From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Our Homeland The Sea

Funny, he, call him old man of the sea, although that appellation has been done to death in about sixteen different ways not all of them apt as that fits as good as any, thought as he watched out over another endlessly enchanted seascape, this time god-brokered, maybe god-forsaken  furious winds driving white-capped  waves thundering to ill-prepared but eagerly waiting to be taken like some overripe maiden beaches already filled with flotsam and jetsam, nature’s jimson,  from a million previous rages, nature rages now co-mingled with his own benighted rages, how much of his life had revolved around the sea, around trying to get a handles on the sea, trying to see, well, hell at this late date where he fit in, no, where he stood, okay. And then he thought this…

Maybe it was the sheer, hard fact, hard to get around fact anyway, of the transcontinental California night calling after too long an absence, the California be-bop, be-bop, be-bop, praise saint be-bop, our lord and king,  late 1960s night, summer of love night and its aftermath when all things were possible and when old Wordsworth had it right, had it poem right, to be young was very heaven, the eternal California be-bop night after years of Maine solitude, of Maine grey-blue-white washed, white-crested, white-capped, foam-flecked Atlantic ocean-flotsam and jetsam strewn waters. After all not all oceans are created the same, just look at the fury-driven ocean in front of him, no friend to man, to beast, or to god, not all oceans speak to one in the same way, speak that siren song whisper, speak hushed tones that no man (and here man means man or woman, okay) dare speak above, nature’s arbitrary law, although they are all old Father (or is it Brother now) Neptune’s thoughtful playgrounds. (Thoughtful for ten thousand thoughtful walks, ten thousand un-thoughtful walks, and eight thousand more or less, indifferent walks, twenty-eight thousand, more or less, chances anyway.

California’s, yes, white-washed, yes, white-crested, yes, white-capped, yes, foam-flecked speak to gentle, warm lapis lazuli blue wealth dreams of the quest, the long buried life long quest for the great blue-pink great American West night, blue-pinked skies of course. Yes maybe it was just that sheer hard fact, hard to get around still, that pushed him, old man of the sea him, out of Eastern white, white to hate the sight of white, snowed-indoors, Eastern gale winds blowing a man against the sand-pebbled seas, and into the endless starless, better, sunless night. Yes, maybe just a change of color, or to color, from the white white whiteness of the sea stretched ,white-etched night. Right down to the shoreline white where the waves devoured night and left their mark, their graffiti mark.

Maybe too it was the sheer, hard fact, he would no longer speak of hard to get facts around since that was enameled into his psyche now, of preparing, against the timetable of that Eastern white night, timetable set and etched by that shoreline outline and that fugitive lover who ravished her shoreline sands and then fled, this and that for the winter California day, and night, the ocean California that set the thoughts of the be-bop night (hell, more than be-bop, be-bop to the nth power suddenly came brain-storming in waves like that turbulent sea over him not seen or heard from since those first summer of love days), and the quest for the blue-pink skies humming once again in the, admittedly, older-boned voyager, voyeur (some snicker dirty old man and save such words as voyeur for the professionals) of dreamed once sultry, steamy nights.

And vivid memories of golden Butterfly Swirl and her sex, her seventeen different little tricks, learned, learned from who knows where, maybe mother ocean but certainly not her former seeking the perfect wave boyfriend- where would that fit into his timetable?  Such thoughts, such return thoughts a different proposition, a different proposition altogether, on most days, from preparing to face fierce Maine winter mornings, unaided by the graces, speak freely of the graces please, and forms nature provides its hardier creations. No thoughts today of heavy woolen coats, double-stitched, double-plied, doubled-vested, old nor’ easter worthy, or heavy woolen pants, same chino pants of youth, same black chino pants, no cuffs, except winter weight, not the always summer weight of no knowledge youth (inside sad joke), or heavy boots, heavy clunky rubbery boots mocking against the snow-felt, ocean-edged soft sand streets, or maybe, more in tune with aged-bone recipes heavy-soled, heavy-rubber soled (or was it rubber souled?) running shoes (also known in the wide world of youth as sneakers, better Chuck’s). Of scarves, and caps, full-bodied caps, better seaman’s caps, heavy, wool, dark blue, built to stand against the ocean-stormed waves crashing and thrashing against ships hulls, and gloves, gloves to keep your hands from frosty immobility I need not speak. Or will not speak. Of this I will speak…

