***Where Is Perry Mason When You Need Him-Raymond Burr’s “Blue Gardenia”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir Blue Gardenia.

Blue Gardenia, starring Anne Baxter, Raymond Burr, Richard Conte, title song sung by Nat King Cole, directed by Fritz Lang, Warner brothers, 1953

Yes, where is Perry Mason when you need him. And not just because one of the lead actors in this film noir is Raymond Burr, who made Perry famous on 1950s black and white television (hey, look it upon Wikipedia if you don’t believe me there really was a time when that is what TV. viewing looked like. Ya, I know, the dark ages.), but because there is a murder to be solved. His. Or rather the ne’er do well, roué, lady’s man, whatever, character he plays here, Harry Preeble, an artist with a very roving eye.

If there is a murder, then there must be a murderer, right, or in this case a murderess, and here hard-working, get ahead, and just jilted Norah (played by Anne Baxter) is picture perfect for the frame, and the big house, women’s side. See, she was old boy Harry’s last known date, last know drunken date taken up to his apartment, from the wilds of the Blue Gardenia club, Chinese food, blue gardenias for the ladies, and serious rum drinks a specialty, to see that old chestnut, his etchings. Yes, silly girl, especially with Harry’s reputation. But birthday, jilted, and blue, flowers for your hair or not, would make any girl, hell, any human, a little out of sorts.

Out of sorts or not, Anne Baxter, who is reduced to sharing an apartment with two other fellow female workers (including one incredibly fierce chain-smoking Ann Sothern), is not going to take any fall for one little off night. And here is where hard-hitting reporter Casey at the press (played by Richard Conte) comes in to wrap things up, wrap them up so tight that even the police have to cry “uncle,” let her go, and go off in some corner and pout. That leaves only one thing. If Ann Baxter didn’t do it, then who did? I am not telling. But think back a minute, old Harry had that roving eye and so the number of female suspects could have stretched around the block. It’s too late for Mr. Harry, but remember that old saw about a woman scorned. Well don’t say you were not warned.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When Jimmy Jack’s Jukebox Jumped- Super Hits 1962-A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Brenda Lee performing her classic teen longing song, All Alone Am I.

CD Review

Super Hits 1962, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1991


Scene brought to mind by the cover that graces this CD. Simple. A jukebox, a Wurlitzer jukebox gismo, bright lights inviting, all are welcome, standing alone in some off-hand corner ready to be played by the latest crowd of song-hungry nickel, dime and quarter carrying teens after they get out of a hard day of fighting boredom at school, in this case the hoary Olde Saco High School up in Maine (or down in Maine for the purists) or are getting ready to do the do on a Friday or Saturday night (in summer, any night) before heading to wilder visions out in the great snarl of the Atlantic Ocean wave machine that is the setting for more than one budding romance, teenage style, Maine ocean teenage style.

“No question, no question at all, Jimmy Jack’s,” answered Josh Breslin to the off-hand life and death question posed by Billy La Croix, king hell king or at least prince, given his age, a mere thirteen, of the be-bop-crazed young teen night around Olde Saco, and maybe farther.

And the question posed by young Billy? Who has the best jukebox with the best and most up to date tunes around town? Of course, the question was a no-brainer, a real no-brainer, for real, because Billy just had to know the answer before he said it. See Billy is none other than the son of the owner of Jimmy Jack’s Diner, the most popular hang-out for teens, young and old, in the whole southern coastal Maine area.

Perhaps an explanation is in order. First off, the Jimmy Jack’s Diner we are referring to is the one on Main Street (really U.S. Route One but everybody calls it Main Street just to be in tune with the seven million other Main Streets that are really part of some state or federal road system and are just as forgettable in the dreary pass through towns of wayward America) down by the old long closed MacAdams Textile Mills, the one with the primo jukebox I just mentioned. The other Jimmy Jack’s Diner, the one over on Atlantic Avenue heading to the beach, is strictly for the early supper, two dinners for the price of one before six, Monday through Thursday, discounts for seniors all day, every day, and tourista in summer, place. With no jukebox, and with no need for such an object to draw the oldsters in.

Second, don’t be fooled by the Jimmy Jack thing, like it was some wayward down home Alabama or Mississippi thing. That’s a vanilla American thing that Billy’s father, real name Jean Jacques LaCroix, picked out when everybody after World War II wanted to leave their heritage behind and drop hyphens. Billy, Jimmy Jack, hell, even Josh Breslin on his mother‘s side (nee Leblanc) are nothing but French-American from way back, not Parisian types though but from Canada, you know Quebec or Nova Scotia, places like that.

And don’t get any idea, any idea at all that Billy LaCroix, or Jimmy Jack’s Diner’s jukebox, is filled up with hokey Cajun ancient Arcadian twos-step jolie blon memory accordion stuff. No Billy is not the king hell king of, maybe prince, given his age, of that kingdom but the, like I said before, be-bop teen night. That means rock, rock and rock for the squares, maybe a doo-wop tune or a weeper for the girls just to keep things interesting. And that has been true for a while.

Here’s how it works. Mr. LaCroix (although everybody calls him Jimmy Jack, except Mrs. LaCroix who still calls him some romanticky, smoochy, lovey-dovey, Jean Jacques, for some reason) figured out that with two diners in one town he wanted to cater to two different clienteles. You already know about the nursing home diner over on Atlantic Avenue for cheapos trying to impress nobody since everybody is already married. But the real Jimmy Jack’s with jukebox in tow is now strictly for teen-agers, for those who want to be teenagers but can’t because they are too old (or too young, maybe), and at night, especially weekend nights a little older crowd, a motorcycle and hot road crowd really for action but in need of early evening or late night (Jimmy Jack’s is open 24/7) refreshments and a little hot music to get things going. And to check out, ya, check out the honeys who line up around the place to be checked out. But you figured that out already. I hope.

And this is where Billy comes in, although now that you know some stuff asking Josh that question about who had the best jukebox was nothing but pure vanity on his part. His part now that he is king, or prince or something. But what got Jimmy Jack pushing the teen scene business is from the time he met Stu Miller, the king hell king and not no prince either but a real king of the hot road night, the only serious night around Olde Saco. Stu came into Jimmy Jack’s one day, one afternoon, from what I heard, for some coffee and. Business was a little slow so they got to talking and during the conversation Stu mentioned that the joint could use a jukebox so that kids who wanted to hear the latest tunes about twelve times in a row could do so in comfort, maybe dance a little, and just hang out.

Jimmy Jack didn’t think much of the idea while Stu was talking until about a half hour later while they were still mulling it over, pro and con, at least fifteen girls began filling up the booths and ordering Cokes and. And, of course, if fifteen girls are, just casually after a hard day looking beautiful at school and all, sitting in any public space for more than two minutes then, like lemmings to the nearby sea, thirty guys are going to be hanging around the booths ordering their Pepsi and. Of course, the real draw was Stu and his custom-built ’57 fire red Chevy that every girl in town, and from what I heard a few women, a couple married, wanted a ride in. And enough had, girls and women both, so that hanging around old Jimmy Jack’s, or any place else was just plain good luck for any girl (or woman) looking to try her luck.

You know, naturally, that Stu still has a special parking spot out in front of Jimmy Jack’s and no one, not police or anybody, had better be seen in it, or else. What you don’t know is that once Stu made Jimmy Jack’s his headquarters the jukebox was a sure thing and the master mad man in charge of keeping the machine filled with the latest hits and throwing out last week’s faded flowers was none other than Billy LaCroix. And his vanity question. And although Josh, as is his wont, will probably be scratching his head for a while over why Billy asked that question one and all should know that what makes Jimmy Jack’s jukebox jump is one William La Croix.

See Billy, since about the age of eight, has had an ear for the rumble coming out of the hills of rock and roll, for the real deal stuff, and the fakos too. So you can be sure that there will be plenty of Brenda Lee and her All Alone Am I and Break It To Me Gently for the swooning girls, and guys who have just been dumped by their true loves and couldn’t express themselves better than listening to Brenda eighty-six times to get over it, and they do. Get over it, that is. And the Drifters up-beat Up On The Roof (and whatever dream image that roof brings to mind) will get play as will the soapy Everley Brothers’ Crying In Rain. And Billy says Shelley Fabares’ Johnny Angel is nothing but candy for those self-same swooning girls and, get this, guys too because she looks kind of innocent foxy the way a lot of guys like their frills.

Jesus, you know every last dance dee-jay is hoping and praying that nobody ever, ever gets tired of last dance of the night because ‘Til by The Angels is built for nothing but last dance time. And every guy is hoping he gets lucky, and girls too. By the way forget Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, The Lettermen’s When I Fall In Love and Brian Hyland’s Sealed With A Kiss. Strictly faded flowers. You see what I mean. Ya, Jimmy Jack’s was the best.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Josh Breslin’s Chucks-In Honor Of Chuck Taylor, Or Rather His Sneakers-A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Ruby and the Romantics performing their classic teen angst song, Our Day Will Come.

