never attended a reunion ever, said he left the dust of the old town high school behind after graduation. More than attending though is that Sam decided that he would help organize the event since that was the trajectory his life had taken, he liked to organize events, usually political not social as in the reunion but he had talked himself into believing that the organizing principles for both were the same (and as it turned out they were although principles of organizing were not the source of why Sam was spellbound on September 27, 2014 in front of some Jack Kerouac-etched snarling ocean at Big Sur singing sutras to ancient memories and not in Rockland). So through the magic of modern communications technology, mainly the Internet and e-mail he had been able to contact Delores Knight (nee Reilly), whom he did not know and who had stayed in the old town along with several other women, some of whom he knew, who either lived in the old town or nearby and who had put on most of the previous reunions. Sam had used a search on Facebook where he found both Delores’s name and a notice that a Class of 1964 reunion committee was being formed by some classmates. He told Delores he was in.                 

Delores and her women friends had also put together a class website as part of their organizing efforts, something that would not have been a practical possibility even as recently as the previous 40^th anniversary reunion and that site is where things started to (and finished up) getting dicey (although Sam later was a pains to explain it was not technology that did him in, no, just old-fashioned human understandings, rather misunderstandings. Of course the easier way to communicate with a large body, maybe the only way, with about four hundred remaining classmates (something like seventy had passed on) who over fifty years have been strewn all over the planet (although a remarkably large number for an increasingly mobile society still lived within fifty miles of the old town) was to establish the website as people heard about what was up through other sources, including “snail mail.” The reunion website once people logged in provided each classmate with his or her own profile page and had other common sections which allowed people to talk to the class individually or collectively. Sam not totally savvy about all aspects of the new technology, although enough as he said to stay half-way computer literate, very definitely had an idea to write some screeds (Sam’s word) to the collective body and see what floated. You know stuff like who you hung out with back in the day (his piece on that subject was titled The Intellectuals or the Jocks? and you can get a flavor for what he was thinking about writing from that example alone). That was part of what Sam considered his role as a member of the committee (the only male for a while by the way until Jimmy Jenkins joined).

One of the first classmates to response to the setting up of the website and logging on was Melinda Loring who back in the day had been nothing but a “fox” as the expression went then who also was very smart, a social butterfly too. Every guy with any pretensions to style and grace was half in love with her, including Sam (Jack as well but don’t mention it to Natalie). Melinda however was back in the day also known as stuck-up, unapproachable, so Sam (and most guys) never did anything about his half-love (except pine). But apparently Melinda a hot-shot professor at State U. had learned a few things in the world (and had been twice-divorced, a big learning curve experience) and so she responded to one of Sam’s pieces with a comment, a positive comment which started a blizzard of e-mails between the pair. And that simple exchange had started it, started Sam and Melinda at 68 to what they could not do at 16.

There is no need to go into all the gory details of their short stormy relationship except to state that hard fact since this is about Jack’s take one the reunion but the relationship was short, a few months during the late winter and early spring before the reunion. What Sam figured out after some reflection later was that at 16 or 68 holding a fire-burning relationship together was nothing but tough work, and speaking for himself he was just not mentally up to the task, up to her everlasting planning their very moment from then on. (He would admit that Melinda was right about his attempting always to stay in the present and not even talk about the future.) Now the way things worked out at the end, the way Sam and Melinda bitterly broke up with plenty of mutual recriminations, too many for what turned out to be a fling, and far too many for the shortness of the affair, precluded one or the other of them from going to the reunion. See the number of people who were planning to attend had by the time the ticket sales closed was somewhat less than one hundred (that did not include spouses, companions, etc.) and the room that was reserved for use was rather too small unlike some cavernous Boston hotel ballroom so there was no way that Sam and Melinda could avoid each other, something Sam was desperate to do. So he unilaterally decided (he and Melinda were not on speaking terms, civilized speaking terms any way) since she was a veteran of these reunions and he had never attended he would defer to her on the issue.

Jack was not happy about the situation when Sam explained his decision to him one night over drinks at the Café Blanc in Cambridge where Jack had just finished up an all-day conference sponsored by his high-tech company.  Jack was left that evening feeling that Sam was leaving him high and dry on something that Sam had made a big deal out of doing. He certainly was not happy at the idea that he as a known Sam friend would have to explain why Sam was not in attendance after Sam had made a big splash on the website with his little sketches. (Sam had also written, in response to one female classmate’s plaintive plea that she was fearful about going to the reunion alone, a comment on the website that he too was afraid since this was to be his first reunion but that he was determined to go and many people had responded favorable to the comment, and a few had decided to go on that basis.) He told Sam that he was going to tell them he did not know what had happened and Sam pretty much agreed that was the best tack, especially if as expected Melinda decided to go to the reunion.              