A picture of Jimmy Leclerc, remember that name like you remember the seas, like you remember certain tales, like you remember, well, like you remember as best you can , that which somebody told you about but which you did not experience (although Jimmy experiences fill my soul, fill my sea-watching soul even today). Blessed, sainted, sanctified, cradled, born under a certain star, lucky maybe if you believe in making your own luck or having it thrust upon you ,Jimmy, young, maybe four or five, no, five, definitely five, school ready, school ready come fall, mucking around the summertime shoreline mucks, low tide, shoreline white- etched ravishes well up the beach, fetid smells from seven kinds of tanker-passing oil slicks, rancid chemicals from the cross-bay industrial plant, human mucks mixed in from ten thousand , ten thousand  (thanks, Sam Coleridge) sources seeping back to shore and mephitic (thanks, Norman Mailer) seeps as well from the close by marshes that guard the approached to the sea. Jimmy, a tow-headed, tow-headed kid, five, portending Adonis and ladies, maybe some Butterfly Swirl and her seventeen little tricks when he gets old enough to know of such tricks, know of teaching such tricks just in case he lands a neophyte, knowing from some savior older brother himself sent to sea at fourteen, or some other worthy sea-mate, that day, that picture day, walking toward the ever-present amateur clam diggers(or maybe professional but it is hard to see how they, or anyone could make a living out of  oil slicked, fetid, human mucked clams),high rubber boots, high almost to the crotch (although Jimmy would not have pointed that hard fact out), buckets, small buckets, portending small payloads, sea-rakes, sea-shovels, sea-backs and working against time before the relentless seas come back to cover their own.            

And just that day, that low tide and mucks days, he learned a valuable lesson from those vagrant gypsy clam-diggers (literally gypsies, Roma, if you prefer, but just plain ordinary gypsies then, and called so, mostly seen with travelling carnivals and on city sidewalks selling cheap roses for the lady, and maybe their daughters too, selling that is, for they used the clams in some special olio broth magic that kept their race alive in hard times) about only believing half (or less, but that was another lesson another time).He had heard, heard from some older boys who lived up the street (the name of the street not important, not important to the lesson, but maybe, naming will act as an omen, name Taffrail Road evoking long ago wooden ships and sea-farers worthy of the name, sea-ward cousins of that day’s gypsies) and who were interested in girls, as girls, as opposed to boys, and not like Jimmy, Jimmy even then as foils for his child-like schemes, not all evil, not at all, but not in entangling, intertwining way like they spoke of. He asked one of the gypsy diggers if he had seen any submarines around while he was digging. The digger spoken to called to his gyspy partner repeating Jimmy’s question and they both let out with a low groan laugh, then a more hearty one. The first man laughed some more and then said to Jimmy that while there were not many around anymore since the war (World War II for those who are keeping counts on wars, or just trying to keep them straight) since the bloody Germans has been defeated and good riddance (reflecting the decimation of his kindred in Europe who took a serious beating from the bloody bastard Nazis) but he said on certain moonless nights you could see objects that certainly looked like submarines so be watchful, and be careful. So for a couple of months thereafter whenever the moon was low or it was cloudy Jimmy looked out fiercely at the open sea and then after a while went on to other things.   

A moonless June night, circa 1961 Jimmy Leclerc is sitting in his brother borrowed  1957 two-toned Chevy (I know, I know said brother should be shot, or worst ,for letting anybody, even a brother, even a brother who spent the whole afternoon turtle-waxing the damn thing borrow his chariot) down at the far end of Seal Rock (name also not important except that Seal Rock says beach, says mystery and says, far end says, that this is the local lovers’ lane for the free-spirits who don’t mind the crowds of cars that dot this place on moonless June nights (and other times too)  or mind being seen in a spot that means only one thing, that you will be anywhere  from point one to point thirty Monday morning in Olde Saco High school before school “lav” talk, boys’ or girls’ lav accordingly. And this week coming Jimmy and Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, will receive a number because Jimmy, who long since has learned to believe in making his own luck, has talked his ball and chain sweetie Lorraine into searching for submarines. And searching for them very closely, as it turned out in the back seat of that cherry ’57 Chevy.         

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Night -Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm

Funny he, Adam Evans, thought, a little sweaty and overheated from the turned too high thermostat put on earlier to ward off the open- eyed chill of the room, as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed, the rain poured down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury, how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm within hearing distance. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.

He thought first and mainly about how early the sea came into his life, almost from birth down at those ragged edge of the sea slopes around Granitetown, the 1950s old time sea air country farm turned modern housing development of single three bedroom homes and duplexes for up and coming World War II veterans like his father with plenty of kids to house and some prospects, where he lived growing up and was tumbled into the sea early. Literally tumbled early to the sea as an errant older brother, aged maybe five, rolled him, maybe aged four, in a barrel, a tinny old trash barrel, down those ragged slopes that formed the outer perimeter of the housing development and gateway to the sea and he would up in about three feet of water crying to get out. Crying also that he had gotten his new trousers and jersey all wet and seaweedy and that he would catch hell (not the word he would have used then but appropriate) when he got home and Ma saw his condition. And Teflon older brother would get away scot-free and he, no snitch even then, would Velcro once again some mother trouble. And he did, although, damn age, he could not recall the penalty, maybe a few days without television.