CD Review

Super Hits 1963, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1991

Scene brought to mind by the cover that graces this CD. Simple, very simple. A pair, black, of course, of Chuck Taylor Hi-Top sneakers (minus the trademark logo here). For those who are clueless, Chuck Taylor was an ancient (and white, very white too) 1930s (or so) professional basketball player whose trademark were these hi-top sneakers that in the 1960s were sold with his famous Chuck Taylor logo on them. I had a bunch of pairs, black of course, in my Jack Kerouac /Allen Ginsberg Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford all night dive “beat” minute along with my black uncuffed chinos, flannel short, red bandana and midnight sunglasses before I turned, full-bore to generation of ’68 hip-hop concerns. Different ‘style,’ same concerns.

Since that time there have been periodic revivals, the early 1980 and mid-1990’s come to mind, (including what looks like a resurgence now) of these note-worthy items. I, naturally, tipped my hat to the trend and bought that mandatory bunch of pairs, black, of course. Now that I see resurgence, although about seven different knee, ankle and hip problems preclude any but a ritualistic symbolic purchase, I will buy a pair, black, of course. Today though, if one can even utter such sacrilege, they are in all colors of the rainbow. There are even low-tops (although how uncool is that) and, mercy, in an age of complete sneaker kill there are imitation Chucks (minus the Chuck logo, un-cool, don’t even say it).

What makes this all remarkable, remarkable to my old eyes, is that these are the very sneaker, although rather primitive by today’s techno-scientifically driven, aero-dynamically precise, lighter than air float, fleet-footed wedge of a sneaker, that Josh Breslin wore to win the Maine state championship in the mile for Olde Saco High School back in the day, the 1967 day. As he has reminded just recently, in case I might have forgotten a hard fact that he has repeated constantly since I first meet him wearing those same sneakers, or same style, black, of course up on a San Francisco Russian Hill park in the summer of love in the year of our lord, 1967. And if you do not know that particular summer of love reference and think it was, or is, just some reference to your average, ordinary, plain vanilla version of summer love like happens every summer when boy meets girl, or girl meets boy, or name your particular combination these days, well hell’s bells, go look it up in Wikipedia.

Oh, sorry, you don’t know Josh Breslin or have never heard of him. Well, I guess, probably not, but he like about twelve million other guys (and gals) had Olympic dreams, or at least Olympic –sized dream based on that silly little local schoolboy win. Moreover, Josh based that big time dream, more understandably, understandably to these ears, on the fiercest desire to get out from under his working poor roots. Ya, Josh’s is that kind of story, another in a long line of such stories, but a story nevertheless. And although he told me the story a long time ago it always kind of stuck with me since I too had some dreams, not Olympic dreams, or Olympic-sized dreams for that matter, but shared his great desire to get out from under my own low-rent working poor roots. That’s probably, although Josh is a few years younger than I am, why when we meet in the summer of love in 1967 out in day-glo, merry prankster, magical mystery tour, yellow brick road San Francisco we kind of hit it off right away. Even though he “stole” my girl, Butterfly Swirl (real name Kathleen Callahan from down in Carlsbad in that same California dream night, Ya, it was that kind of time, read up on it like I said), right from under my nose. But to his story.
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Josh Breslin, church mouse proud, poor as a church mouse proud, maybe poorer, just like his father, Prescott, never liked to show how poor he was, especially after his father lost his job in the MacAdams Textile Mills after that firm fled south for cheaper labor and left many in Olde Saco, that’s up in coastal podunk Maine, with not much to scratch by on. With the years Prescott’s dreams faded to insect size, maybe ant size, but Josh, once he got to be about eleven or twelve just decided one day that way, that dreamless father dream way, was not for him. Let’s just leave it at that for his motivation, and that seems about right for the eight millions strains that a young boy is under, and puts himself under.

But like many twelve- year olds what the hell is he going to do about it. Too young to work, to young and clueless to take off on some bum freighter, or smoke dream freight train. In short, no prospects, no hit you in the head with prospects. Then one day, one late fall day Josh, walking down to Olde Saco Beach after school, purple paisley-print hand-me-down shirt from older brother, untucked, chinos, uncuffed, (signifying not cool, not cool in Olde Saco boy teen world, but cuffed were more expensive and that argument won the day, the Mother Breslin day), and wore buster brown shoes to guide him through early tween-hood just started to run once he hit the sand, and he kept running for long while, long enough to work up a serious sweat, and get rid of some serious angst, tween variety.

And that simply enough is how it started. Now at twelve or so he was no speed demon, and too ill-formed physically to have endurance yet but he was on a roll and for a couple of years he just ran, ran to get some sweat up, and take some of that angst crust off. By the time he reached Olde Saco High in the ninth grade he had something of a reputation as a guy who ran (and as a loner, except for the odd girl or seven who fell for his “from hunger” but “cute” routine but that, like the later, ah, Butterfly Swirl “theft” incident is not part of the story so we will move on) so, naturally, the cross country coach (who also tripled as indoor and out track coach), “recruited” him to the teams. Grade 9 Josh was something of a bust because he tried to keep pace with the older boys rather than run at his own pace, and part of grade 10 too, but anyone could see that he had plenty of determination to run, and seek his glory by running. This was the ticket out, the way out.

There is no need to go into detail about his training regimen (running the dunes, beach work, mainly) or that toward the end of tenth grade he started to beat the older boys not just at Olde Saco but around southern Maine too. You can look that stuff up. What you can’t look up, at least in any record book, is how Josh in his senior year won it all, won the Maine state one mile championship that was going to propel him to, well, Olympic heights. And the key? Josh, sometime in the eleventh grade got hold of a pair of Chuck Taylor’s. ( I won’t bore you with the black, of course tag) Why, well, in those pre-techno-wiz sneakers with bells and whistles crazed days because they were cheap, all Prescott could afford for his son. Now Chuck’s may have had (and have) a certain cache as basketball shoes, and maybe even by the time Josh started winning a lot a certain “cool” cache with the girls but to win races, even podunk state championship races, you needed real track shoes, Adidas, stuff like that. Not Josh though. The kid he beat from Auburn upstate had them but there was young Josh in the winner’s circle with his old clickety-clack Chuck’s.

More than one Olde Saco girl who had not previously fallen for his “from hunger” act started calling him up in the night. Late at night. Including one cheerleader-type who practically stalked him and who when she introduced herself stated “I didn’t know Olde Saco had a track team.” Oh, well. Now I wish that I could say that Josh then went on to fame and fortune as a runner. In those days, unlike now when there is real dough in the thing, runners as a species were “from hunger” and so that dream energy went into other stuff. But, hell, it still is a good story, right? Especially that "cool with the girls" part. I know Butterfly Swirl liked his “kicks” (code name for Chuck’s among the aficionados) out in that warm San Francisco summer of love night. Damn Josh and his damn silly sneakers.

***Out Of the Be-Bop 1940s Film Noir Night-Publish Or Perish- “The Big Clock”- A Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir The Big Clock

DVD Review

The Big Clock, starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lancaster, Paramount Pictures, 1948

Yes, after over a score of film reviews of noir efforts I can truthfully say they come in all sizes, some that stretch the limits of “proper” noir dimensions like the noir under review, The Big Clock. After all plenty of glib lines, some faded femme fatale, a few screwball scenes and an off-hand maniacal press baron as the bad guy could have fit as well as in the 1930s social comedy beat. The thing that saves this actually nice ninety minute film is the flashback aspect of the plot line as it unfolds and the comeuppance of one Rupert Murdoch, oops, Earl Janoth (played a little too woodenly, and perhaps archly, by great actor Charles Laughton).

As to the plot line here is the skinny. Press baron Janoth will stop at nothing, nothing at all (sound familiar?), to keep up the circulation of his various world-wide journalistic enterprises, in the days before social media clicked our cares away, when such items were massively bought and read by the large reading public, Needless to say in order to keep producing plenty of grist for the mill, and keep people employed, it is necessary to have a staff that is little short of workaholic (to say nothing of alcoholic). And here is where hard working journal editor George Stroud (playing in dapper, and perhaps a little too arch as well, manner by Ray Milland) trying to balance work and home life comes in. Because if anybody is going to get to the bottom of anything, anything, at all, it will be George Shroud. Just ask his hard-pressed wife.

And George has plenty to get to the bottom of. It seems that among his oddball, off-hand interests (besides big clocks, keeping a very tight ship, and firing people at a patrician whim) Mr. Janoth doesn’t like the idea of being the “fall guy” for murder. Oh, yes and he also is jealous of other men “courting” his wayward, conniving mistress. Which leads to said murder (maybe murder two, but murder nevertheless) when he confronts his dear after seemingly seeing some shadowy guy coming out of their little love nest. That is why he needs a fall guy.