So with Sam’s “girl” woes as a drag on the evening let’s get to Jack’s observations on the event. Naturally the Marriott Riverside in September was a lovely location, the ballroom used actually cozy for the size crowd that was gathering and the buffet and liquor okay (other than a wine toast buying liquor was on one’s own hook, the inevitable cash bar which Jack played out buying half the guys in the place a drink that night before he and Natalie left). The committee had decided to have a DJ playing old stuff from their school days, not too fast since everybody had lost a step or two, hell, maybe seven step so no twist or wiggle-warble stuff to have everybody crying for their acupuncturist or chiropractor but nice Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel stuff to get weepy over. Other dance stuff from their parents’ generation, you know Frank Sinatra Shadows In The Night stuff which was old hat and the cause of many family radio and record player disputes back in their youth but sounded better these day and mercifully danceable. One of the classmates, a profession singer, Jim James, sang some songs when the DJ took a break. Jack thought Jim whom he had known slightly in high school in a study hall did a good job and while he could see where Jim would never have made it big, his voice was too reedy for those times, he would have made a decent living working the lounge act scene (hell, he had listened to some guys even when he was late night half-drunk drawing big money who did not sound nearly as good as old Jim).

But enough of the descriptions of the place, the quality of the food, or the entertainment since Jack had been to a million weddings, retirement parties, workplace parties, and other highlight moment events to know that whatever the occasion they all are basically the same. What intrigued Jack (Natalie too) was that other than Melinda Loring whom he had met when the thing with Sam had been in full bloom in the spring, and who obviously had been drinking well before the seven o’clock start time in anticipation that she would have to face Sam he did not recognize very many of the classmates despite the fact that Sam had told him that several of the women on the committee, including Delores, except for some weight gain (which he smart boy kept to himself even from Natalie) looked pretty much like back in the day. Sam had been too kind. By the way on that Melinda thing Jack had not realized that Sam was actually keeping his decision on not going to the reunion to himself and when Melinda asked him about half-way through the night where Sam was, asked with an evil look, he said he did not know. And Jack actually did not know “officially” until Sam came about a week later and emailed him that he had gone to Big Sur on the Friday before the reunion. Had as well to symbolically add insult to injury, although Melinda would never know this to be injured by the knowledge, had taken his second ex-wife, Laura, out with him and they were having something of a rekindled romance.            

Jack thought more than once that night “thank God for name tags” since he would have been hard-pressed to name names without that aid. Jack although nothing but a Jimmy Jack’s Diner corner boy along with Sam, Frankie Riley, the leader, Jimmy Jenkins, the late Peter Markin (he had been found face down in dusty Sonora down Mexico way with two slugs in the back of his head after a drug deal had gone awry back in the 1970s needless to say the murder was never solved), and a cast of rolling in and out boys, also had been connected with many of those in attendance that night through sports, the school newspaper or the senior dance committee and still came up short on recognition. Funny, Jack thought to himself, that at the tenth reunion he was able to remember almost everybody without benefit of name tags but the forty years since then had done their damage, had made him who had taken some effort to keep himself in shape, although with less hair, a full-grown beard and a slight paunch wince at all the talk of surgeries and other medical conditions.    

His dismay started right from the first moment practically when he was greeted at the door by Delores who had been made the designated greeter, a role she had played before in previous reunions, whom kind Sam had obviously given a pass to on the weight issue no question. (Jack when he mentioned Delores and her appearance to him later only found out then that Sam had never actually physically been present in the same room with a number of the committee members, including Delores, who lived with her husband in Florida most of the year, since a lot of the work was done through e-mails and such, a nice bow to modern technology.) A big fat guy then came up to him to greet him and it turned out to be Timmy Lally the famed quarterback of the Warrior football team who back then had been pretty thin. Another, Muffy (real name) Sullivan, Timmy’s girlfriend and head cheer-leader in the old days and the queen of the social butterflies had taken a turn for the worse with almost white blonde dyed hair and a cane. Jack though he was going to be able to go chapter and verse on old-time memories with all those that he knew from the old days at the reunion but he found himself just getting depressed as they inevitably told their seemingly endless mandatory medical histories when he asked about their health. And he wound up grinding his teeth at the incessant talk of grandchildren and strangely not of their children which is what he liked to talk about since he kept his own grandchildren, all four of them, at arm’s length). He mentioned to Natalie that he could have gone to an AARP meeting and found the same amount of conviviality. As it turned out Jack and Natalie left an hour before the event was to close up, at around ten, and he was glad of it although they had been enjoying themselves and later would reaffirm that that had a certain amount of fun despite the silly banter. Here is why they left though. Before glad-handing his way through to the coat checkroom once Jack had decided they had had enough he had suddenly turned red, very red not from embarrassment but anger, an anger that had been building all night, anger at Sam for leaving him in the lurch like that, leaving him to sift through some pretty broken dreams. Damn Sam.           

 

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night-When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love-An Encore

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

“Jesus, I never thought I would get here and here I am in San Francisco all in one piece standing at the foot of  Russian Hill where all the ‘hippies’ were hanging out before they went over to Golden Gate Park a few months ago and ‘blew their minds, really blew their minds from what somebody had told him about the trendy electric kool-aid acid tests, taking hits of powerful psychedelics like LSD in Dixie cups filled, for the unwary or those who preferred to pay homage to their childhood delight with name your flavor Kool-Aid, cool, ‘ Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love or Prince, and hereafter so identified reflecting the mania for the sometimes off-the-wall monikers to go with the new sensibilities of the age, to break out of the slave names as some clever wit put it with tongue in-cheek), late of Olde (very old to hear him tell it) Saco (Maine) High School Class of 1967, but just now of youth nation, youth nation descending on friendly, friend-sized, go West young man (and woman), go West, heaven said to his boon companion of three days, Benny Buzz (real name Lawrence Stein, Brooklyn High School of Science, Class of 1967), also currently of youth nation. It was Benny Buzz who, having the vast experience of having been in ‘Frisco for a week now, and having “been up the hill,” a few times already who guided Prince Love to the foot of Russian Hill  in preparation for, well, for his first summer of love experience. No, not the  eternal teen summer of love at some beach, camp or vacationland amusement park where boys ogle girls (and they back, maybe) but the long expected jail break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan every step of your life world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles.      

