Dreams Of Easy Rider Pretty James Preston-With Bessie Smith’s “Yellow Dog Blues” In Mind

By Fritz Taylor

Minnie Murphy, despite two marriages, or maybe because of those marriages complete with consummated kids, still had dreams, moisture-laden dreams about her “easy rider,” her Pretty James Preston, her first love if it came right down to it. Pretty James had fallen down, had taken the big fall, almost twenty years before after attempting single-handedly to rob a branch of the Granite National Bank in Braintree about twenty miles from Boston. Minnie had been standing across the street from the bank when Pretty James came rumbling out of the bank after having shot dead a bank guard who thought the money in the bank was his personal stash or something like that and had run into a police barrage while trying to get to his getaway Vincent Black Lightning. That action had unlike his twelve or so previously armed robberies (and assorted gas station and store robberies too numerous to count since the age of fifteen when he started it all robbing the Citco gas station of one hundred and seven dollars and found his profession) had slowed him up enough to let the coppers get to the bank in time for their shoot-out. Pretty James Preston, 26, D.OA. at South Shore Hospital  went down in a hail of bullets as he lived, fast, very fast and easy always with those fates of film actor James Dean and legendary outlaw Harlow Court in mind-yeah, live fast and die young leave old age for the nervous and square, they could have that all for free.   

(After childhood nobody called James Preston anything but Pretty James or they would face a fistful of knuckles-strange since during that childhood you were very likely to get that same fistful of knuckles if you called him that moniker which had been bestowed on him by his mother.  Just ask Sam Lowell.)

Once Minnie had seen what had happened to Pretty James she left the scene quickly (a witness later would say that a red-headed woman, her, had appeared nervous and appeared to be waiting for somebody across the street from the bank, and did not look like anybody she recognized in that small town at that time of day) and headed to Boston to a whorehouse where she had a friend, or rather a friend of Pretty James, in order to make some money for a getaway. Minnie had been a virgin when Pretty James came up to her and her boyfriend Lester Lannon at the Adamsville Beach one summer day while they were walking down the seawall. Pretty James had spied her in her “come hither” diaphanous summer dress going by on the boulevard, turned his bike around for a better look, liked what he saw and bold as brass (or maybe knowing two things-Lester was no match for him and had sensed Minnie was having too many womanly feelings of late for her tender age of sixteen) nodded without a word for her to get on back of his ride. Without a word she did so and that started the sweet strange love affair between her and Pretty James Preston which would continue to haunt her dreams twenty years later.    

The strange part at least to an average person, maybe a little too square average person, was that when Pretty James needed some walking around money in between robberies he would send her over to Madame LeBlanc’s whorehouse near Symphony Hall to meet expenses. When he first proposed the idea the still not fully broken in Minnie was shocked but as only Pretty James could of all the men she had loved he coaxed her after a few arguments. It had not been too bad once she decided the best way to get by was to believe she was doing it for her love of Pretty James. Madame kind of cushioned the blow keeping her away from the kinkier clientele and their odd requests. Alone now that was her first refuge, and she was grateful to Madame for taking her in.        

Minnie would eventually wind up in a rooming house in Saco, Maine before she felt the coast was clear and finally settled in Portland where she consummated those two marriages and her eternal salacious dreams of her Pretty James. Pretty James who had always called her Sugar Bowl their private inside joke for what he liked to do with her while she was sleeping. (The old Bessie Smith tune “Put a little sugar in my bowl” had been playing from some weird airwaves Chicago blues program on the radio in their motel room that night he christened her). Many a night, married or in between, she would put herself to sleep with visions of Pretty James on that fast-super fast Black Lightning, Pretty James’ pride and joy an English bike that he said put Harleys and Nortons to shame once you got it out on some super-highway and let her rip.

Even the cops couldn’t catch the bike as Pretty James proved one night after robbing a White Hen convenience store with her at his back. He pulled the throttle down on Route 24 and blew those coppers away, left them in the dust. She was so excited after that caper that she let Pretty James take her right out on the Adamsville Beach in full view of cars full of young lovers doing their own private versions of what she and her man were doing in public. Yeah, Pretty James had had an easy ride that night didn’t even need to deal with any foreplay she was so wet.                 

Minnie had not always been a biker girl, been behind an easy rider, her easy rider who slipped her on back of his bike and revved her up as he revved up that blown-out engine. Far from it. In high school before she dropped out to be with her Pretty James she was in College Prep classes, had wanted to become like a lot of young women back then before the big sea-change a schoolteacher or an artist, probably more realistically a schoolteacher since a having come from hunger the life of a bohemian artist would not have sat well with her parents, and probably not her either when time came to make choices. She also had a pretty square boyfriend, Lester Lannon. (She thought he was pretty square as well but they had known each other forever and lived two streets apart in the old Acre neighborhood of Riverdale where she had grown up for he didn’t even respond to her come hither diaphanous summer dress she wore at the beach to maybe stir him up a little.) They were forced to take public transportation when they went on dates because neither she nor Lester had a car, or access to a car. Besides Lester was so nerdy that he had flunked his driver’s test and so even if he had access to a car that would not have helped them. Needless to say both were so square that they never even thought about having sex although as least Minnie thought about it, thought about it a lot as she matured.

Minnie and Lester went along as best they could even if once in a while Minnie seethed inside, seethed some unnamed hurt, some unnamed want, inside. Then the summer between junior and senior year her whole world turned upside down. She and Lester had been walking down to the Adamsville Beach after taking the bus to the last stop before the beach. Minnie acknowledged even then that she was a conventional pretty well-brought up Irish Catholic virginal girl and more than one boy had taken a run at her despite knowing she was “going steady” with Lester. That day she had on a sun dress against the heat and so looked very tempting to any passing boys. However she was not prepared for what was to come a few minutes after they had started walking when she heard this roar come up behind them. She, they turned around for her to see her first look at Pretty James and his exotic bike. Pretty James, she could tell was somewhat older than they were, did not say word one to her, to either of them but just nodded to her to get on the back of his bike. Minnie hesitated for a few seconds thinking very quickly what getting on the back of that bike would mean and then made decision. That was the last time she saw Lester. That night after talking for most of the afternoon Pretty James took her to a motel, took all she had to give, took her maidenhead, took her a couple of times even though she was sore for a couple of days after.                 

There was hell to pay when she went home and her mother could tell, could tell as any woman could, that a dramatic change had come over Minnie, that she had joined the ranks of womanhood. Her parents had thought it was Lester she had given herself to and were ready to crucify him, were ready to call the coppers on him for “raping” their daughter. Minnie was not sure what to do so she called Pretty James to explain what was going on. He said for her to get her things together and meet him out in back of her family’s house which was filled with trees and provided cover against any snooping parents. When he showed up Minnie with a knapsack and nothing else asked what was going to happen. Pretty James said they were going to split, to stay low for a while. Without another word Minnie got on the bike and they were off. That was the last that Minnie saw of her parents, the last she saw of Riverdale for many years. Pretty James would always be under her skin, would always be like that first summer day down at old Adamsville Beach.