And learned the power of the sea early when one winter storm night, maybe about fourth grade but in any case a situation that would, minimum, call for at least one no school day, Mother Nature played a dirty trick on her seaward brethren and tried to bring them home to her bosom all in one lashed-up swoop as the exploding high water, ignoring painfully constructed man-made seawalls, came right up to that home’s front door and the lot of them, two parents and three brothers, only reached higher ground in a split second before a big foam-flecked (aren’t they always foam-flecked like some angry man ranting to a rapt crowd when they come in that hard, fast and furious) wave crashed down on their home. A few nights spent in the gymnasium of his elementary school, Snug Harbor (jesus, what a name after that episode), and weeks of clean- up and smells of bleach to get rid of mold and other stuff taught him well the fickleness of old Mother.

And later, childhood later, a few years after the winter storm later anyway, when he, bravo he, decided, yes, consciously decided that the impeding summer storm he could sense coming (he had developed a sense about weather, sea weather anyway, without the need for television prompts) would be no deterrent to his taking that somewhat water-logged log he eyed on the beach and using it to help him swim to China, or some such place, on the current. The China, or someplace being prompted, that day by episode 234 in the Velcro Ma wars that he had just lost another round in and was ready to chuck it all if he could just get away to make his fame and fortune . The subject of the dispute, a case of missing money from her purse (money missing and spent the night before on sweet roll crème-filled Twinkies, ditto cocoa rich chocolate cupcakes, and a few off-hand pieces of penny candy, mary janes , no, not that mary jane what would he have known of weeds, dopes, and such in those suburban dark ages, tootsie rolls, stuff like that, maybe adding up to a dollar, a big dollar just then with Pa just out of work and no dough rolling in and mortgages to pay, and hungry, not sweet tooth hungry kids to feed, and so every penny counted. Round to Ma, and adieu, no more burden son.

But enough of motivation, and enough of not having the sense that god gave geese because just then he let go of the log to do something, something forgotten. And with the sea picking up steam that log kept eluding his grasp as they, he and the log, headed to open water. And losing the log in the churning waters he, not a strong swimmer then (or now) almost drowned, and would have and fate changed, except for the screams of his panic beach-bound older brother (the rolling barrel older brother, thanks, he owed older brother one) seeing his plight sounded the alarm for help and some Madonna savior swimmer, beach-bound too, came and swooped him up before he went down for the third time. And later he yelling beach-bound and still full of water, yelling to his savior bother “Don’t tell Ma, jesus, don’t tell Ma.” And he didn’t .

Or that night, that funny night (funny night in retrospect, then and now retrospect) when he, his buddy since elementary school Will (and proper subject of some wild non-mighty storm tales) and his girl, Carrie he thought although it could have been Donna, Donna whom Will later married and divorced after about three weeks of marriage right after he caught her running around with about four different guys, and a couple of dykes to top things off, and who would wind up a very senior cadre, if cadre is the right word for those times and that feeling, in the summer of love in San Francisco, 1967 not fifteen blocks from this stormy night Seals Rock Inn, and she, she Terry Wallace, his mostly through high school flame, sat in Will’s father-bought high school car, a ’59 Dodge, “making out” (term of art for“doing the do,” “going all the way,” sex, hell, fucking) while the sea churned up around them at old Nippo Point Beach just up from home Granitetown and the police, spotting the storm blasted car and the fix, came and rescued them rescued them while they were in, ah, compromising positions (you figure it out, back seat car figure it out, or read the Karma Sutra, position number twenty- one, or just read it and dream figure your own position, he just laughed his thought laugh) because in the throes of love they had not realized that they were in a couple of feet of sea water and rising that had splashed over some poor man-made seawall built against Mother’s angers. And the cops, the cops snitching, snitching like they always do, snitching like crazy to Ma (and Pa too on all sides), talking about court and under-age, even when Donna, yah, that’s right, it had to be Donna, she was just that bold and sassy, offered to give them a piece, or maybe some head, if they would forget the whole matter. Mas and Pas didn’t and Will and he walked, walked alone all summer, and all summer heard Karma Sutra laughs from fogged up cars down at that broken Nippo Point seawall they claimed.