Yes, Prince Love, could write the book on hassles, hassles followed by man, or not. Just a few week before he, having just graduated from Olde Saco High, had a “job offer,” a job working as a janitor in Shepard’s Textile Mill, yeah, the ones who make those “boss” cashmere sweaters the girls are all crazy for these days. Crazy for in winter anyway because right now warm suns, California, Denver, hell even Maine suns, require nothing more than some skimpy top, shoulders showing, and a pair of shorts, short shorts depending on the legs or vanity. His father, Prescott, a longtime employee of the mills, the lifeblood of Olde Saco just then, “pulled a few wires” to get him the job for the summer before he went off to State U in the fall. Last year, last year when he was nothing but a raw hang out in front of the Colonial Doughnut Shoppe on Main Street (officially U.S. Route 1) with his boys (and occasionally girls, but only for a few moments while they picked up their orders) he would have jumped with both feet, maybe with both hands and feet, at the job to get some money for college.          

But that was then and this is now, as they say. Now, or rather the now just a few weeks or so before he got to the foot of Russian Hill, he had received word through that mysterious youth nation grapevine that parents, squares, cops, and authority guys were frantic to figure out, but who, in the end, were  clueless  about,  of a “great awakening”  that was going on in ‘Frisco. That news fed, fed deeply, into the wells of the discontent Prince Love was feeling about his own desire to break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan every step world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles mentioned before. The grapevine, by the way, was not all that mysterious. Some young, long-haired, wild-looking guy dressed in a blotted multi-colored shirt (later he found out such things were called “tie-dyed,” an interesting process that was popular among the kind of back to nature, and if not back that far then maybe to some simple agrarian society, crowd who were beginning to ad hoc come up with new ideas about how to clothe, feed and transport youth nation and get away from the rat race plan every step ways) from the West Coast had come east to see his grandparents who lived on Olde Saco Beach a few miles down the road and had run into Prince Love at the doughnut shop when he was looking for some joe and cakes to tide him over before a walk on the beach and told him about what was happening on the West Coast. Simple as that, okay.     

That information, those pressing on the brain existential jail-break things that he was feeling press against his brain, and well, the cold hard fact that he had just broken up with his girl, his long time high school honey, Julie Cobb, were what drove him to seek the road west. Simple as that. Well not so simple, really, because, if the truth be known, Julie left him for another guy, an older guy who was already working in the mills (not Shepard’s but Cullen’s, the high society linen-makers), had some dough, had a boss 1964 Mustang and, most  importantly, wanted to get married, and pretty soon too. That was the sticking point between the Prince and Julia, the conventional marriage game thing that had been going on in the town since, since, well Prince didn’t know but it was pretty common. Here was the drill. Graduate Olde Saco, work in the mills, get a couple of bucks, get married, get a tiny house on Atlantic Avenue, maybe,  have two point six children, throw in a dog or two cats, and then finish up whitewashing that picket fence in front of the house with the grandchildren.

No sale, not for Prince Love. He was going to college, leave the dust of that old town behind, and make a name for himself at something before he settled down in not-Olde Saco, maybe, maybe on the settle down part but juts then he had the wanderlust, had it bad. And from what he had heard along the way on his way west, and since he had arrived in San Fran a lot of people were feeling, wondering, groping for some answers just like him. And, yeah, just like them the Prince was looking to try some dope, listen to some far out music, grab some cool chick to shack up with, and really leave that home town dust behind before going back east for the fall semester of school.                

Now you are filled in, a little, on the what and the why of Prince (and Benny Buzz who however had been right then leaving Prince to go see a man, well, go see a man about something, let’s just leave it at that)  being on Russian Hill, that classic San Francisco hill mentioned a while back.  A hill not previously known to first time Frisco Prince, although maybe well-known to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working its 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.

I just remembered, you know everything, everything except how Prince Love got here which is not a big deal since he took some dough he had  originally saved up for college and used it for the Greyhound bus fare to get him here. Not for him the hitchhike road like the old time beat “beats” craved to get what they called the feel for authentic America which the Prince just slightly drenched with the end of the “beat” minute had to laugh at since according to guru Jack Kerouac’s book On The Road which he had finally read the previous summer old Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady was blazing about one hundred and ten miles per hour so the whole thing was a blur. Beside he didn’t need the hassles, man, the hassles first of Mother Breslin going crazy over the idea that he son would be some “jungle” hobo just like one of her cousins and didn’t need the hassles from weird guys picking up lone guys in Winnemucca or a place like that and then trying something funny. Not for him either merry prankster buses driven by mad monk zen masters in the heated western night since he had heard of nobody going west like that, heard the yellow brick bus road was mainly a California thing then (although not for long after the news of the summer of love filtered through the grapevine).