What he doesn’t know is that George, innocently (at least from what we are shown on camera and what figures given the unfolding plot line), is the spotted guy. Naturally Mr. Janoth, given his aversion, wants to cover his tracks and find that fall guy. As is also inevitable he puts someone on the case that will leave no stone unturned. Yes, George. So you know, know even before the final confrontation of good and bad that drives noir that Mr. Murdoch, oops again, Janoth is going to take “the fall.” And that, my friends, is what passed for high drama, high journalistic-themed drama, in the days before social networking eliminated the guesswork.

***You Don’t Need A Band To Perform The Last Waltz-Do You?

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his teen tear-jerker, Teen Angel to set an "appropriate" mood for this post.

The Last Waltz, Indeed

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

Note: The term “last waltz” of the title of this piece is used as a simple expression of the truth. The life, or better, half-life of this sketch came about originally through reviewing, a few years ago, a long-running series of “Oldies But Goodies” CDs from the 1950s and early 1960s, the time of my coming of age time. After reviewing ten of these things I found out that the series was even longer, fifteen in all. Rather than turning myself into some local hospital for a cure and the good effects of some oldies twelve-step program to restore my soul health I plugged on. Plugged on, plugged on intrepidly, with the full knowledge that such things had their saturation point.

After all how much could one rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those of us who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in those treasured compilations. How many times, moreover, can one read about wallflowers (their invisibleness and, dread of dreads, not winding up like them even if it meant casting off friendships with every known nerdish future, doctor, engineer and lawyer in town), sighs (ahs, and otherwise), certain shes (or hes for shes) the real point of reviewing any such compilations, the crepe paper-etched moonlight glow on high school dance night (if there was any, moon that is) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!

Or so I thought until my old friend, my old mad monk, merry prankster, stone freak, summer of love (1967 version) compadre from Olde Saco up in Maine, Josh Breslin. Yes, that Josh Breslin, or rather Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who have read his by-line over the years in half the unread radical chic or alterative vision publications in this country, called me up in a frenzy just after I had finally completed the last damn review. And as usual when he calls up in the dead of night it was “girl” trouble, if that is the appropriate way to describe such an illness for sixty-somethings.

His frenzied three in the morning problem? Josh’s Old Saco High School Class of 1967 was going to have its fortieth reunion, and through the now weathered Mainiac grapevine he found out that some middle school (then junior high) sweetheart, Lucy Dubois (Olde Saco was, and is a central gathering spot for French-Canadians and French Canadian Americans, including Josh’s old mother, Delores, nee LeBlanc), was going to show and he needed a refresher on the old time tunes. More importantly, he continued on to explain why he, madcap love ‘em and leave Josh in that summer of love 1967, and beyond, including a not forgotten “theft” of my girlfriend at the time, Butterfly Swirl (ya it was that kind of time), still had a “crush” on Ms. Dubois and what was he going to do about it come reunion night. So the following is just a little mood music from Josh’s backward trek in the old reprobate own words, or close to them as that degenerate will ever get.
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No question that those of us who came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s were truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents please. Or look it up on Wikipedia if you are too embarrassed to not know such ancient history things. Join the bus.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that one’s parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least they left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.

Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable forty or fifty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation like the ones Peter Paul has been satanically reviewing but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me (and Peter Paul when we talked about such august matters one Big Sur 1968 night, one stoned night but that is just redundant after I already said Big Sur 1968), or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. Just don’t remind Lucy of that, okay. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip, to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. I had to drop more guys from the old neighborhood over on Albemarle, the Olde Saco projects, who later made good just because I didn’t want the guilt by association wallflower nerd label hanging around my neck. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, maybe now too, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.

But what about the now seeming mandatory question that Peter Paul made a point of asking in those dimwitted reviews he is so proud of, the inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that I really want to talk about. Or rather about Lucy Dubois’ (I won’t use her married name because she still lives up around Olde Saco and has, many, many family connections around, including a couple of giant economy-sized brothers). The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumble-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar).

Here the 1960 Mark Dinning tune Teen Angel fills the bill, or filled Lucy’s bill. Hey, I did really like this one too, especially the soulful, sorrowful timing and voice intonation. Yes, I know, I know the lyrics are, well, not life-enhancing and apparently the Laura or Lorraine who, ill-advisedly, ran back to that car stuck on the railroad track was none too bright. Not if she went overt he edge for some cheapjack high school ring that would not survive more than few hand-washings before turning green and that, moreover, Lance or Larry had already previously given (and taken back) from half the girls in the school. Jesus, did we really think we were that immortal. Yes, before you even start, I also know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason than to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences). I did, didn’t you?

Well Lucy showed up that class reunion night as expected since my intelligence source on the matter was very reliable. Moreover the “as expected” aspect had an additional factor also relayed by that same source. Lucy was coming back only because she had heard that I was coming back for the reunion. Damn, she still held me in thrall when I saw here coming in the entrance of the hotel ballroom where the reunion was being held on the outskirts of Portland, as I flashed back to the old days, the days when Lucy and I shared many a laugh, many an awkward boy and girl junior high school laugh, and later many a stolen kiss down at Squaw Rock, the “parking” end of Olde Saco Beach.

See, there was some kind of cosmic karma bond between us from early on even though we had more than our share of battles, break-ups, alternative romances, and the like. And from early on she was always the sensible one the one that teethered my flights of fancy and kept me from going off more than one deep-end. Or almost. Lucy, as was the serious tradition in Podunk Olde Saco French-Canadian culture, the working class part which when you got right down to it was on the only real part back then, was “slated” to be married (and out of the house) right after high school. And I was the guy, the glad guy for most of high school to join her in that act. Much to the joy of her parents and my own French-Canadian mother (nee LeBlanc).

But then the 1960s hit backwater Olde Saco in late 1966 and early 1967 and I got the wanderlust a little, although I was “slated” to go to State U in the fall of ’67. Peter Paul already mentioned my summer of love exploits, or if he didn’t he will although take any such talk strictly with the grain of salt. So instead of marrying Lucy that summer I told her to wait until I got back. Well, I got a little delayed, made seventeen detours here and there, and by the time I was ready to settle down a little Lucy had already found somebody else to marry and that was that. Except that never-ending slight gnawing in my stomach every time I heard the name Lucy, Olde Saco, Maine, the ocean, somebody parking a car, or took more than more than one stolen kiss.

Upon seeing her once again across the ballroom I almost could smell that faint-edged scent, some lilac and dreams, bed sheet dream, scent, that always travelled around with her and drove me (and other guys too, no question) to distraction. That slender girl with the do good in the world dreams and cozy cottage ambitions. But mainly it was that sensibleness, that what you see is what you get, and that ingrained gentliness no book or essay could convey that would see her, and you, through many stormy nights. And what song did we, Josh Breslin and Lucy Dubois, trot out on that scary dance floor to on that wintry November reunion night? Come on now, guess.
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....and a trip down memory lane.

MARK DINNING lyrics - Teen Angel

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh

That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please

***Ancient dreams, dreamed- When Miss Cora Swayed –Magical Realism 101

Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie a guy up so bad he will go to the chair without a murmur, the electric chair for those not in the know or those not wound up in the love game with a big old knot very tightly squeezing him. That is he will not murmur if there is such a merciful chair in his locale, otherwise whatever way they cut the life out of a guy who has been so twisted up he couldn’t think straight enough to tie his own shoes, or hers. Here’s the funny part and you know as well as I do that I do not mean funny, laughing funny, the guy will go to his great big reward smiling, okay half-smiling, just to have been around that frail, frill, twist. dame, oh hell, you know what I mean. Around her slightly shy, sly, come hither scents, around her, well, just around her. Or maybe just to be done with it, the knots and all, although six-two-and even he would go back for more, plenty more, and still have that smile, ah, half-smile as they lead him away. Ya, guys just like Frank.

Frank Jackman had it bad.(but you might as well fill in future Peter Paul Markins, Joshua Lawrence Breslins, name your name, just kids when they started getting twisted up in knots, girl knots, and a million, more or less, other guys as easily as Frank, real easy). Ya, Frank had it bad as a man could have from the minute Miss Cora walked through that café door from the back of the house, the door that separated the living quarters from the café. Just an off-hand plain plank door, cheaply made and amateurishly hinged, that spoke of no returns.

She breezed, Frank thought later when he tried to explain it, explain everything that had happened and how to anyone who would listen, trade winds breezed in although this was the wrong coast for that, in her white summer frilly vee-necked buttoned cotton blouse, white short shorts, tennis or beach ready, maybe just ready for whatever came along, with convenience pockets for a woman’s this-and-that, and showing plenty of well-turned, lightly-tanned bare leg, long legs at first glance, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white, the bandana that is. Ya, she came out of that crooked cheapjack door like some ill-favored Pacific wind, some Japan current ready, ready for the next guy out. Jesus.

