From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Joshua Lawrence Breslin’s Father’s Day

Peter Paul Markin comment:

My old friend from the merry prankster yellow brick road 1960s day Josh Breslin, Olde Saco High School Class of 1967, having a few years ago transcribed some stories that his late father told him and his sister Lissette on April 16th 1983 while he recovering from a heart attack, had as a result some things, some Father’s Day things that he wanted to get off his chest. (See Prescott Breslin’s Stardust Memories War. Josh was, frankly having a hard time doing the task (as had I several years before) so he asked me to help him write this belated tribute to his late father, Prescott Lee Breslin. The words may have been jointly written and edited but, believe me, the sentiments and emotions expressed are strictly those of Joshua Lawrence Breslin. I do know that it took a lot of work, sweat and tears for him to transfer them into written form.
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In honor of Prescott Lee Breslin, 1917-1985, Lance Corporal, United States Marine Corps, World War II, Pacific Theater , and perhaps, other Olde Saco fathers too.

Josh turned red, turned bluster, fluster, embarrassed, internal red, red with shame, red as he always did this time of the year, this Father’s Day time of the year, when he thought about his own father, the late Prescott Lee Breslin. And through those shades of red he thought, sometimes hard, sometimes just a flicker thought passing, too close, too red close to continue on, he thought about the things that he never said to his father, about what never could be said to him, and above all, because when it came right down to it because they might have been on different planets, what could not be comprehended said. But although death now separated them by over twenty years he still turned red, more internal red these days, when he thought about the slivers of talk that could have been said, usefully said. And he would go to his own grave having that hang over his own Father’s Day thoughts.

But just that minute, just that pre-Father’s Day minute, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Joshua Lawrence, for those Olde Saco brethren who insisted on calling him Joshua Lawrence when he preferred plain old Josh in those old-time 1960s high school days, wanted to call a truce to his red-faced shame, internal or otherwise, and pay public tribute, pay belated public tribute to Prescott Breslin, and maybe it would rub off on others too. And just maybe cut the pain of the thought of having those unsaid things hang over him until the grave.

See, here’s the funny part, the funny part now, about speaking, publicly or privately, about his father, at least when Josh thought about the millions of children around who were, warm-heartedly, preparing to put some little gift together for the “greatest dad in the world.” And of other millions, who were preparing, or better, fortifying themselves in preparation for that same task for dear old dad, although with their teeth grinding. Josh could not remember, or refused to remember, a time for eons when he, warm-heartedly or grinding his teeth, prepared anything for his father’s Father’s Day, except occasional grief that might have coincided with that day’s celebration. No preparation was necessary for that. That was all in a Josh’s day’s work, his hellish corner boy day’s work or, rather, night’s work, the sneak thief in the night work, later turned into more serious criminal enterprises. But the really funny part, ironic maybe, is grief-giving, hellish corner boy sneak thief, or not, one Prescott Breslin , deserved honor, no, required honor that day because by some mysterious process, by some mysterious transference Josh, in the end, was deeply formed, formed for the better by that man.

And you see, and it will perhaps come as no surprise that Josh, hell everybody called him Joshua Lawrence in the old days so just so nobody will be confused we will use that name here, was estranged from his family for many years, many teenage to adult years and so that his father’s influence, the “better angel of his nature,” influence had to have come very early on. Joshua Lawrence , even now, maybe especially now, since he had climbed a few mountains of pain, of hard-wall time served, and addictions to get here, did not want to go into the details of that fact, just call them ugly, as this memorial was not about his trials and tribulations in the world, but Prescott’s.

Here is what needs to be told though because something in that mix, that Breslin gene mix, is where the earth’s salts mingled to spine Joshua Lawrence against his own follies when things turned ugly later in his life. Prescott Lee Breslin, that middle name almost declaring that here was a southern man, as Joshua Lawrence name was a declaration that he was a son of a southern man, came out of the foothills of Kentucky, Appalachian Kentucky. The hills and hollows of Hazard, Kentucky to be exact, in the next county over from famed, bloody coal wars, class struggle, which-side-are-you-on Harlan County, but all still hard-scrabble coal-mining country famous in story and song- the poorest of the poor of white Appalachia-the “hillbillies.”

And the poorest of the poor there, or very close to it, was Prescott Breslin’s family, his seven brothers and four sisters, his elderly father and his too young step-mother. Needless to say, but needing to be said anyway, Prescott went to the mines early, after a couple of break-out years as a singer, had little formal schooling and was slated, like generations of Breslins before him, to live a short, brutish, and nasty life, scrabbling hard, hard for the coal, hard for the table food, hard for the roof over his head, hard to keep the black lung away, and harder still to keep the company wolves away from his shack door. And then the Great Depression came full force and thing got harder still, harder than younger ears could understand today, or need to hear just now.