Or that day, that wind- swept, foam-flecked sea day (okay, enough of foam-flecked seas, enough of rough seas. big swirling rough seas, immense, beyond man-sized immense out in the deep blue deep all green gloss gone falling but almost tepidly to thankful womb shores, cluttered with jetsam and flotsam, logs, ancient memory logs, China-worthy logs, from hurt penny-pinched childhood, cigarette packages, maybe discarded from some white tee- shirted corner boy venture out in the submarine race night, lobster traps, useful for student ghetto table, every smashed and swirled thing, enough of wind, enough to fill a lifetime wind , a lifetime of sad blown winds, a lifetime of false trumpet winds, Miles Davis be-bop full-throated winds, if they, the winds could have “dug” be-bop instead of aimless fury), when his world fell apart, the day when Diana, his first wife, had left him, left him for good, for good after about seventeen mad bouts of irreconcilable differences and about sixteen almost reconciliations. Enough of almost reconciliations to fill a book, a book of how to, and how not to, his version, his final truth version, screw up the genteel, gentle, the broken, or better half-broken women (nah, woman, she ) from saddened youth spills, damnations, and mishaps without really trying.

Funny, although not humorously funny like his nymph tryst with Terry, or ironically funny like his bonding with the sea from birth, but kind of sad sack funny he and Diana had met, met in Harvard Square in the summer of love, 1967 (check it out on Wikipedia for the San Francisco version of that same year but basically it was the winds blowing the right way for once when make love not war, make something, make your dreams come true with sex, drugs, music had its minute, has its soon faded minute via self –imposed hubris and the death-dealing, fag-hating, nigger-hating, women-hating, self-hating bad guys with the guns and the dough leading, and still leading, a vicious counter-attack), she from Podunk Mid-West (Davenport out in the Iowas if you need to know) far from ocean waters, but thrilled by the prospect of meeting an ocean boy who actually had been there, to the ocean that is.

Oh yah, how they met in that Harvard Square good night for the curious, simplicity itself (his version), she was sitting about half way across the room, the cafeteria room, the old Hayes-Bickford lunch room just up from the old end of the red line Harvard Square subway stop (and no longer there, nor is the subway stop the end of the Red Line), if that name helps (and it did , did help that is, if you had any pretensions to some folkie literary career, some be-bop blessed poet life, or just wanted to rub elbows with what might be the next big thing after that folk minute expired of a British invasion of sexed-up moppets and wet dream bad boys and poetry died of T.S. Eliot and rarified air, or, maybe just a two in the morning coffee, hard pressed sudsy coffee, but coffee, enough to keep a seat in the place, after a tough night at the local gin mills, and hadn’t caught anybody’s attention, sitting by herself, writing furiously, on some yellow notepad, and she looked up.

He, just that moment looked up as well (although he had taken about six previous peeks in her direction but she ignored them with her furious pen), and smiled at her. And she gave him a whimsical, no, a melt smile, a smile to think about eternities over, about maybe chasing some windmills about, about, about walking right over and asking about the meaning of, well, that smile. And he did, and she did, she told him that is. And in the telling, told him, that she had half seen (her version) him peeking and wondered about it. And all this peeking, half peeking, got him a seat at her table, and her a cup of coffee and a couple of hours of where are you from, what do you like, what is the meaning of existence and what the hell are you writing so furiously about at two o’clock on Sunday morning. And one thing led to another and eventually the sea came in, although, damn age against he couldn’t for the life of him remember how that subject came up, except maybe something triggered when she mentioned Iowa, or something.

And what did she look like, for the male reader in need of such detail, especially since she was sitting alone writing furiously at two in the morning, maybe she was, ah, ah, a dog. Nah she was kind of slender, but not skinny, slender in that fresh as sweet cream Midwestern corn-fed way that started to happen after the womenfolk, not prairie fire pioneer women any longer, had been properly fed for a couple of generations after those hard Okie/Arkie western trek push on days of eating chalk dust and car smoke trailing dreams. With her long de riguer freshly- ironed brown hair pulled back from her face (otherwise she would have constantly had to interrupt her furious writing to keep it out of her face as she wrote). And a pleasing face, bright blue eyes, good nose, and nice lips, kissable lips. Nice legs from what he could see when he went over. But who was he kidding, it was that whimsical, no, melt smile, that smile that spoke of eternities, although what it spoke of at that two in the morning was gentle breezes, soft pillows, of that Midwestern what you see is what you get and what you get, well, you better hang on, and hang on tight, and be ready to take some adversity, to keep around that smile. But that was later, later really, when he figured it out better why he tossed and turned all that night (really morning) and that thought would not let him be.