I might as well tell you, just like he told it to me before he moved on, it didn’t have to finish up like the way it. Or start that way, for that matter. Like the way it did play out. Not at all. No way. He could have just turned around anytime he said but I just took that as so much wind talking, or maybe some too late regret. Sure there are always choices, for some people. Unless you had some Catholic/Calvinist/Shiva whirl pre-destination mandela wheel working your fates, working your fates into damn overdrive like our boy Frank.

Listen up a little and see if Frank was just blowing smoke, or something. He was just a half-hobo, maybe less, bumming around and stumbling up and down the West Coast, too itchy to settle down after four years of hard Pacific battle fights on bloody atolls, on bloody coral reefs, and knee-deep bloody islands with names even he couldn’t remember, or want to remember after Cora came on the horizon but that was later. He was just stumbling like he said from one half-ass mechanic’s job in some flop garage here, another city day laborer’s job shoveling something there, and picking fruits, hot sun fruits, maybe vegetables depending on the crop rotation, like some bracero whenever things got really tough, or the hobo jungle welcome ran out, ran out with the running out of wines and stubbed cigarette butts. He mentioned something about freight yard tramp knives, and cuts and wounds. Tough, no holds barred stuff, once tramp, bum, hobo solidarities broke down, and that easy and often. Frank just kind of flashed that part of the story because he was in a hurry for me to get it straight about him and Cora and the hobo jungle stuff was just stuff, and so much train smoke and maybe a bad dream.

Hell, the way he was going, after some bracero fruit days with some bad hombre bosses standing over his sweat, the “skids” in Los Angeles, down by the tar pits and just off the old Southern Pacific line, were looking good, a good rest up. Real good after fourteen days running in some Imperial Valley fruit fields so he started heading south, south by the sea somewhere near Paseo Robles to catch some ocean sniff, and have himself washed clean by loud ocean sounds so he didn’t have to listen to the sounds coming from his head about getting off the road.

Here is where luck is kind of funny though, and maybe this is a place where it is laughing funny, because, for once, he had a few bucks, a few bracero fruit bucks, stuck in his socks, he was hungry, maybe not really food hungry, but that would do at the time for a reason, and once he hit the coast highway this Bayview Diner was staring him right in the face after the last truck ride had let him off a few hundred yards up the road. Some fugitive barbecued beef smell, or maybe strong onions getting a work out over some griddled stove top, reached him and turned him away from the gas station fill-up counter where he had planned, carefully planning to husband his dough to the city of angels, to just fill up with a Coke and moon pie. But that smell got the better of him. So he walked into that Bayview Café, walked in with his eyes wide open. And then she walked through the damn door.

She may have been just another blonde, a very blonde frail, just serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint as he found out later, but from second one when his eyes eyed her was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Frank femme fatale, fatal. Of course between eying, pillow talk dreaming, and scheming up some “come on” line once she had her hooks into him, which was about thirty seconds after he laid eyes on her, he forgot, foolishly forgot, rule number one of the road, or even of being a man in go-go post-war America. What he should have asked, and had in the past when he wasn’t this dame-addled, was a dish like this doing serving them off the arm in some rundown roadside café out in pacific coast Podunk when she could be sunning herself in some be-bop daddy paid-up hillside bungalow or scratching some other dame’s eyes out to get a plum role in a B Hollywood film courtesy of some lonely rich producer. Never for a minute, not even during those thirty seconds that he wasn’t hooked did he figure, like some cagey guy would figure, that she had a story hanging behind that bandana hair.

And she did. Story number one was a “serve them off the platter” hubby short-ordering behind the grill in that tramp cafe. The guy who, to save dough, bought some wood down at the lumber yard and put up that crooked door that she had come through on first sight and who spent half his waking hours trying to figure how to short-change somebody, including his Cora. Story number two, and go figure, said hubby didn’t care one way or the other about what she did, or didn’t do, as long as he had her around as a trophy to show the boys on card-playing in the back living rooms and Kiwanis drunk as a skunk nights. Story number three was that she had many round-heeled down-at- the-heels stories too long to tell Frank before hubby came along to pick her out of some Los Angles arroyo gutter. Story number four, the one that would in the end sent our boy Frankie smiling, sorry half-smiling, to his fate was she hated hubby, hell-broth murder hated her husband, and would be “grateful” in the right way to some guy who had the chutzpah to take her out of this misery. But those stories all came later, later when she didn’t need to use those hooks she had in him, use them at all.

I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled, yelled from some womblike place, at the screen once I saw her coming through that door for him, for Frank, to get the hell out of there at that moment. This dame was poison, no question. Frank stop looking at those long paid for legs and languid rented eyes for a minute and get the hell out of there to some safe hobo jungle. Hell, just go out the café door, run if you have too, get your hitchhike great blue-pink American West thumb out and head for it. There’s a hobo jungle just down the road near Santa Monica, get going, and tonight grab some stolid, fetid stews, and peace.

But here is where fate works against some guys, hell, most guys. She turned around to do some dish rack thing or other with her lipstick-smeared coffee cup and then, slowly, turned back to look at Frank with those languid eyes, what color who knows, it was the look not the color that doomed Frank and asked in a soft, kittenish voice “Got a cigarette for a fresh out girl?” And wouldn’t you know, wouldn’t you just know, that Frank, “flush” with bracero dough had bought a fresh deck of Luckies at the cigarette machine out at that filling station just adjacent to the diner and they were sitting right in his left shirt pocket for the entire world to see. For her to see. And wouldn’t you know that Frank could see plain as day, plain as a man could see if he wanted to see, that bulging out of one of the convenience pockets of those long-legged white short shorts was the sharply-etched outline of a package of cigarettes. Ya, still he plucked a cigarette into her waiting lips, kind of gently, gently for rough-edged Frank, lit her up, and dated her up with his eyes. Gone, long-gone daddy, gone except for dreams and that final smile.

I screamed again, some vapid man-child scream, some kicking at the womb thump too, but do you think Frank would listen, no not our boy. You don’t need to know all the details if you are over twenty-one, hell over twelve and can keep a secret. She used her sex every way she could, and a few ways that Frank, not unfamiliar with the world’s whorehouses in lonely ports-of-call, was kind of shocked at, but only shocked. Like I said, he was hooked, hook, line and sinker. Frank knew, knew what she was, knew what she wanted, and knew what he wanted so there was no crying there.

Here is what is strange, and while I am writing this even I think it is strange. She told Frank her whole life’s story, the too familiar father crawling up into her teen bed, the run-aways, returns, girls homes, some more streets, a few whore house tricks, some street tricks, a little luck with a Hollywood producer until his wife, who controlled the dough, put a stop to it, some drugs, some L.A. gutters, and then a couple of years back some refuge from those mean streets via husband Manny’s Bayview Diner.

Even with all of that Frank still believed, believed somewhere from deep in his recessed mind, somewhere in his Oklahoma kid mud shack mind, that Cora was virginal. Some Madonna of the streets. Toward the end it was her scent, some slightly lilac scent, some lilac scent that combined with steamed vegetable sweat combined with sexual animal sweat combined with ancient Lydia MacAdams' bath soap fresh junior high school crush sweat drove him over the edge. Drove him to that smiling chair.

He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end. Christ, just like his whole young stupid gummed up life he had to play with fire. And from that minute, although really from the minute that Frank saw those long legs protruding from those white shorts Manny was done for. Hell, these two amateurs gummed up the job every which way, gummed it so that even a detective novel writer would turn blush red with shame. If you want the details just look them up in the 1946 fall editions of the Los Angeles Times, they covered the story big, and the trial too. That’s just the details though. I can give you the finish now and save your eyes, maybe. Frank, ya, Frank was just kind of smiling that smile, what did I call it, half-smile, all the way to the end. Do you need to know more?

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The 42nd Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company performing the bluesy classic, Piece Of My Heart.

Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some fogged memory accompanying CD booklet of a wispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. In the time of our time. Belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing from somewhere beyond a no good man, no job, no roof over a head, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or down town “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay.
*******
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or some place like that) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Ya, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then.

Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.

Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” he decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.

What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.

Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).

Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain is the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).

But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.

What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.

Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).

Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.

Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.

The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night-When “Stewball” Stu Ruled The Highways

Click on to the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Danny and The Juniors performing Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay to set the mood for this sketch.

Scene: Brought to mind by the be-bop cover photograph of a “boss” two-toned 1950s Oldsmobile sitting in front of a car dealership just waiting to be driven off in the “golden age of the automobile” night.

