***Out In The American Neon Wilderness Night- Josie’s Story

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

This is the way Josie, Josie Little, an old flame, told her story late one bluesy, rainy Cambridge bar stool Saturday night in the late 1970s, the Miller Hi-Life sign flickering on and off in the background, a story of a trip she had taken with her first love up north in the early 1970s when their love was still in early bloom. A story out in the neon wilderness.     
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… Allan [that first love] was crazy to go to Neil’s Harbor and Peggy’s Cove up in Cape Breton and could hardly wait to get on the road out of Halifax and push north. We were however also somewhat behind in our schedule, our  rough schedule, to try to head west to California and then south to Mexico before the winter set in. But we had been taken by the beauty, the hills rising above the ocean along the road that encircled the whole place ,and the separate circle that enveloped Cape Breton, Nova Scotia beyond that Arcadia French exile notion further south, and also the provincial parks, unlike the local parks in the states were cheap, were well kept-up, provided firework and hearths, and had decent showers facilities except in the few “primitive” sites we were confronted with at certain points where you had to backpack in and take your chances, ugh. Not taken in though so much by the ocean view aspect, we were both heartily getting tired of endless seas, endless looking at seas, although not of walking them, sitting and listening to the ocean, or making love as the waves rolled in when we had the chance. His thing was to chart things like the furthest point in all directions we hit on the trip, how many of this and that we saw, how many that and this things we did, he was a real numbers and geography guy. Not where those places were in the world , no, so he could said, sometimes brag, brag a little, but mostly say, well, he had been this far in case somebody might think he was a rube if he hadn’t been far enough from home.

That notion was funny too because Allan’s politics made him definitely not a rube, his political passions that he was suppressing a little on the trip for my sake. He was always talking, and doing something about which is where we were beginning to differ, about the struggle against the American government in Vietnam, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the fate of the Palestinians, the one major point where I, a half-hearted Zionist, daughter of Zionists, and he would have a few blow-ups including one night back in Boston before the trip when we, drunk and stoned, were at some party which was being attended, although neither of us knew that was it who they were , by something like the central committee of the Zionist movement in Boston. They were raising money for something in Israel, and he started talking his liberation talk, talking about the Irgun gang, about the King David Hotel, about Deir Yessin, Jesus, stuff even I didn’t know about. He got heated, got heated at me, most of all, for half-defending the infidels at the party, or just their right to support Israel, something like that, so when we got to my place, we weren’t living together then he was living in commune down the road, I threw him out, after we probably woke up half of the student ghetto in Boston.

Then around four o’clock I was missing my sweet walking daddy [her pet name for Allan]and called him up to come back over, he said he didn’t want to, didn’t want to because he was sleepy, and we had another row over that. He, when I propositioned him, propositioned him with a little secret thing that I did to him in bed, a thing that as he said he had heard on some blue song, maybe David Bromberg, maybe Muddy Waters I don’t remember, that “curled his toes,” he came over, but it was not a good night, not a good omen at all.  

It’s funny on that rube thing too because I was, and he later admitted that he was too, very provincial, not in the sense of being some hayseed thing out in Iowa but provincial in the way we interpreted Saul Steinberg’s funny New Yorker cover, the one where his map of America started in Manhattan big and then the rest of America was put in about one inch of space. I related to that and would tell him, at his request, endless things, odd-ball things, about the vagaries of growing up in Manhattan, about what I had seen there, and done. He said he felt the same about Boston and maybe that is why he had to have charts and lists and a stuff like that, his stuff in the world.

My thing in Peggy’s Cove though was, besides the great view and friendly huge immense rocks we could sit on and get splashed by the sea and feel clean, that since that was the eastern most point of our trip (and we thought at the time it would be the northernmost as well) we could stay in a bed and breakfast place. Indoors with an indoor shower, private, not wait in line, or anything like that like out in the woods. And we did, did find one, just off the main road, Mrs. Miller’s Bed and Breakfast. And if thename of that place and the name of the woman who ran it sounded like something out of about 1947 then you would be  right because that is exactly what it was like, and what she was like. Of course out in the provinces, the gentle provinces, among the folk who live in the little off-the-road places, the places where times stands still, they depend on the travelling peoples of the world who want to see great natural beauty, and relax against the craziness of the world to make their, what did Allan call it, their harsh lonely winter tide-me-over money, in season. But these people, and we ran into many, on the outskirts of civilization have their toleration limits, and have their own mores, and good for them.

