Once Again, Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Frankie Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night

 

 

A YouTube film clip of the Dubs performing the classic Could This Be Magic? to set the mood for this piece.

 

By Josh Breslin

 

Frankie Riley, the old corner boy leader of the crowd, our crowd of the class of 1964 guys who made it and graduated, not all did, a couple wound up serving time in various state pens but that is not the story I want to tell today except that those fallen brothers also imbibed Frankie’s wisdom (else why would they listen to him for they were tougher if not smarter than he was) about what was what in rock and roll music in the days when we had our feet firmly planted in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor in North Adamsville, had almost a sixth sense about what songs would and would not make it in the early 1960s night. Knew like the late Billy Bradley, my corner boy when my family lived on the other side of town back then, did in the 1950s elementary school night what would stir the girls enough to get them “going.” And if you don’t understand what “going” meant or what “going” and “rock and roll” together in the same sentence meant then perhaps you should move along. Why else would we listen to Frankie, including those penal tough guys, if it wasn’t to get into some girl’s pants. Otherwise guys like Johnny Blade (and you don’t need much imagination to know what kind of guy and what kind of weapon that moniker meant) and Hacksaw Jackson would have cut of his “fucking head’ (their exact expression and that is a direct quote so don’t censor me or give me the “what for”).

 

But that was then and this is now and old, now old genie Frankie had given up the swami business long ago for the allure of the law profession which he is even now as I write starting to turn over to his younger partners who are begging just like he did in his turn to show their stuff, to herald the new breeze that the austere law offices of one Francis Xavier Riley and Associates desperately needs to keep their clients happy. In that long meantime I have been the man who has kept the flame of the classic days of rock and roll burning. Especially over the past few years when I have through the miracles of the Internet been able between Amazon and YouTube to find a ton of the music, classics and one-shot wonders of our collective youths and comment on those finds from the distance of fifty or so years.

 

I have presented some reviews of that material, mostly the commercially compiled stuff that some astute record companies or their successors have put together to feed the nostalgia frenzy of the cash rich (relatively especially if they are not reduced to throwing their money at doctors and medicines which is cutting into a lot of what I am able to do), on the Rock and Roll Will Never Die blog that a guy named Wolfman Coyote had put together trying to reassemble the “youth nation” of the 1960s who lived and died for the music that was then a fresh breeze compared to the deathtrap World War II-drenched music our parents were trying to foist on us.        

 

That work, those short sketch commentaries, became the subject for conversation between Frankie and me when he started to let go of the law practice (now he is “of counsel” whatever that means except he get a nice cut of all the action that goes through the office without the frenzied work for the dollars) and we would meet every few weeks over at Jack’s in Cambridge where he now lives since the divorce from his third wife, Minnie. So below are some thoughts from the resurrection, Frankie’s term, for his putting his spin on “what was what” fifty or so years ago when even Johnny Blade and Hacksaw Jackson had sense enough to listen to his words if they wanted to get into some frill’s pants.

 

“Okay, you know the routine by now, or at least the drift of these classic rock reviews. [This reference is what had been the sixth in the series that I had originally commented on but which Frankie felts he had to put his imprimatur on just like in the old days- JB] The part that starts out with a “tip of the hat” to the hard fact that each generation, each teenage generation that is makes its own tribal customs, mores and language. Then the part that is befuddled by today’s teenage-hood. And then I go scampering back to my teenage-hood, the teenage coming of age of the generation of ‘68 that came of age in the early 1960s and start on some cultural “nugget” from that seemingly pre-historic period. Well this review is no different, except, today we decipher the drive-in restaurant, although really it is the car hops (waitresses) that drive this one.

 

See, this series of reviews had been driven, almost subconsciously driven, by the Edward Hopper Nighthawk-like illustrations on the The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era CDs of this mammoth set of compilations (fifteen, count them, fifteen like there were fifteen times twenty or so songs on each compilation or over three hundred classic worth listening to today. Hell, even Frankie would balk at that possibility-we both agree something like fifty of them have withstood the test of time and that is giving guys like Gene Pitney with his Town Without Pity the best of it best mainly on melody not lyrics).

 

In this case it is the drive-in restaurant of blessed teenage memory. For the younger set, or those oldsters who “forgot” that was a restaurant idea driven by car culture, especially the car culture from the golden era of teenage car-dom, the 1950s. Put together cars, cars all flash-painted and fully-chromed, “boss” cars we called them in my working class neighborhood, young restless males, food, and a little off-hand sex, or rather the promise or mist of a promise of it, and you have the real backdrop to the drive-in restaurant. If you really thought about it why else would somebody, anybody who was assumed to be functioning, sit in their cars eating food, and at best ugly food, not as bad as at the drive-in movies but you expected that there, the theater owners knew every teenager was there for reasons other than nutrition and so could have foisted of paper cut-outs of food and we would have bought that, but bad, off a tray while seated in their cherry, “boss" 1959 Chevy.