But this too Well, come on now, not everybody got every piece of news, especially in Podunk Maine, about the ways west, VW bus west, stick out the thumb west and that there were people, your kind of people, ready to pick you up and take you down the road a piece. Even back up on super-highway interstates to pick up a fellow youth nation straggler left on some desolate stretch fair game for hungry police eyes. Besides, after about a two-day bout with his parents about not taking that summer job, using the dough for college for such foolishness (to quote his everywoman mother), and other assorted arguments, family arguments started back in childhood, he had promised them to take the bus west. Let’s just say hassles, man, hassles and be done with it. Now we are done with the past.

Right then though, after saying a few things in parting with Benny Buzz after Benny had “scored” (you figure out what in summer Frisco ’67) about catching up with each other later, as he started walking up the hill toward the entrance to the mini-“people’s park” that was about half way up Russian Hill Prince spied a tall young man, maybe a few years older than him although such things were always hard to tell with making guys look older beards, the trauma of three-day drug haggards, and glazed looks.  He was, at second glance,  tall but not as tall as Prince, lanky, maybe not as lanky as him either and from the look of him with his drug stews diet having taken some additional pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well,  not really normally lanky.  Dressed, always worthy of description in 1967 ‘Frisco, male or female, in full “hippie” regalia, faded olive drab World War II army jacket, half-faded blue jeans, bright red bandana headband to keep his head from exploding, stripped checkerboard 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, with roman sandals on his feet).

And to draw the eye more fully to the scene this guy is sitting with two foxy looking young women. One, the younger one, maybe a high school student, blonde, blue-eyed, slender, short shorts belying West Coast origin,  and de rigueur practical road-worthy peasant blouse. A poster child for San Francisco summer of love if he ever saw one, and of his own feverish Maine night teenage desire summer or winter of love now that Julia was past. The other women, who called herself  Lupe Matin just then although the Prince found out later from the lanky guy that she had run through several monikers previously, a college student for sure , dark-haired, dark-eyed, slightly voluptuous, seemingly a little out of place with her male companion completed the entourage. (Her real name, Susan Sharp, Vassar College, Class of 1966, and “trying to find herself.”)  

Prince cast several glances at that regal company, nodded slightly, a knowing nod eyes fixed as was the fashion just then, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on the blonde (yah, he had a thing for blondes, see Julia was just that same kind of waspy blonde, minus the tan and year-round sunshine, that he fell for, fell for hard and fast), “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” The male, who Prince would later come to know as “Far-Out” Phil (Phillip Larkin, North Adamsville, Massachusetts, Class of 1964), looked at him in a bemused manner (nice touch, bemused, right).  Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this Prince traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have, thought “Far Out” to himself,  been his  brother, biological brother.

That line, that single Prince Love line, could have been echoed a thousand, 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.  And the women, of course.                  

That sense that Far Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred had been 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 Prince 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 for later use after college. Josh, now fully into his Prince Love persona 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.”

The Prince was just being a little off-handedly flirtatious as was his style when around women, young or old (old being thirty, tops), aiming his ammunition in general but definitely honing in on the blonde, the blonde now identified for all eternity as Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School, California, Class of 1968). (Phil, by the way, never ever said what his reaction to that last part of the Prince’s spiel, the flirtatious part, which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old North Adamsville corner boy Phil menace would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer of love it just passed by like so much air)  Naturally Phil, a lordly road warrior now, on the bus now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited the Prince  to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Prince Love was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.            

And of course, family, meant home, and home for Far Out, Butterfly Swirl, and Lupe Matin meant the now locally famous (West Coast local, okay) yellow brick road bus now known as Captain Crunch’s Crash Pad (after the owner of the bus, and “leader,” whatever that meant, of the expedition). Prince Love, from the first night, not only felt that he had found a home, a home that he never felt he had in Olde Saco but that whatever happened out here he would survive. And as more dope-filled pipes were passed that night, and as the music played louder into the sea-mist bay night, and lights gleamed from all directions the Prince grew stronger in that conviction. Especially when Far Out Phil, acting out of some old testament patriarchal script, came sauntering over to The Prince around midnight and whispered in his ear, “Butterfly Swirl wants to be with you, okay?”         

And that night the Prince and Butterfly Swirl were “married.”

I Hear The Voice Of My Arky Angel-Once Again-With Angel Iris Dement In Mind

 

SWEET FORGIVENESS (Iris DeMent)

(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP

Sweet forgiveness, that's what you give to me

when you hold me close and you say "That's all over"

You don't go looking back,

you don't hold the cards to stack,

you mean what you say.

Sweet forgiveness, you help me see

I'm not near as bad as I sometimes appear to be

When you hold me close and say

"That's all over, and I still love you"

There's no way that I could make up for those angry words I said

Sometimes it gets to hurting and the pain goes to my head

Sweet forgiveness, dear God above

I say we all deserve a taste of this kind of love

Someone who'll hold our hand,

and whisper "I understand, and I still love you"

AFTER YOU'RE GONE (Iris DeMent)

(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP

There'll be laughter even after you're gone

I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn

'cause I've memorized each line in your face

and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me

I'll miss you, oh how I'll miss you

I'll dream of you and I'll cry a million tears

but the sorrow will pass and the one thing that will last

is the love that you've given to me

There'll be laughter even after you're gone

I'll find reason and I'll face that empty dawn

'cause I've memorized each line in your face

and not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me

Every once in a while I have to tussle, go one on one with the angels, or a single angel is maybe a better way to put it. No, not the heavenly ones or the ones who burden your shoulders when you have a troubled heart but every once in a while I need a shot of my Arky angel, Iris Dement. Every once in a while when I am blue, not a Billie Holiday blue but maybe just a passing blue I need to hear a voice that if there was an angel heaven voice she would be the one I would want to hear.    