“Stewball” Stu loves cars, loved 1950s classic “boss” cars, period. And on the very top of that heap is his cherry red ’57 Chevy. The flamed-out king hell dragon of the Mainiac highways, especially those back roads around his, our, hometown, Olde Saco, close by the sea. Not for him the new stuff, the new “boss” Mustang, Mustang Sally ride I am crazy for, or would be crazy for if, (1) I was older than my current no-driver, no legal driver fifteen, and (2) I had any kind of dough except the few bucks I grab doing this and that, mainly that. And how do I know about Stewball’s preferences, prejudices if you want to put it that way? Well I, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, have been riding “shot-gun” to Stewball’s driver for the past several months, ever since I proved my metal, my Stu-worthy metal, when I “scrammed” a while back when Stu moved in on me and a “hot date” I had with a local Lolita and three was a crowd(let’s leave it at for her name, looks and prowess since she was, uh, what you would call under-aged but definitely not under-sexed and maybe even now the statute of limitations hasn’t run on that fact, the age fact. But, hell, why do you think King Stu moved in on me?).

You, Stu and I are tight, tight as a nineteen- year old guy who is the king of the roads around here can be with a fifteen-year old guy with no dough, no drivers’ license, no sister for him to drool over, and zero, maybe minus zero, mechanical skills to back him up. So you see me flaking out on that Lolita thing meant a lot to Stewball, although he is not a guy that you can figure something on, not easy figuring anyhow.

[Hey, by the way, by the very big way, that Stewball moniker is strictly between you and me. Some of the guys that hang around his garage (really his bent out of shape trailer home rigged up with all kinds of automobile-fixing stuff all over the place) started to call him “Stewball” among ourselves after we observed, observed for the sixty-fifth time, Stu loaded before noon on some rotgut Southern Comfort that he swore kept his sober, unlike whiskey. Like I say don’t spread that around because Stu in one tough hombre. I once saw him chain-whip a guy just for kind of eyeing a Lolita (not the one I butted out on) that was sitting next to him in that cherry red Chevy at Jimmy Jacks’s Diner, the one down on Route One, not the one over on Atlantic Avenue. Enough said, okay.]

Let me tell you about one time a few months back when Stu proved, for the umpteenth time (although my first time, first really seeing him in action glory time), why no one can come close to him as king of these roads around here, and maybe any. It was a Friday night, an October Friday night just starting to get to be defroster or car heater time so it had to be then. Stu, who lives over on Tobacco Road (I won’t tell you his real address because, like he says, what people don’t know is just fine with him and the girls all know where he is anyway. Ya, that’s a real Stu-ism) picked me up at my house on Albemarle Street (got that girls, Albemarle) like he always does, sometime between seven and eight, also as usual.

We then make the loop. First down Atlantic passed the Colonial Donut Shoppe (they serve other stuff there too, early in the day breakfast stuff, all day) to see if there was any stray clover (A Stu-ism for a girl, origin unknown) or two looking to erase the gloomy, lonely night coming on. I hoped two, two girls that is, because while I am glad, glad as hell, that I did right by Stu with that Lolita (and she was hot, maybe too hot for me then, not now) I don’t want to make a habit of it, being Stu’s “shot-gun,” or not. No dice. So off to Lanny’s Bowl-A-World over on Sea Street. Guess it was kind of early because no dice there either. Well, it’s off to “headquarters,” Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Main Street (really Route One but everybody local calls it Main just to be from Main Street, although I never got the joke).

Now Jimmy Joe’s has been Stu’s headquarters for so long that he has a “reserved” spot there. Yes, right in front just to the left on the entrance so that he can “scope” (Stu-ism) the scene (read: girls, Josh-ism). Jimmy Joe, the owner, felt that Stu was so good for business, Friday night hot teenage girls crowding the place looking for fast-driving guys and fast, or slow, driving guys for, well you know and I don’t have to draw you a diagram on that, business so he had no problem with the arrangement.

Except this Friday night, this October Friday night, Stu’s reserved spot is occupied, occupied by a two-toned low-riding 1956 Oldsmobile that even I can see had been worked on, worked hard on to create maximum horse-power in the minimum time. And inside that Oldsmobile sat one Duke McKay, a guy some of us had heard of, from down in Kittery near the New Hampshire border. So maybe Duke, not knowing the local rules, parked in that spot by accident.

Ya that seemed like the right answer because no local guy, not even some hayseed farmer boy with more horsepower than head power, would park with in three spaces of Stu’s spot. Just in case he needed some extra space. No way, though. Why? Because sitting right next old Duke, actually almost on top of him was that Lolita that I made way for to help Stu. Said Lolita (not her real name like I said because she was, and is maybe, as I write, uh, still not “of age” so Lolita is a good enough moniker) looking very fine, very fine indeed, as Stu goes over to the Oldsmobile to give Duke the what for. I can almost hear the whipsaw chains coming out.

But Stu must have had some kind of jinx on him, or Lolita had put one on him, because all he did was make Duke a proposition. Beat Stu in a “chicken run” and the parking spot, Lolita, and the unofficial king of the road title were his. Lose, and he was gone (without a chain-whipping, I hoped) from Olde Saco, permanently, minus Lolita. Now I can see where this Lolita was worth getting a little steamed up about. But take it from me Stu, until just this minute, was strictly a love them or leave them guy (leave them to me, please). Duke, with eight million pounds of bravado, answered quickly like any true road-warrior does when challenged just and uttered, “On.” And we were off, although not before Lolita gave Stu some madness femme fatale look. A look, a pout really, which you couldn’t tell if she was in Stu’s corner or just really wanted to see him in flamed-out hell. Girls, hell.

A chicken race, for the squares, is nothing but a race between two cars (usually), two fast teenager-driven cars, done late at night or early in the morning out on some desolate road, sometimes straight, sometimes not. The idea is to get a fast start and keep the accelerator on the floor as long as possible before some flame-out. For Olde Saco runs they use the beach down at the Squaw Rock end since it is long, flat, and wide even at high tide, and the loser either winds up in the dunes or the ocean, usually the latter, ruining a perfectly good car but that is the way it is. Most importantly it is out of sight of the cops until it too late, way too late for them to do anything about it-except call a tow truck.

So about two in the morning one could see a ’57 cherry red Chevy lining up, with me as a “second,” against a ’56 Oldsmobile, with Lolita as Duke’s “second.” Jimmy Jack’s son, Billy, who I will tell you about sometime, acted as starter as usual. And at Billy’s signal we are off. Duke got an extremely fast start and was maybe thirty yards ahead of us and it looked like we were done for when Stu opened up from somewhere and flat out “smoked” the side of Duke Olds sending his vehicle off into the ocean, soon to sputter in the roaring waves, and oblivion.

Stu stopped the Chevy, backed up the several hundred yards to the vicinity of the distressed Oldsmobile, opened up the passenger side door of that wreck and escorted Lolita, as nice as you please, to his king hell Chevy. And she was smiling, no pout this time, smiling very, well let’s put it this way, Stu’s got a big treat coming. And Josh? Well, Stu yelled over “Hey, Josh, hope you find a ride home tonight.” But do you see what I mean about Stewball Stu being the king of the roads around here. What a guy.

***You Don’t Need The Band To Perform The Last Waltz-Do You?

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his teen tear-jerker, Teen Angel to set an "appropriate" mood for this post.

The Last Waltz, Indeed

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

Note: The term “last waltz” of the title of this piece is used as a simple expression of the truth. The life, or better, half-life of this sketch came about originally through reviewing, a few years ago, a long-running series of “Oldies But Goodies” CDs from the 1950s and early 1960s, the time of my coming of age time. After reviewing ten of these things I found out that the series was even longer, fifteen in all. Rather than turning myself into some local hospital for a cure and the good effects of some oldies twelve-step program to restore my soul health plugged on. Plugged on, plugged on intrepidly, with the full knowledge that such things had their saturation point.

After all how much could one rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those of us who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in those treasured compilations. How many times, after all, can one read about wallflowers (their invisibleness and dread of dreads not winding up like them even if it meant casting off friendships with every known nerdish future, doctor, engineer and lawyer in town, sighs (Ahs, and otherwise), certain shes (or hes for shes) the real point of reviewing any such compilations, the crepe paper-etched moonlight glow on high school dance night (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!

Or so I thought until my old friend, my old mad monk, merry prankster, stone freak, summer of love (1967 version) compadre from Olde Saco up in Maine, Josh Breslin. Yes, that Josh Breslin, or rather Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who have read his by-line over the years in half the unread radical chic or alterative vision publications in this country, called me up in a frenzy just after I had finally completed the last damn review. And as usual when he calls up in the dead of night it was “girl” trouble, if that is the appropriate way to say it for sixty-somethings.