 

And beside the food, of course, there was the off-hand girl watching (in the other cars with trays hanging off their doors), and the car hop ogling (and propositioning, if you had the nerve, and if your intelligence was good and there was not some 250 pound fullback back-breaker waiting to take her home after work a few cars over with some snarl on his face and daggers in his heart or maybe that poundage pounding you) there was the steady sound of music, rock music, natch, coming from those boomerang speakers in those, need I say it, “boss” automobiles. And that is where all of this gets mixed in.

 

Of course, just like another time when I was reviewing one of the CDs in this series, and discussing teenage soda fountain life, the mere mention, no, the mere thought of the term “car hop” makes me think of a Frankie story. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie from the old hell-fire shipbuilding sunk and gone and it-ain’t-coming-back-again seen better days working class neighborhood where we grew up, or tried to. Frankie who I have already told you I have a thousand stories about, or hope I do. Frankie the most treacherous little bastard that you could ever meet on one day, and the kindest man (better man/child), and not just cheap jack, dime store kindness either, alive the next day. Yeah, that Frankie, my best middle school and high school friend Frankie.

 

Did I tell you about Joanne, Frankie’s “divine” (his term, without quotation marks) Joanne because she enters, she always in the end enters into these things? Yes, I see that I did back when I was telling you about her little Roy “The Boy” Orbison trick. The one where she kept playing Running Scared endlessly to get Frankie’s dander up. But see while Frankie has really no serious other eyes for the dames except his “divine” Joanne (I insist on putting that divine in quotation marks when telling of Joanne, at least for the first few times I mention her name, even now. Needless to say I questioned, and questioned hard, that designation by Frankie on more than one occasion to no avail) he is nothing but a high blood-pressured, high-strung shirt-chaser, first class. And the girls liked him, although not for his looks although they were kind of Steve McQueen okay. What they went for him for was his line of patter, first class. Patter, arcane, obscure patter that made me, most of the time, think of fingernails scratching on a blackboard (except when I was hot on his trail trying to imitate him) and his faux “beat” pose (midnight sunglasses, flannel shirt, black chinos, and funky work boots (ditto on the imitation here as well). And not just “beat’ girls liked him, either as you will find out. Certainly Joanne, the rose of Tralee, was not a “beat” sister (although she was his first wife and beat him out his first serious bout of alimony and child support). 

 

Well, the long and short of it was that Frankie, late 1963 Frankie, and the...(oh, forget it) Joanne had had their 207th (really that number, or close, since 8th grade) break-up and Frankie was a "free” man. To celebrate this freedom Frankie, Frankie, who was almost as poor as I was but who has a father with a car that he was not too cheap or crazy about to not let Frankie use on occasion, had wheels. Okay, Studebaker wheels but wheels anyway. And he was going to treat me to a drive-in meal as we went cruising the night, the Saturday night, the Saturday be-bop night looking for some frails (read: girls, Frankie had about seven thousand names for them)

 

Tired (or bored) from cruising the Saturday be-bop night away (meaning girl-less) we hit the local drive-in hot spot, Arnie’s Adventure Car Hop for one last, desperate attempt at happiness (yeah, things were put, Frank and me put anyway, just that melodramatically for every little thing). Now this Arnie’s was a monument to the post-World War II values and while you may have an idea of what this drive-ins looked like if you had watched the 1973 film American Graffiti which was nothing but a paean to car culture in the Modesto night most of those scenes except they would have entailed ocean rather than valley life could have taken place in North Adamsville or a million other towns on a weekend night back in the day. So yes Arnie’s had the huge neon sign advertising his place which could be seen from miles around since it was on a hill and acted as a magnet for youth nation, circa 1960s, had the stalls reserved for “boss” cars (that extra perk brought forth by the hard fact that Red Radley the owner of the “bossest” ’57 Chevy and acknowledged king of the “chicken run” had been, ah, upset one night when he could not find a parking spot to highlight his beauty of a car and proceeded to wreck half of Arnie’s. He got the message, got it loud and clear), and had the menu in bright lights. He also had red vinyl booths inside for the “walkers,” those goofs without cars (and had picnic tables outside and in the back for summer use of those same goofs) since everybody cool or goof wanted to hug to the bright lights and possible action come weekend nights. 