Except not good for us, almost. Mrs. Miller wanted to know if we were married, and we, thinking we were in Boston or New York, said, well no, and, essentially, what of it. She kind of flipped out and did not want to let us stay in her “home.” So we, tired from a long day on the road, some time spent in the rock-bound sea sun, and not sure where the next B&B was, if any, started back-tracking, started talking about our travels, about our tires, about our using this trip to see if we should get married. (That contribution was by me so you could see Allan’s blarney side rubbing off.) She didn’t like it but, as a good Christian woman, she had to welcome us. It was close though, very close. See too though we intended that this indoor scene would allow us to have a freshen up shower, have a nice dinner, maybe some wine to get a little high (we had no intention of doing pot, no way), and then some serious gentle sex. We were both tired of hard-scrabble dirt, of rocks, of fleas, gnats and every other bug taking the edge off our love-making. So we had to debate whether to do this deed in this good Christian woman’s house. We did but we did it so quietly that I thought that this was the way that they are forced to do it in Chinese villages and working- class neighborhoods where everybody was packed in together. But here is the best part, the next morning Mrs. Miller made the best pancake-waffle-eggs-anyway you wanted them-ham-hash-home fries- muffins-juice-and whatever for us the best breakfast we had ever had we both agreed. And to top it off a big old fresh-baked blueberry pie for us to eat on our travels. A good Christian angel woman, indeed, she has her place reserved in heaven, if such a place is worthy.

Although I lived the island of Manhattan growing up I never had an occasion to ride the Staten Island ferry which people who don’t come from Manhattan don’t understand, especially since it was only a nickel. Allan said that his mother told him when she was a girl that she would take boat from Boston down to New York via the Cape Cod Canal and the two things he remembered that she went on and on about were the cheap jack Automat, the cafeteria where you inserted coins and got your food via the cubicles, a far out thing in the 1930s I guess, and the ride on the cheap Staten Island ferry (and a grand view of downtown Manhattan from the Staten Island side). So he told me that first time we went down to New York City together to face the fireworks from my parents about us living together and me having a goy boyfriend and they wouldn’t, no way, let us stay together in my room he actually spent the night riding the ferry back and forth, a very cheap way to keep out of the cold and away from harm and cops' eyes. So when we made the turn past Neil’s Harbor and headed west, the first real west move we made the trip he said let’s take the ferry over to Prince Edward Island and so we did and while it was interesting to be on the water with our funny old Datsun it wasn’t anything like the big deal he made of it. Let’s put it this way I still haven’t taken the Staten Island ferry. Now Prince Edward Island certainly had its charm, small fishing and farming villages dotted the highway around the island, but even I was getting a little antsy about moving on to see some different scenery from the boats and cows.

The one thing that sticks out though was this incredible beach on the north side of the island, this Brackley Beach which extended from miles jutting out into the Saint Lawrence River, and which, if you can believe this, that far up north had no qualms about allowing nude bathing. We were kind of shocked but I said to Allan I was game, although I had a swim suit along. Allan was kind of funny about that though, some Irish Catholic working- class hang-up about public exposure, or something. He used to hang around the various water spots we landed on with a light weight long sleeve shirt, his jeans and sandals, he refused to wear a bathing suit, and as it turned out didn’t even have one with him. This all-purpose get-up thing was he said because of the bugs that really did seem to draw a bee-line to him. That day though I coaxed him out of his jeans and all when I whispered in his ear that I was kind of horny, horny like down in Maine and maybe I was up for giving him a little something to “curl his toes.” That perked him up as we headed to some private area of the dunes, put down a big towel, maybe a small blanket and I went to work on him. See I knew how to get to him, although it wasn’t all tough to do, not then.

“Flow river flow, down to the sea,” a phrase from The Ballad Of Easy Rider by the Byrds, I think, is what Allan kept practically chanting as we drifted down the Saint Lawrence River headed to Quebec City. But along the way we stopped at seemingly twenty different towns, Trois this and that kind of towns, three river places, all the same as far as I was concerned, but one I will give you as my little road story because it really could stand in for all of them. See all these river towns had, like a lot of towns we had seen, a small main street, a few stores, maybe a library, a school showing here and there, and all had churches, but not the New England big steeple white simple church gathering in the pious brethren on Sunday to hear some big top theology from some learned Harvard-trained minister, something like that but stone-etched imposing cathedral like edifices with plenty of artwork , devotional stuff, and dank, dark, and smelling of death, or really the readiness for death that the Catholics are always hankering for. Really though just like the New England pine-box churches once you have seen one you have pretty much seen all you need to see about the damn things.

And I would have left it at that but something about the whole sanctified, sacred, scented scene, kind of took Allan off his moorings. Like I said before he was off the church thing but like he also said such things when so intense die hard, die out only after some kind of sacred exorcism, and so that is how he schemed (schemed in the good sense of planning something out) to do a mock exorcism at the church in Trois Rivieres, a couple of hundred miles from Quebec City. Now this was not some churchy thing he was thinking of but rather as was our thing then, a little sexual escapade. See his idea was that we would do some hanky-panky in that dark church (dark, like the white steeple churches because the brethren were deep in work on the farms or in the cotton mill that provided some work for the town folk). So we snuck over to the chapel I guess you call it, Allan did know what it was like maybe he knew that was the best place , although he swore, swore after we were done that he had never done it there, or even though about it until the ride down the Saint Lawrence.