His frenzied three in the morning problem? Josh’s Old Saco High School Class of 1967 was going to have its fortieth reunion, and through the now weathered Mainiac grapevine he found out that some middle school (then junior high) sweetheart, Lucy Dubois (Olde Saco was, and is a central gathering spot for French-Canadians and French Canadian Americans, including Josh’s old mother, Delores, nee LeBlanc), was going to show and he needed a refresher on the old time tunes. More importantly, he continued on to explain why he, madcap love ‘em and leave Josh in that summer of love 1967, and beyond, including a not forgotten “theft” of my girlfriend at the time, Butterfly Swirl (ya it was that kind of time), still had a “crush” on Ms. Dubois and what was he going to do about it come reunion night. So the following is just a little mood music from Josh’s backward trek.
********
No question that those of us who came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s were truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents please. Or look it up on Wikipedia if you are too embarrassed to not know ancient history things. Join the bus.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that one’s parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.

Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable forty or fifty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation like the ones Peter Paul has been satanically reviewing but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. Just don’t tell Lucy that, okay. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. I had to drop more guys from the old neighborhood over on Albemarle, the projects, who later made good just because I didn’t want the guilt by association wallflower nerd label tagged around my neck. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, maybe now too, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.

But what about the now seeming mandatory question that Peter Paul made a point of asking in those dimwitted reviews he is so proud of, the inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that I really want to talk about. Or rather about Lucy Dubois’ (I won’t use her married name because she still lives up around Olde Saco and has, many, many family connections around, including a couple of giant economy-sized brothers). The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumble-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar).

Here the 1960 Mark Dinning tune Teen Angel fills the bill, or filled Lucy’s bill. Hey, I did really like this one too, especially the soulful, sorrowful timing and voice intonation. Yes, I know, I know the lyrics are, well, not life-enhancing and apparently the Laura or Lorraine who ill-advisedly ran back to that car stuck on the railroad track was none too bright. Not for some cheapjack high school ring that would not survive more than few hand-washings and that, moreover, Lance or Larry had already previously given (and taken back) from half the girls in the school. Yes, I also know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason than to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences). I did, didn’t you?

Well Lucy showed up that class reunion night as expected, as expected as she told me once she heard that I was coming back for the night. Damn, she still held me in thrall. Upon seeing her once again across the room I almost could smell that faint-edged scent, some lilac and dreams, bed sheet dream, scent, that always travelled around with her and drove me (and other guys too, no question) to distraction. And what song did we, Josh Breslin and Lucy Dubois, trot out to on that wintry November reunion night? Come on now, guess.
*************
....and a trip down memory lane.

MARK DINNING lyrics - Teen Angel

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh

That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please

***Out In the Be-Bop 1950s Night- Josh Learns Love 101 The Hard Way

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Chuck Berry performing his rock and roll classic, Maybelline.

CD Review

The Golden Age Of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Volume 10, various artists including Chuck Berry, Ace Records, Ltd., 2002

Scene brought to mind by the photo that graces the cover of this CD: Friday night, maybe Saturday, but probably not because that day is real date night, not girls night out time waster like Friday night. If it is summer- it’s school’s out jail-break out time and by the look of the cherry two-toned pink convertible fully down it is a no rain summer day turn into night. And it could be any night, except definitely not a Saturday date night, because the three vixens, 1950s style vixens okay, sitting side by side in the front seat of that chariot would not be wasting their time on that night girls cruising the Olde Saco beach night but would be busy holding off some sidewalk Lothario, or kind of, half kind of, holding off said mad man, down at the “submarine” races Squaw Rock end of the beach.

Ya, it had to be Friday night because this threesome have just come from Jimmy Jack’s Diner on old Main Street (really Route One but everybody calls it Main Street, well, to be from Main street okay). And right now Jimmy Jack’s, the local teen heaven place of earthly delights (read: boys for girls, girls for boys, whatever), is zero, nothing but a zero because the place is filled with grandpas and grandmas having their weekly thrill minute on Jimmy Jack’s Friday night special platter or touristas looking for some relief from the sand and sun. Squaresville. Try back later when the rubes vacate the premises and the jukebox jumps with the latest from The Coasters, Searchin’, and stuff like that.

So off goes our threesome, kind of hungry, but not the kind of hungry that Jimmy Jack’s can do anything about. And if Jimmy Jack’s had turned into zero then the only other place to be was down at the fringes of Olde Saco Beach. No, not the Squaw Rock end, that’s for later successes, for the midnight ‘til dawn fighting off the lotharios patrol. Right now our damsels- in-distress are headed for Larry’s Loop (everybody, every under twenty-one body and maybe a few older too, knows where that is and if you don’t just ask around and someone will tell you because that’s not the real name of the place. The real name is some rube name, some general from the Civil War or Spanish-American War, or something). The loop is where everything kind of starts out-from the ancient mating rituals (only slightly updated with the advent of the automobile) to the midnight hour doings just mentioned, the fame “submarine races,” to the dark hour “chicken” runs.

Yes, the girls are on the prowl. Oh they have names, Marge, Jo (short for Joann), and Barb (short for, come on now, you know). And they are just average, or just kind of average for looks although they all have plenty of personality but what gives them cachet, gives any just average girl cachet in the Olde Saco scheme of things, hell, maybe everywhere that has enough teenagers to make a difference, is that father-bought boss cherry 1956 two-tone pink convertible. That is their entrée into the loop night. And so plenty of guys, guys with cars and without, especially without are giving them plenty of once overs and making some calculations about where the night might be headed. See, no body goes to the loop, including our three young ladies, without something in mind, something to do with sex if you really couldn’t figure that out and just had to know for sure. Just don’t go there otherwise. It is written in stone. So while strikeouts are not uncommon, not uncommon at all, everybody knows the score.

And that includes one Joshua Lawrence Breslin, fifteen, but who looks older, and who is just now standing dead-ass against Stu Miller’s cherry ’57 fire red Chevy that has all the girls crying for a ride(and getting in line, Stu’s line). Josh is Stu’s “shot-gun” this night (and many others) every since Josh stepped aside and let Stu go full-bore with a local Lolita that Josh was working on.

“Hey, girls looking for me?” Josh yells out as our threesome ritualistically slowly goes by that hell fire Chevy. The car stops and Marge yells back, “Maybe, got any friends?” ‘No, I’m traveling solo tonight,” answered Josh. Now Josh not only looks a little older but is just enough good looking to be sweet candy to this set of girls and so someone, not Marge, yells back, “Come on, maybe you’ll bring us luck.” And so Josh splits from his fire red perch and jumps over into the back seat of the convertible just as Roy Orbison comes over the car radio blasting his cool-hand Ooby Dooby.

And all the while Josh is steaming thoughts that with three chances he is sure, sure as hell, sure as Larry’s Loop hell to get lucky himself, never mind bringing luck.

And that is the funny part, although not for Josh. Somehow having Josh, king of the two-toned pink convertible night in the backseat acted as a deterrent to other guys making a move on the girls. Like maybe he was a younger brother keeping sacred guard overt the harem or something. Or maybe it wasn’t in the cards that night for just kind of ordinary girls to get some Squaw Rock action. But the way they talked among themselves upfront and to him he knew, he knew just as sure as he was born, that they were hungry and so he suggested they go down to Squaw Rock and see what happened. They all agreed in unison.

See though when this carload got there and after a lot of hemming and hawing they couldn’t decide who was going to “be” with Josh (although in his mind his had an idea, a crude, vulgar, but inspired idea to “be” with all three of them). He could see that they were toying with the idea themselves but then just as quickly gave it up when Hank Bowen and his girlfriend showed up a few yards away. No it wasn’t going to work. So our boy Josh learned a serious lesson that night. The next time you see three dames in a boss convertible avert your eyes and be silent, silent as the ocean night.

***Just When You Thought It Was Safe To… Be-Bop-No Doo-Wop-Redux

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Capris performing There's A Moon Out Tonight.

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

Confused by the headline? Don’t be. All it does is refer to a previous seemingly endless series of Oldies But GoodiesCD reviews in this space a while back. (Cold war, red scare, jail break-out 1950s-1960s , there at the creation, there when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Wanda and their brethren were young and hungry and we were too, oldies but goodies, just so you know.) That gargantuan task required sifting through ten, no, fifteen volumes of material that by the end left me limping, and crying uncle.

Christ who am I kidding I was ready for the sweet safe confines of some convalescent home just to ‘dry out” a little and prepare myself for yet another twelve-step “recovery” program and I hadn’t even gotten to 1960 before I went off the deep end. See, as I explained in the last few reviews of the series, just when I thought I was done at Volume Ten I found that it was a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. In any case I whipped off those last five reviews in one shot and was done with it. Praise be and all of that. I would rather cover six non-descript American presidential campaigns straight up than go through that again. Make that seven presidential campaigns, including that of some dingbat over in New Hampshire named “Red Bucket” whose “campaign” consists of mocking everybody who even has pretensions to the vaunted oval office.