 

That was the set-up we lived and died for and on an ordinary date-less Friday night that would have been a sad last call before an early night home. What I didn’t know that night was that Frankie, king hell skirt-chaser had his off-hand eye on one of the car hops, Sandy, and as it turned out she was one of those girls who was beyond belief enamored of his patter (or so I heard later when I grabbed the details and she actually confirmed that she thought Frankie was the smartest guy she knew, book smart wise, and maybe he was). So he pulled into her station and started to chat her up as we ordered the haute cuisine.  Everybody admitted that Arnie’s had the best burgers in town especially if the late hour and maybe some lingering booze, drug, or sex overload made one hungry enough to eat anything placed before you but the other stuff was so-so and you were better off going to Jimmy Jake’s Diner over on Thornton Street if you really wanted to eat a  meal but which also meant that you had given up early on that lingering business mentioned above. But here was the funny thing, now that I saw her up close I could see that she was nothing but a fox (read: “hot” girl). Part of the draw to Arnie’s was that the car hop uniforms were half-way to the whorehouse, or maybe better a burlesques show, what with the skimpy almost see-through blouses which showed in Sandy’s case her beautiful pointy proud bust, the very short, short pants that showed off her long well-turned legs and ankles, topped off by a rakish bellboy’s hat fixed at an angle. Her blue eyes and long reddish blonde hair and big ruby red lips completed the picture. Yeah, an A-one fox.   

 

The not so funny thing though was that she was so enamored of Frankie’s patter that he was going to take her home after work. No problem you say. No way, big problem. I was to be left there to catch a ride home while they set sail into that good night. Thanks, Frankie.

Well, I was pretty burned up about it for a while but as always with “charma” Frankie we hooked up again a few days later. And here is where I get a little sweet revenge (although don’t tell him that).

Frankie sat me down at the old town pizza parlor [Tonio’s Pizza Parlor of blessed memory-JB] and told me the whole story and even now, as I recount it, I can’t believe it.

 

Sandy was a fox, no question, but a married fox, a very married fox, who said she when he first met her that she was about twenty-two and had a kid. Her husband was in the service and she was “lonely” and like I said she said she had succumbed to Frankie’s charms. Fair enough, it is a lonely world at times. But wait a minute, I bet you thought that Frankie’s getting mixed up with a married honey with a probably killer husband was the big deal. No way, no way at all. You know, or you can figure out, old Frankie spent the night with Sandy. Again, it's a lonely world sometimes.

 

The real problem, the real Frankie problem, was once they started to compare biographies and who they knew around town, and didn’t know, it turned out that Sandy, old fox, old married fox with brute husband, old Arnie’s car hop Sandy was some kind of cousin to Joanne, second cousin maybe. And she was no cradle-robber twenty-two (as if any woman could rob the cradle according to Frankie) but nineteen, almost twenty and was just embarrassed about having a baby in high school and having to go to her "aunt's" to have the child. This “aunt” business variously Aunt Emmy or Aunty Betsy usually lived in some place like Kansas or the Dakotas, you know out West so that the girl who was visiting auntie would have some reason to be away for several months and the farther away the mythical aunt lived the better. Get how I said mythical since the whole thing was eyewash as every twelve year old guy around our working class neighborhood and maybe every eleven year old girl knew once they started thinking about sex and what really happened if you were not careful-or did not abstain as the good parish priests tried to hammer home every freaking Sunday and other times too.

So the “visit” meant that some girl whether she wanted to or not let some guy go too far and all of us ignorant about sex and precautions knew she was in the “family way,” knocked-up, you know pregnant and was the reason they would have to go to the aunt’s. Sometimes not returning and sometimes going to auntie more than once. I would give a dollar to figure out how many girls were “away” at any given time but you know I, we, were mostly too interested in the girls who were around to worry about some bimbo who couldn’t keep her knees together (the way my father would express it about the “visit” when we kids got old enough not to have to listen to aunt silliness).

 

 

Moreover, and here is where the rubber hit the road as far as Frankie’s fate got twisted and turned around somewhere along the line Sandy, dish Sandy, lonely Sandy, and cousin Joanne had had a parting of the ways, a nasty parting of the ways. (Frankie thought it might be about bringing shame on the Murphy family name, Joanne and Sandy’s last names but that seems too adult world dross although Joanne was a religious girl always even when she was secretly to the world giving Frankie whatever he wanted in the sex department outside of missionary intercourse so it could have had something to do with it.)  So sweet as a honey bun Arnie's car hop Sandy, sweet teen-age mother Sandy, was looking for a way to take revenge and Frankie, old king of the night Frankie, was the meat. She had him sized up pretty well, as he admitted to me. And he was sweating this one out like crazy, and swearing everyone within a hundred miles to secrecy. So I’m telling you this in strictest confidence even now fifty years later and long after his divorce from her, from the divine Joanne. Just don’t tell Joanne. Ever.