At the start of World War II Prescott jumped, jumped with both feet running once he landed, at the opportunity to join the Marines in the wake of Pearl Harbor, fought his fair share of battles in the Pacific Theater, including Guadalcanal, although he, like many men of his generation, was extremely reticent to talk about his war experiences. By the vagaries of fate in those up-ending times Prescott eventually was stationed at the huge Portsmouth Naval Depot before being discharged, a busy base about thirty miles from Olde Saco.

[Joshua Lawrence , interrupted his train of thought as chuckled to himself when he thought about his father’s military service, thought about one of the few times when he and Prescott had had a laugh together. Prescott often recounted that things were so tough in Hazard, in the mines of Hazard, in the slag heap existence of Hazard, that in a “choice” between continuing in the mines and daily facing death at Japanese hands he picked the latter, gladly, and never looked back. Part of that never looking back, of course, was the attraction of Delores LeBlanc (Olde Saco High School Class of 1937), Joshua Lawrence’s mother whom Prescott met while stationed at Portsmouth where she worked in the civilian section of the base of an insurance company based in Olde Saco. They married shortly thereafter, had three sons, his late oldest brother, Larry , killed many years ago while engaged in an attempted armed robbery, Danny who just kind of wandered off one day and had not been heard from since, and Joshua Lawrence, ex-sneak thief, ex-merry prankster, ex-dope-dealer, ex-addict, ex-, well, enough of ex’s, and a younger sister, Lissette, now in a private mental health facility after years of alcohol and drug abuse, and the rest is history. Well, not quite, whatever Prescott might have later thought about his decision to leave the hellhole of the Appalachian hills. He was also a man, as that just mentioned family resume hints at, who never drew a break, not at work, not through his sons and daughter (although it was the sons that counted, mainly), not in anything.]

Joshua Lawrence , not quite sure how to put it in words that were anything but spilled ashes since it would be put differently, much differently in 2011 than in, let’s say, 1971, or 1961 thought of it this way:

“My father was a good man, he was a hard- working man when he had work, and he was a devoted family man. But go back to that paragraph about where he was from. He was also an uneducated man with no skills for the changing Olde Saco labor market. There was no call for a coal miner's skills in Olde Saco after World War II so he was reduced to unskilled, last hired, first fired jobs. This was, and is, not a pretty fate for a man with hungry mouths to feed. And stuck in the damn Olde Saco Housing Authority apartments, come on now let’s call a thing by its real name, real recognizable name, “the projects,” the place for the poorest of the poor, Olde Saco version, to boot.

To get out from under a little and to share in the dream, the high heaven dream, working poor post-World War II dream, of a little house, no matter how little, of one’s own if only to keep the neighbor’s loud business from one’s door Delores, proud, stiffly French-Canadian 1930s Depression stable working class proud Delores, worked. Delores worked mother’s night shifts at one of the Jimmy Jack’s Homemade Diners filling up coffee cups and fixings for hungry travelers and tourists in order to scrap a few pennies together to buy an old, small, rundown house, on the wrong side of the tracks, on Maple Street for those from Olde Saco who remember that locale, literally right next to the old Bay Lines railroad tracks. So the circle turned and the Breslin family returned back to the Atlantic section of town of Maude’s youth.”

Joshua Lawrence grew pensive when he thought, or rather re-thought, about the toll that the inability to be the sole breadwinner (no big deal now with an almost mandatory two working-parents existence- but important for a man of his generation) took on the man's pride. A wife filling damn coffee cups, jesus.

He continued:

“And it never really got better for Prescott from there as his three boys grew to manhood (Lissette’s troubles began much later, much later), got into more trouble, got involved with more shady deals, acquired more addictions, and showered more shame on the Prescott Breslin name than needs to be detailed here. Let’s just say it had to have caused him more than his fair share of heartache. He never said much about it though, in the days when Joshua Lawrence and he were still in touch. Never much about why three boys who had more food, more shelter, more education, more prospects, more everything that a Hazard po’ boy couldn’t see straight if their lives depended on it, who led the corner boy life for all it was worth and in the end had nothing but ashes, and a father’s broken heart to show for it. No, he never said much, and Joshua Lawrence hadn’t heard from other sources that he ever said much (Delores was a different story, but this is Prescott’s story so enough of that). Why? Damn, they were his boys and although they broke his heart they were his boys. That is all that mattered to him and so that, in the end, is how Joshua Lawrence, whatever he would carry to his own grave, that Prescott must have forgiven him.”

Joshua Lawrence, getting internal red again, decided that it was time to close this tribute. To go on in this vein would be rather maudlin. The old man was a Marine, and he was closer to the old Marine Corps slogan than Joshua Lawrence could ever understand - Semper Fi- "always faithful." Yes, Joshua Lawrence thought, as if some historic justice had finally been done, that is a good way to end this. Except to say something that should have been shouted from the Olde Saco rooftops long ago- “Thanks Dad, you did the best you could.”