I first heard Iris DeMent doing a cover of a Greg Brown tribute to Jimmy Rodgers, the old time Texas yodeller, on Brown's tribute album, Driftless. I then looked for her solo albums and for the most part was blown away by the power of Iris’ voice, her piano accompaniment and her lyrics (which are contained in the liner notes of her various albums, read them, please). It is hard to type her style. Is it folk? Is it Country Pop? Is it semi-torch songstress? Well, whatever it may be that Arky angel is a listening treat, especially if you are in a sentimental mood.

Naturally when I find some talent that “speaks” to me I grab everything they sing, write, paint, or act I can find. In Iris’ case there is not a lot of recorded work, with the recent addition of Sing The Delta just four albums although she had done many back-ups or harmonies with other artists most notably John Prine. Still what has been recorded blew me away (and will blow you away), especially as an old Vietnam War era veteran her There is a Wall in Washington about the guys who found themselves on the Vietnam Memorial probably one of the best anti-war songs you will ever hear. That memorial containing names very close to me, to my heart and I shed a tear each time I even go near the memorial when I am in D.C. It is fairly easy to write a Give Peace a Chance or Where Have All the Flowers Gone? type of anti-war song. It is another to capture the pathos of what happened to too many families when we were unable to stop that war. The streets of my old-time growing up neighborhood are filled with memories of guys I knew, guys who didn’t make it back, guys who couldn’t adjust coming back to the “real world,” or could not get over no going into the service to experience the decisive event of our generation.

Other songs that have drawn my attention like When My Morning Comes hit home with all the baggage working class kids have about their inferiority when they screw up in this world. Walking Home Alone evokes all the humor, bathos, pathos and sheer exhilaration of saying one was able to survive, and not badly, after growing up poor, Arky poor amid the riches of America. (That may be the “connection” as I grew up through my father coal country Hazard, Kentucky poor.)  

Frankly, and I admit this publicly in this space, I love Ms. Iris Dement. Not personally, of course, but through her voice, her lyrics and her musical presence. This “confession” may seem rather startling coming from a guy who in this space is as likely here to go on and on about Bolsheviks, ‘Che’, Leon Trotsky, high communist theory and the like. Especially, as well given Iris’ seemingly simple quasi- religious themes and commitment to paying homage to her rural background in song. All such discrepancies though go out the window here. Why?

Well, for one, this old radical got a lump in his throat the first time he heard her voice. Okay, that happens sometimes-once- but why did he have the same reaction on the fifth and twelfth hearings? Explain that. I can easily enough. If, on the very, very remotest chance, there is a heaven then I know one of the choir members. Enough said. By the way give a listen to Out Of The Fire and Mornin’ Glory. Then you too will be in love with Ms. Iris Dement.

Iris, here is my proposal, once again. If you get tired of fishing the U.P., or wherever, with Mr. Greg Brown, get bored with his endless twaddle about old Iowa farms or going on and on about Grandma's fruit cellar just whistle. Better yet just yodel like you did on Jimmie Rodgers Going Home on that Driftless  CD.

                

A 50^th Class Reunion Of The Mind-With Sam Lowell’s Trials And Tribulations In Mind

 

A Sketch From Frank Jackman

Of course Jack Dawson attended the 50^th anniversary class reunion of his Class of 1964 at North Adamsville High, a school located some miles south of Boston for those who like to know geographic locations (although on this subject, this reunion thing, the location could have been anywhere since every high school has a graduated class each year and hence fodder for reunion memories because inevitably some energetic classmates will gather their forces and put one together). Now Jack was not much for such events, he had gone to his tenth reunion only because his first wife, Kathleen Clemens, had been a fellow classmate and insisted they go to show off the fact that class sweethearts could stay the course (they had been the subject of a photograph in the Magnet, the class yearbook, proclaiming them by vote of their fellows-class sweethearts). That did not stop her, them, before twenty rolled around from going her way, and he went his. He had failed to attend his fifth reunion which is the one that he really was interested in since he was pretty far away, out in an outpost near Pleiku up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Somehow Sam Lowell, his old corner boy hang-out friend from the corner at Jimmy Jack’s Diner, had convinced him that since this particular anniversary would be the last effective time that the old gang would be reasonably likely to get together short of assistance, short of having the thing in a nursing home or some such place that he needed to go. So Jack and his second wife, Natalie, not a fellow classmate but met at work in Hingham when he was working for General Dynamics went to the affair and according to Jack had a pretty good time. Had a good despite the fact that Sam Lowell did not attend, had as Jack did not find out until later not even been on the same coast having been lost in the rain in Big Sur at the time. But I am getting ahead of the story, Jack’s story of the reunion and a bit part for Sam and his trials and tribulations.            