The reason for such haste at that point seemed self-explanatory. After all how much could we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories, teen memories, teen high school memories mainly, from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs, others have died, mercifully died, and gone to YouTube heaven to be clicked “like” by about three people, including the up-loader, and probably “Red Bucket”) in the reviewed compilations. How many times could one read about guys with two social left feet (and I won’t even mention geeky clothes and shoes brought on by an onslaught of, well, family poverty in my case), the social conventions of dancing close (and not being hip to mouthwash and deodorant wisdom, although very hip to that fragrance a certain she was wearing, that maddening come hither fragrance), wallflowers (and their invisibleness) , the avoidance of wallflower-dom (at all costs, including cutting loose on long time friendships with geeky future lawyers, professors and doctors, jesus) , meaningful sighs (ho-hum), meaningless sighs (ah, gee), the longings, eternal longings from tween to twenty, for certain obviously unattainable shes (or hes for those of the opposite sex then, or maybe even same sex but that was a book sealed with seven seals, maybe more ), the trials and tribulations associated with high school gymnasium crepe paper-adorned dances, moonlight-driven dream thoughts of after dance doings, and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. And there and then I threw in the towel, I thought. Bastante.

Well now I have “recovered” enough to take a little different look at the music of this period-the doo wop sound that hovered in the background radio of every kid, every kid who had a radio, a transistor radio, to keep parental prying ears at arm’s length, and who was moonstruck enough to have been searching, high and low, for a sound that was not just the same old, same old that his or her parents listened to. Early rock and rock, especially that early Sun Record stuff, and plenty of rhythm and blues met that need but so did, for a time, old doo wop-the silky sounds of lead singer-driven, lyrics-driven, vocal-meshing harmony that was the stuff of teenage “petting” parties and staid old hokey school dances, mainly, in my case, elementary school dances.

As I mentioned in those oldies but goodies reviews not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to, or meant to be, playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability, slow danceabilty, to make any Jack or Jill start snapping fingers then, or now. Of course that begs a question. As I asked in that previous series and is appropriate to ask here as well what about the now seeming mandatory question of the best song of the times-doo-wop variation. The one that stands out as the inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumble-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar).

Here The Capris’ There’s A Moon Out Tonight fills the bill. And, yes, I know, this is one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason than to “impress” that certain she (or like before he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

P.S. Okay, okay I’ll “confess” but only because I know that if don’t somebody, maybe even someone who was at one of those damn dances, will pry it out of me with some mean and evil method of torture. And if there is one thing in life that I have had enough of after a long career in the public prints, even if they were mainly alternative rags and trendy radical chic reads, is threats of public exposure and other ill-advised methods of “getting the truth out.” Yes, I took dancing lessons to try to cover up those two social left feet.

But wait! It wasn’t just some generic moonbeam boy meets girl thing but for “her.” Her being in this case, one Lydia MacAdams, and yes, if that name sounds familiar, from the MacAdams Textiles family. The ones who seemingly make every towel placed in every hotel in America, and maybe beyond for all I know. Lydia was a granddaughter of the founder, although I never did quite catch the full details on the exact relationship. The MacAdams mills used to be located in Olde Saco, Maine where I grew to manhood and employed most of the town, including my father, before they headed south for cheaper labor from what I remember. The Lydia branch stayed put in Olde Saco over on Elm Street where all the fancy Victorians were located (and still are, more recently refurbished for old-time house crazies).

Lydia and I went to Olde Saco East Junior High School (now Middle School) together and first met in art class in eighth grade. We used to talk, serious and funny talk, all the time. I never did anything about it that year, although I think that Lydia expected me to ask her out. Maybe it was me just wishing but that’s what I thought then. Of course “asking out” (read: date, okay) meant going after school over to Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on Main Street just down from East for something to eat but really to listen to Jimmy Jack’s jukebox that had all the latest be-bop rock, doo wop hits and stuff like that on it. Like I said I never got that far. Why. Well that’s where coming from the “wrong side of the tracks” comes in, the Albemarle “projects” wrong side of the tracks over in back of the old mills. No dough, okay. And no dough meant no go with Lydia in my head.

So that is where the dancing lessons came in. I caddied over at the Olde Saco Country Club all summer to save up money to take lessons (and for dough in case I got Jimmy Jack’s lucky). Why? Well two whys. One to “ be ready” for the Olde Saco High freshmen mixer in October when I was planning to take dead-aim at Lydia for the last dance of the night. The last slow dance, see. Two, because one Lydia MacAdams was also taking dance lessons at Miss Jean’s over on Atlantic Avenue. Do not ask how I found that out I will not tell and you can torture me all you want on that one.

But do feel free to ask about this though. The first day, the very first day of dance class after school in September just after we entered august Olde Saco High, Lydia came up to me and said, no commanded, that whether or not I thought she had two left feet because I had not asked her to the mixer, we, she and I, were going to dance the last dance. She also said she hoped that it would be that dreamy There’s A Moon Out Tonight that she loved to play on Jimmy Jack’s jukebox. Well, what’s a fellow to do when he is “commanded” to do something by Lydia MacAdams. I can still smell that maddening come hither fragrance she wore that mixer night as we danced the night away so close it would have taken an army to separate us.

***Entering Olde Saco High, 1960-For The Olde Saco East Junior High School (Middle School) Class Of 1960

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his teen tear-jerker, Teen Angel to set an "appropriate" mood for this post.

Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco High School Class of 1964, comment:

Funny, here I am, finally, finally after what seemed like an endless heat-waved, eternal August dog day’d, book-devoured, summer. Standing, nervously standing, waiting with one foot on the sturdy granite-chiseled steps, ready at a moment’s notice from any teacher’s beck and call, to climb up to the second floor main entrance of old Olde Saco High (that’s in Maine for the non-Mainiacs, and if you don’t know Olde Saco you never will be a Mainiac and even if you do know if you were not born here you won’t be either. That’s how it is, and that’s how we like it). An entrance flanked by huge concrete spheres on each side, which are made to order for me to think that I too have the weight of the world on my shoulders this sunny day. And those doors, by the way, as if the spheres are not portentous enough, are also flanked by two scroll-worked concrete columns, or maybe they are gargoyle-faced, my eyes are a little bleary right now, who give the place a more fearsome look than is really necessary but today, today of all days, every little omen has its evil meaning, evil for me that is.

Here I am anyway, pensive (giving myself the best of it, okay, nice wrap-around-your soul word too, okay), head hanging down, deep in thought, deep in scared, get the nurse fast, if necessary, nausea-provoking thought, standing around, a little impatiently surly as is my “style” (that “style” I picked up a few years back in elementary school down in the Olde Saco “projects” over on Albemarle, after seeing James Dean or someone like that strike the pose, and it stuck). Anyway it’s now about 7:00 AM, maybe a little after, and like I say my eyes have been playing tricks on me all morning and I can’t seem to focus, as I wait for the first school bell to sound on this first Wednesday after Labor Day in the year of our lord, 1960.

No big deal right, we have all done it many times by now it should be easy. Year after year, old August dog days turn into shorter, cooler September come hither young wanna-be learner days. Nothing to get nervous about, nothing to it. (Did I say that already?) Especially the first day, a half day, a “gimme” day, really, one of the few out of one hundred and eighty, count ‘em, and mainly used for filling out the one thousand and one pieces of paper about who you are, where you live, who you live with, and who to call in case you take some nasty fall in gym trying to do a double twist-something on the gym mat (and trying to impress in the process some girl over on the other side of the gym with your prowess, hope she is not looking juts then) or a wrestled double-hammer lock grip on some poor, equally benighted fellow student that goes awry like actually happened to me last year in eighth grade. Hey, they were still talking about that one in the Olde Saco East Junior High locker rooms at the end of the year, I hear.

Or, more ominously, they want that information so that if you cross-up one, or more, of your mean-spirited, ill-disposed, never-could have-been-young-and-troubled, ancient, Plato or Socrates ancient from the look of some of them, teachers and your parents (embarrassed, steaming, vengeful Ma really, in our neighborhoods) need to be called in to confer about “your problem,” your problem that you will grow out of with a few days of after school “help.” Please.