I was afraid to take my clothes off, and I said I wouldn’t so we settled on me giving him some head, but he said that for once we would use a condom and leave it there as a burnt offering for the sins of the world. I don’t usually like condoms (rubbers) in my mouth because they taste funky but this time I kind of didn’t notice it some much because frankly, as we got started I got so turned on by the idea we were doing it in church, a sacred place, that I just went about my work, and I could tell by his little moanings that Allan was appreciating my efforts, although after a bit I started thinking about how maybe we should “do the do” (our little term for our love-making courtesy of a Howlin’ Wolf song) and I suggested that to him but once he got into my head thing that usually was what he wanted. Well, he came, after I had given him the best blow job I think I had ever given him until then, and least he had a big grin on his face after I took the condom off and we placed it carefully in front of the altar. I told him I was still turned on and so we went back to that secluded area and did our “do the do,” twice. I would tell you more, a couple of little extra things we did, but I can tell you are getting turned on a little and so I will leave it at that.

After the farms, fields and rivers coming down the Saint Lawrence all of a sudden out of the river mist, out of the river turn around Ile de Orleans there came into view the great fortress city of Quebec City, a city that we both confessed that we knew about mainly from the Plains of Abraham, bloody deaths of Montcalm and Wolfe in some 18^th century part of the world- wide battle between the British and French for world supremacy, for the ports, the commercial ports of entry. Quebec to me though was mainly a matter of about ten million churches, Gallic Roman Catholic churches fit for the lame, halt and crippled it seemed by their names or names associated with each parish, with all grey stone, all gothic, all forbidding, foreboding and frankly hostile, hostile to whatever Jewish identity I felt, felt being among those who not that long ago (and maybe they still did) called my people Christ-killers and did stuff about it. Allan, a long lapsed Catholic ,lapsed since about fourteen when he started reading some stuff , some stuff by Jews like Karl Marx and Sartre, and feeling out of sorts and oppressed by the Catholic-ness of the place (except for those bloody plains of Abraham alongside the Saint Lawrence that were really beautiful), for his own reasons, stated categorically that he would defend me, my honor, the bones of my forbears, even my fussy parents, if anybody, anybody under cloak of clerical authority, or just any lay person who got crazy, tried any rough stuff on me and mine, and that kept me in check (and made me love him even more, and ready then to show him some decidedly non-Catholic loving out of wedlock, and out of procreation’s way too).

Also despite the architectural beauty of the city, the gothic old time sense of some very much earlier age, some age when men and women were not afraid to come out and face the wilds, the hostile Indians, the even more hostile wildlife and stake their claim to new world riches and pay homage to the providence that spared those who survived put paid to that good wind by those incredible churches, nunneries and chapels (and the vast number of personal to service them), the current crop of French-Canadians who just then dominated the very nationalistic scene were short with Anglos, including sympathetic Anglos like us. This was the heyday of the Quebec independence movement and the tensions were still in the air against the Anglo government which had at one point declared martial law in the province. The way this feeling came out was when we would go into restaurant in Old Town and try to order lunch or something (admittedly my high school and first year of college long past French and later Allan’s Spanish in Mexico were too Anglo to fake anybody out that we were anything but Americanos) and be snubbed at every turn, deliberately snubbed by waiters, slumming while students like was almost universal then, maybe now too, who you could overhear speaking perfectly usable English among themselves when they wanted to make some obscure point. Allan would get on his high horse with me and while he wasn’t happy about snubs, or any other of the small change hurts of people, people like his Irish forbears, who couldn’t respond to their oppression any other way was more tolerate than I was toward what he called his fellahin brethren .

I asked him, asked him seriously one time when we were driving out of Quebec City toward Montreal, what he meant by fellahin. Had he heard or seen the word in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road where he wrote about it as part of his trip in southern California in describing the people in the night after hard day fields places, the mex places, where he and his lady of the time, his little mex whore,  their mores, his kindred? Allan said no he had learned it in seventh- grade at Hull Junior High School when some history teacher, a Jewish guy if he remembered correctly, held the class in awe with stories about the struggles on th eland in the Middle East with the Palestinians, including labor Zionists, and he had held the word like a lot of odd-ball words that interested him in his head since then. What he meant, maybe like Kerouac, and like that history teacher too, was life’s dispossessed, those left behind in the dust who, until their judgment day (not that foolish religious one) when they were liberated, maybe generations later, would forget that bondage times but until then he wanted to be very indulgence toward them, even if we got poor wait staff service, ouch.       

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After that last piece Josie then said  she was getting tired, she had had too many scotches and had previously taken a few too many puffs off a proffered joint and didn’t want to talk about Allan anymore that night. She asked if I wanted to take her home. In the cab she ruefully whispered that the trip was their beginning, the real beginning, and every once in a while although she could no longer be with him, no way, there was just too much sorrow between them, on wind-swept nights, or when she was near some ocean, or some raggedy scruffy guy selling some left-wing newspaper passed by her she would get misty about her sweet walking daddy. She said I would have to know that, know that up front on that rainy, sad, bluesy night. And that was our beginning…