Maybe the Sam part is not necessary to tell the reunion story but Jack, well, really Natalie, thought that the reunion part would not make sense without telling why Sam was not at the Marriot Courtyard Hotel in Rockland (the one fast by the Plymouth River not the one just off Route 3 which is just for tired travelers) on the night of September 27, 2014. See Sam back in the fall of 2013 got very North Adamsville High patriotic (that was the way that he put the matter) since he had been brought face to face with the old town after many years of statutory neglect (his term) due to a series of family-related deaths combined with a certain nostalgia for the old gang as he had never attended a reunion ever, said he left the dust of the old town high school behind after graduation. More than attending though is that Sam decided that he would help organize the event since that was the trajectory his life had taken, he liked to organize events, usually political not social as in the reunion but he had talked himself into believing that the organizing principles for both were the same (and as it turned out they were although principles of organizing were not the source of why Sam was spellbound on September 27, 2014 in front of some Jack Kerouac-etched snarling ocean at Big Sur singing sutras to ancient memories and not in Rockland). So through the magic of modern communications technology, mainly the Internet and e-mail he had been able to contact Delores Knight (nee Reilly), whom he did not know and who had stayed in the old town along with several other women, some of whom he knew, who either lived in the old town or nearby and who had put on most of the previous reunions. Sam had used a search on Facebook where he found both Delores’s name and a notice that a Class of 1964 reunion committee was being formed by some classmates. He told Delores he was in.                  

Delores and her women friends had also put together a class website as part of their organizing efforts, something that would not have been a practical possibility even as recently as the previous 40^th anniversary reunion and that site is where things started to (and finished up) getting dicey (although Sam later was a pains to explain it was not technology that did him in, no, just old-fashioned human understandings, rather misunderstandings. Of course the easier way to communicate with a large body, maybe the only way, with about four hundred remaining classmates (something like seventy had passed on) who over fifty years have been strewn all over the planet (although a remarkably large number for an increasingly mobile society still lived within fifty miles of the old town) was to establish the website as people heard about what was up through other sources, including “snail mail.” The reunion website once people logged in provided each classmate with his or her own profile page and had other common sections which allowed people to talk to the class individually or collectively. Sam not totally savvy about all aspects of the new technology, although enough as he said to stay half-way computer literate, very definitely had an idea to write some screeds (Sam’s word) to the collective body and see what floated. You know stuff like who you hung out with back in the day (his piece on that subject was titled The Intellectuals or the Jocks? and you can get a flavor for what he was thinking about writing from that example alone). That was part of what Sam considered his role as a member of the committee (the only male for a while by the way until Jimmy Jenkins joined).

One of the first classmates to response to the setting up of the website and logging on was Melinda Loring who back in the day had been nothing but a “fox” as the expression went then who also was very smart, a social butterfly too. Every guy with any pretensions to style and grace was half in love with her, including Sam (Jack as well but don’t mention it to Natalie). Melinda however was back in the day also known as stuck-up, unapproachable, so Sam (and most guys) never did anything about his half-love (except pine). But apparently Melinda a hot-shot professor at State U. had learned a few things in the world (and had been twice-divorced, a big learning curve experience) and so she responded to one of Sam’s pieces with a comment, a positive comment which started a blizzard of e-mails between the pair. And that simple exchange had started it, started Sam and Melinda at 68 to what they could not do at 16.

There is no need to go into all the gory details of their short stormy relationship except to state that hard fact since this is about Jack’s take one the reunion but the relationship was short, a few months during the late winter and early spring before the reunion. What Sam figured out after some reflection later was that at 16 or 68 holding a fire-burning relationship together was nothing but tough work, and speaking for himself he was just not mentally up to the task, up to her everlasting planning their very moment from then on. (He would admit that Melinda was right about his attempting always to stay in the present and not even talk about the future.) Now the way things worked out at the end, the way Sam and Melinda bitterly broke up with plenty of mutual recriminations, too many for what turned out to be a fling, and far too many for the shortness of the affair, precluded one or the other of them from going to the reunion. See the number of people who were planning to attend had by the time the ticket sales closed was somewhat less than one hundred (that did not include spouses, companions, etc.) and the room that was reserved for use was rather too small unlike some cavernous Boston hotel ballroom so there was no way that Sam and Melinda could avoid each other, something Sam was desperate to do. So he unilaterally decided (he and Melinda were not on speaking terms, civilized speaking terms any way) since she was a veteran of these reunions and he had never attended he would defer to her on the issue.

Jack was not happy about the situation when Sam explained his decision to him. Jack was left feeling that Sam was leaving him high and dry on something that Sam had made a big deal out of doing and certainly not happy when as a known Sam friend he had would have to explain why Sam was not in attendance after Sam had made a big splash on the website with his little sketches. (Sam had also written, in response to one female classmate’s plaintive plea that she was fearful about going to the reunion alone, a comment that he too was afraid since this was to be his first reunion but that he was determined to go and many people had responded favorable to the comment, and a few had decided to go on that basis.)            

So with Sam’s “girl” woes as a drag on the evening let’s get to Jack’s observations on the event. Naturally the Marriott Riverside in September was a lovely location, the ballroom used actually cozy for the size crowd that was gathering and the buffet and liquor okay (other than a wine toast buying liquor was on one’s own hook, the inevitable cash bar which Jack played out buying half the guys in the place a drink that night before he and Natalie left). The committee had decided to have a DJ playing old stuff from their school days, not too fast since everybody had lost a step or two, hell, maybe seven so no twist or wiggle-warble but nice Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel stuff to get weepy over and other dance stuff from their parents’ generation, you know Frank Sinatra Shadows In The Night stuff which was old hat back in their youth but sounded better these day and mercifully danceable. One of the classmates, a profession singer, Jim James, sang some songs when the DJ took a break. Jack thought Jim whom he had known slightly in high school in a study hall did a good job and while he could see where Jim would never have made it big, his voice was too reedy for those times, he would have made a decent living working the lounge act scene (hell, he had listened to some guys even when he was late night half-drunk who did not sound nearly as good as old Jim).