This “gimme” day (let’s just call it that okay, it will help settle me down) will be spent reading off, battered, monotone home room teacher-reading off, the also one thousand and one rules; no lateness to school under penalty of being placed in the stocks, Pilgrim-style, no illness absences short of the plague, if you have it, not a family member, and then only if you have a (presumably sanitized) doctor’s note; no cutting classes to explore the great American day streets at some nearby corner variety store, or mercy, Olde Saco Downs, one-horse Olde Saco Downs also under severe penalty; no (unauthorized) talking in class (but they will mark it down if you don't authorize talk, jesus); no giving guff (ya, no guff, right) to your teachers, fellow students, staff, the resident mouse or your kid brother, if you have a kid brother; no writing on walls, in books, and only on occasion on an (authorized) writing pad; no(get this one, I couldn’t believe this one over at East) cutting in line for the school lunch (the school lunch, Christ, as poor as we are in our family we at least have the dignity not to pine for, much less cut in line for, those beauties: the American chop suey done several different ways to cover the week, including a stint as baloney and cheese sandwiches, I swear); no off-hand rough-necking (or just plain, ordinary necking, either); no excessive use of the “lav” (you know what that is, enough said), and certainly no smoking, drinking or using any other illegal (for kids) substances.

Oh, ya, and don’t forget to follow, unquestioningly, those mean-spirited, ill-disposed teachers that I spoke of before, if there is a fire emergency. And here’s a better one, in case of an off-hand atomic bomb attack go, quickly and quietly, to the nearest fall-out shelter down in the bowels of the old school. That’s what we practiced over at East. At least, I hope they don’t try that old gag and have us practice getting under our desks in such an emergency like in elementary school. Christ, I would rather take my chances, above desk, thank you. And… need I go on, you can listen to the rest when you get to homeroom I am just giving you the highlights, the year after year, memory highlights.

And if that isn’t enough, the reading of the rules and the gathering of more intelligence about you than the FBI or the CIA would need we then proceed to the ritualistic passing out of the books, large and small. (placing book covers on each, naturally, name, year, subject and book number safety placed in insert). All of them covered against the elements, your own sloth, and the battlefield school lunch room, that humongous science book that has every known idea from the ancient four furies of the air to nuclear fission, that math book that has some Pythagorean properties of its own, the social studies books to chart out human progress (and back-sliding) from stone age-cave times on up, and, precious, precious English book (I hope we do Shakespeare this year, I heard we do, that guy knew how to write a good story, same with that Salinger book I read during the summer). Still easy stuff though, for the first day.

Ya, but this will put a different spin on it for you, well, a little different spin anyway. Today I start in the “bigs”, at least the bigs of the handful-countable big events of my short, sweet life. Today I am starting my freshman year at hallowed old Olde Saco High (can you say old Olde, well you know what I mean) and I am as nervous as a kitten. Don’t tell me you weren’t just a little, little, tiny bit scared when you went from the cocoon-like warmth (or so it seemed compared to the “bigs”) of junior high over to the high school, whatever high school it was. Come on now, I’m going to call you out on it. Particularly those Easties who, after all, have been here before, unlike me who came out of the "projects" on the other side of town, and moved back to Olde Saco High after the "long march" move to the new East Junior High in 1958 so I don't know the ropes here at all.

They, especially those sweet girl Easties, including a certain she that I am severely "crushed up" on, in their cashmere sweaters and jumpers or whatever you call them, are nevertheless standing on these same steps, as we exchange nods of recognition, and are here just as early as I am, fretting their own frets, fighting their own inner demons, and just hoping and praying or whatever kids do when they are “on the ropes” to survive the day, or just to not get rolled over on day one.

And see, here is what you also don’t know, know yet anyway. I’ve caught Frank’s disease. You never heard of it, probably, and don’t bother to go look it up in some medical dictionary at the Caleb Brewster Public Library, or some other library, it’s not there. What it amount to is the old time high school, any high school, version of the anxiety-driven cold sweats. Now I know some of you know Frank, and some of you don’t, but I told his story to you before, the story about his big, hot, “dog day” August mission to get picnic fixings, including special stuff, like Kennedy’s potato salad, for his grandmother. That’s the Frank I’m talking about, my best junior high friend, Frank.

Part of that story, for those who don’t know it, mentioned what Frank was thinking when he got near battle-worn Olde Saco High on his journey to the Downs back in August. I’m repeating; repeating at least the important parts here, for those who are clueless:

“Frank (and I) had, just a couple of months before, graduated from East Junior High School and so along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit of anxiety was starting to form in Frank’s head about being a “little fish in a big pond” freshman come September as he passed by. Especially, a proto-beatnik “little fish”. See, he had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it “style” over there at East. That "style" involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long chino-panted, plaid flannel-shirted, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to mankind. Like that really was the way to impress teenage girls. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading…”

And that is why, when the deal went down and I knew I was going to the “bigs” I spent the summer this year, reading, big time booked-devoured reading. Hey, I'll say I did, The Communist Manifesto, that one just because old Willie Westhaven over at East called me a Bolshevik when I answered one of his foolish math questions in a surly manner. I told you that was my pose, what do you want; I just wanted to see what he was talking about. In any case, I ain’t no commie, although I don’t know what the big deal is, I ain't turning anybody in, and the stuff is hard reading anyway. How about Democracy in America (by a French guy), The Age of Jackson (by a Harvard professor who knows Jack Kennedy, and is crazy for old-time guys like Jackson),and Catcher In The Rye by that Salinger guy I mentioned before (Holden is me, me to a tee).

Okay, okay I won’t keep going on but that was just the reading on the hot days when I didn’t want to go out, test me on it, I am ready. Here's why. I intend, and I swear I intend to even on this first nothing (what did I call it before?-"gimme", ya) day of this new school year in this new school in this new decade to beat old Frankie, old book-toting, girl-chasing Frankie, who knows every arcane fact that mankind has produced and has told it to every girl who will listen for two minutes (maybe less) in that eternal struggle, the boy meets girl struggle, at his own game. Frankie, my buddy of buddies, mad monk, prince among men (well, boys, anyhow) who navigated me through the tough, murderous parts of junior high, mercifully concluded, finished and done with, praise be, and didn’t think twice about it. He, you see, despite, everything I said a minute ago was “in.”; that arcane knowledge stuff worked with the “ins” who counted, worked, at least a little, and I got dragged in his wake. Now I want to try out my new “style”

See, that’s why on this Wednesday after Labor Day in the year of our lord, 1960, this 7:00 AM, or a little after, Wednesday after Labor Day, I have Frank’s disease. He harped on it so much before opening of school that I woke up about 5:00 AM this morning, maybe earlier, but I know it was still dark, with the cold sweats. I tossed and turned for a while about what my “style”, what my place in the sun was going to be, and I just had to get up. I’ll tell you about the opening day getting up ritual stuff later, some other time, but right now I am worried, worried as hell, about my “style”, or should I say lack of style over at East. That will tell you a lot about why I woke up this morning before the birds.

Who am I kidding. You know that those cold night sweats, that all-night toss and turn teen angst, boy version, last night was nothing but thinking about her. That certain "she" I have kind of sneaked around mentioning as I have been talking, talking my head off just now to keep the jitters down. I just saw her, saw her with the other Eastie girls on the other side of the steps, and so I am going to have to say a little something about it. See, last year, late, toward the end of school I started talking to this Lydia MacAdams, yes, from the MacAdams family that ran the textile mills here in Olde Saco for eons and who employed my father and a million other fathers around here and then just headed south for the cheaper labor I heard. This is one of the granddaughters or some such relation I never did get it all down. And it was not all that important anyway because what mattered, what matterd to me, was that faint scent, that just barely perceivable scent, some nectar scent, that came from Lydia when I sat next to her in art class and we talked, talked our heads off.

But I never did anything about it, not then anyway although I had this feeling, maybe just a feeling because I wanted things to be that way but a feeling anyway, that she expected me to ask her out. Asking out for junior high school students, and for freshmen in high school too because we don't have licenses to drive cars, in Olde Saco being the obligatory "first date" at Jimmy Jack's Diner (no, not the one of Atlantic Avenue, that's for the tourists and old people, the one on Main is what I am talking about). I was just too shy and uncertain to do it.

Why? Well you might as well know right now I come from the wrong side of the tracks in this old town, over in the Albamarle projects and she, well like I said comes from the MacAdams family that lives over on Elm in one of those Victorian houses that the swells are crazy for now, and I guess were back then too. That is when I figured if I studied up on a bunch of stuff, stuff I like anyway, then this year I might just be able to get up the nerve to ask her to go over to Jimmy Jack's for something to eat and to listen to the jukebox after school some day like every other Tom, Dick and Harry in this burg does.

....Suddenly, a bell rings, a real bell, students, like lemmings to the sea, are on the move, especially those Easties that I had nodded to before as I take those steps, two at a time. Too late to worry about style, or anything else, now. We are off to the wars; I will make my place in the sun as I go along, on the fly. But guess who just kind of brushed against me and gave me one of her biggest faintly-scented smiles as we raced up those funky granite steps. On the fly, indeed.
********
....and a trip down memory lane.

MARK DINNING lyrics - Teen Angel

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh

That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please