But enough of the descriptions of the place, the quality of the food, or the entertainment since Jack had been to a million weddings, retirement parties, workplace parties, and other highlight moment events to know that whatever the occasion they all are basically the same. What intrigued Jack (Natalie too) was that other than Melinda Loring whom he had met when Sam and her thing was in full bloom in the spring, and who obviously had been drinking well before the seven o’clock start time in anticipation that she would have to face Sam he did not recognize very many of the classmates despite the fact that Sam had told him that several of the women on the committee including Delores except for some weight gain (which he smart boy kept to himself even from Natalie) looked pretty much like back in the day. Sam had been too kind. By the way on that Melinda thing Jack had not realized that Sam was actually keeping his decision on not going to the reunion to himself and when Melinda asked him about half-way through the night where Sam was, asked with an evil look, he said he did not know. And Jack actually did not know until Sam had come back about a week later that he had gone to Big Sur on the Friday before the reunion. Had as well to symbolically add insult to injury although Melinda would never know this had taken his second ex-wife, Laura, out with him and they were having something of a rekindled romance.             

Jack thought more than once that night “thank God for name tags” since he would have been hard-pressed to name names without that aid. Jack although nothing but a Jimmy Jack’s Diner corner boy along with Sam, Frankie Riley, the leader, Jimmy Jenkins, the late Peter Markin (he had been found face down in dusty Sonora down Mexico way with two slugs in the back of his head after a drug deal had gone awry back in the 1970s needless to say the murder was never solved) and a cast of rolling in and out boys, also was connected with many of those in attendance that night and still came up short on recognition. Funny, he thought to himself that at the tenth reunion he was able to remember almost everybody but the forty years since then had done their damage, had made him who had made some effort to keep himself in shape, although with less hair, a beard and a slight paunch wince at all the talk of surgeries and other medical conditions.    

First off was Delores who had been the designated greeter, a role she had played before in previous reunions, whom kind Sam had obviously given a pass to on the weight issue no question (Jack did not find out until later that Sam had never actually physically been present in the same room with a number of the committee members, including Delores, who lived with her husband in Florida most of the year, since a lot of the work was done through e-mails and such, a nice bow to modern technology.) A big fat guy then came up to him to greet him and it turned out to be Timmy Lally the famed quarterback of the Warrior football team. Another Muffy (real name) Sullivan, Timmy’s girlfriend and head cheer-leader had taken a turn for the worse with almost white blonde dyed hair and a cane. Jack though he was going to be able to go chapter and verse on all those that he knew from the old days at the reunion but he found himself just getting depressed as they told their seemingly mandatory medical histories (and incessant talk of grandchildren and strangely not children which is what he liked to talk about since he kept the grandchildren, all four of them, at arm’s length). He figured he could have gone to an AARP meeting and found the same amount of conviviality. As it turned out Jack and Natalie left an hour before the event was to close up, at around ten, and he was glad of it although they had been enjoying themselves and later would reaffirm that feeling. Here is why they left though. Glad-handing his way through to the coat checkroom Jack suddenly turned red, very red not from embarrassment but anger, an anger building all night, anger at Sam for leaving him in the lurch like that, leaving him to sift through some pretty broken dreams. Damn Sam.            

The Multicultural Cuisine Look-The Hundred-Foot Journey

 

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

The Hundred-Foot Journey, starring Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, Charlotte LeBon, 2014 

It was bound to happen, no question, once the film industry caught up to this cycle’s uptick in people’s quests for all things culinary. Earlier this year I reviewed Chef, a story about a rags-to-riches latest trend food truck operator. In the film under review here, The Hundred-Foot Journey, we actually take a few steps back to the “fight” between the old-fashioned standard high-side French cuisine getting mixed in with a multicultural twist ancient India food made from hand-down to hand-down forbear memory in two restaurants in modern day France. (That “hundred-foot” in the title being literally true since the two restaurants are that far across the road from each other). Oh yeah, and mixed in with the battle of the cuisines is, well, the battle of the sexes, the also old-fashioned love story, or better stories.            

Here is how the love of food played out with love all mixed up like a garden salad (nice metaphor here right) topped off by the modern multicultural tolerance message. The restaurant-owning Kadam family, mostly importantly for the film, Papa (played by Om Puri) and Hassam who is being groomed as the next generation family chef (played by Manish Dayal) had been run out of India when the political winds shifted and wound up in asylum exile first in England where they could not make a go of it there then to France where they, mainly Papa decided to make a last stand to re-start his restaurant business in a small village. Decided to bring the ancient Indian cuisine to the peasantry so to speak. Problem One. French people (and others) as is well known like, really like French cuisine, actually look down in pity at the rest of the world and its hot dogs and hamburgers tastes, and the chances that they will go for Indian food seems remote. Problem Two. There is already a very fine French one-star, and eventually two-star, Michelin restaurant right across the street from their proposed site run by a Type-A owner, Madame Malloy (played by Helen Mirren who used to be Queen Elizabeth I when last seen in these precincts). So there was going to be a war between these two immovable objects who will fight just like McDonald’s and Burger King for market share. This has all the making a drag down fight to the finish.          

Well not exactly to the finish because then the cross-culinary mix gets mixed in with love interests, the first part between Hassam who is nothing by a genius chef in-waiting and an employee of Madame Malloy, Marguerite (played by Charlotte LeBon) who has her own dreams of being a master chef and the second part, once they get to know each other a little between Madame and Papa if you can believe that.

Here how where the ice got thawed.  Hassam wanted to see if he could make it in the high-end world of French cuisine since that is the standard in the industry so after the Indian restaurant established itself through Papa’s winning ways and after a few tense moments (brought on by Madame’s fears about her place) he becomes an apprentice chef at Madame’s place alongside Marguerite.       

Naturally since Hassam has been nurtured in the spice world of Indian food and is inventive enough to bring off combining aspects of the two cuisines he is acknowledged as the king hell king chef before long. Topped off by bringing Madame that second Michelin star she has craved for many years. But small town France is not where Hassam can make his mark to do that he needs the competitive edge of Paris to see how good he can be. Of course that will put a big crimp in the affair with Marguerite but Hassam must follow his stars. And he does set all of Paris on fire with his innovative touches. That however does not make him happy because he is missing something-missing his Marguerite. So he decides to goes back for his fellow chef and life in the village. Of course that other love interest between Papa and Madame had unfolded along the way and so all’s well that ends well. Especially since Hassam and Marguerite are going to run Madame’s restaurant and get it up to Michelin three-star speed. A funny look at multiculturalism, the world of the kitchen and the inevitable girl-boy thing that drives most films. Enough said.       

The Multicultural Cuisine Look-The Hundred-Foot Journey

 

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

The Hundred-Foot Journey, starring Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, Charlotte LeBon, 2014 

It was bound to happen, no question, once the film industry caught up to this cycle’s uptick in people’s quests for all things culinary. Earlier this year I reviewed Chef, a story about a rags-to-riches latest trend food truck operator. In the film under review here, The Hundred-Foot Journey, we actually take a few steps back to the “fight” between the old-fashioned standard high-side French cuisine getting mixed in with a multicultural twist ancient India food made from hand-down to hand-down forbear memory in two restaurants in modern day France. (That “hundred-foot” in the title being literally true since the two restaurants are that far across the road from each other). Oh yeah, and mixed in with the battle of the cuisines is, well, the battle of the sexes, the also old-fashioned love story, or better stories.            

Here is how the love of food played out with love all mixed up like a garden salad (nice metaphor here right) topped off by the modern multicultural tolerance message. The restaurant-owning Kadam family, mostly importantly for the film, Papa (played by Om Puri) and Hassam who is being groomed as the next generation family chef (played by Manish Dayal) had been run out of India when the political winds shifted and wound up in asylum exile first in England where they could not make a go of it there then to France where they, mainly Papa decided to make a last stand to re-start his restaurant business in a small village. Decided to bring the ancient Indian cuisine to the peasantry so to speak. Problem One. French people (and others) as is well known like, really like French cuisine, actually look down in pity at the rest of the world and its hot dogs and hamburgers tastes, and the chances that they will go for Indian food seems remote. Problem Two. There is already a very fine French one-star, and eventually two-star, Michelin restaurant right across the street from their proposed site run by a Type-A owner, Madame Malloy (played by Helen Mirren who used to be Queen Elizabeth I when last seen in these precincts). So there was going to be a war between these two immovable objects who will fight just like McDonald’s and Burger King for market share. This has all the making a drag down fight to the finish.          

Well not exactly to the finish because then the cross-culinary mix gets mixed in with love interests, the first part between Hassam who is nothing by a genius chef in-waiting and an employee of Madame Malloy, Marguerite (played by Charlotte LeBon) who has her own dreams of being a master chef and the second part, once they get to know each other a little between Madame and Papa if you can believe that.

Here how where the ice got thawed.  Hassam wanted to see if he could make it in the high-end world of French cuisine since that is the standard in the industry so after the Indian restaurant established itself through Papa’s winning ways and after a few tense moments (brought on by Madame’s fears about her place) he becomes an apprentice chef at Madame’s place alongside Marguerite.       

Naturally since Hassam has been nurtured in the spice world of Indian food and is inventive enough to bring off combining aspects of the two cuisines he is acknowledged as the king hell king chef before long. Topped off by bringing Madame that second Michelin star she has craved for many years. But small town France is not where Hassam can make his mark to do that he needs the competitive edge of Paris to see how good he can be. Of course that will put a big crimp in the affair with Marguerite but Hassam must follow his stars. And he does set all of Paris on fire with his innovative touches. That however does not make him happy because he is missing something-missing his Marguerite. So he decides to goes back for his fellow chef and life in the village. Of course that other love interest between Papa and Madame had unfolded along the way and so all’s well that ends well. Especially since Hassam and Marguerite are going to run Madame’s restaurant and get it up to Michelin three-star speed. A funny look at multiculturalism, the world of the kitchen and the inevitable girl-boy thing that drives most films. Enough said.