And memory bank of their first time up in ocean’s kingdom, the next day actually she was so anxious to see the ocean, or maybe anxious to see it with him, they talked about it being that way too but let’s just memory call it her anxiety, the rugged cross salvation rocks that make up Perkins’s Cove in southern Maine, up there by Ogunquit. There are stories to be told of his own previous meetings with Mother Perkin’s but this is Diana’ s story and those stories, his stories, involved other women, other treacheries, other immense treacheries, and other delights too. That day thought she flipped out, flipped out at the immensity of it, of the majestic swells (and of her swaying, gently, but rhythmically to the rise and fall of each wave) of the closeness of a nature that she, she of wind- swept wheat oceans, of broken- back bracero wet back labor to bring in the crop, of fights against every form of injury, dust, bugs, fire, drought had not dreamed of. And as if under some mystic spell, or some cornfield mistake, she actually plunged fully-clothed (not having been told of the need for a swimsuit since the ocean itself was the play, the hugeness of it, the looking longingly back to primordial times of it, the reflection in the changings winds of it), in to the ocean at that spot where there was just enough room if the tide was right, just ebbing enough to create a sand bar to do so (today there is no problem getting down there as the Cove trustees have provided a helpful stairs, concrete-reinforced, against old time lumber steps breakaway and lost in some snarled sea) and promptly was almost carried out by a riptide.

He saved her, saved her good that day. Saved her with every ounce of energy he had to take her like some lonesome sailor saving his shipmate, save just to be saving, saving from the sea for a time anyway, or better, saving like the guy, that long gone daddy, who did or said some fool thing to his woman and she flipped out and make a death pact with old King Neptune (and wouldn’t you know want to bring him along for the ride) from that song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds. But get this, and get it from him straight just in case you might have heard it from her. That day she was so sexed-up, there is no other way to say it, and there shouldn’t be, what with the first look ocean swells and her swaying , and her getting dunked good (with wet clothes and a slight feverish chill), and her being so appreciative of him saving her (the way she put it, his version anyway, was that save, that unthinking save, meant that whatever might come that she knew, knew after one day, and knew she was not wrong, that he would not forsake her for some trivial) that she wanted to have sex with him right there, right in the cove. (In those days there was a little spot that he knew, a little spot off a rutted dirt path that was then not well known, was unmarked and was protected by rows of shrubbery so there was no problem about “doing the do” there and frankly that thought got him sexed-up too. Today there are so many touristas per square inch in high season and that old rutted path now paved so that the act would be impossible. It would have to wait hard winter and frozen asses, if that same scenario came up again.)

Here’s the thing thought she, Diana, from the sticks, new to Harvard Square summer of love and Boston college scene school didn’t take birth control pills or have any other form of protection that day, although she was fairly sexually experienced (some wheat field farmer and then the usual assortment of colleges guys, some honest ,some, well, one-night stands). And he, he not expecting to be a savior sailor that day carried no protection, hell condoms (and, truth, his circle, the guys anyway, and really the girls knowing what the guys expected, left it up to their partners to protect themselves. Barbarians, okay). So before they could hit the bushes, before they could lose themselves in the stormy throes of love he had to run (yes, he ran, so you know he was sexed-up too) up to Doc’s Drugstore (no longer there, since Doc passed away many years ago and his sons became lawyers and not pharmacists) on U.S.1 right in the center of Ogunquit. And red faced purchased their “rubbers” (and wouldn’t you know there was some young smirky I-know what-you-are-up- to-right-now sales girl behind the counter when he paid for his purchase, jesus). So as the sun started blue –pink setting in the west and to the sound, the symphony really, of those swells clanging on those rugged cross rocks they made love for the first time, not beautiful sultry night pillow love in some high-end hotel (like later), or fearfully (fearful that her prudish dorm roommate would bust in on them) in her dorm room but fiercely, fiercely like those ocean waves crashing mercilessly to shore. The time for exotic, genteel, gentle love-makings (“making it,” out of some be-bop hipster lexicon their way of expressing that desire) would come later, later intermingled with the seventeen differences and sixteen almost reconciliations.

And funny too in that same sad sack love way they early on had vowed, secular vowed (no, not that Perkin’s Cove love day, sex is easier to agree to, to make and unmake, than vows, religious, secular, or blasphemous), that they would not, like their parents fight over every stupid thing.. That night in her dorm room after that full day of activity they stayed up half the night (hell with a little benny that wasn’t hard, and perhaps they stayed up all night, and although her roommate never showed that night they did not, his version, did not make love) remembering his Velcro Ma wars and, as she related that night and many night after, her Baptist father repent sinners weird wars. He related in detail his various wars, wars to the death that left him with no option, no he option except to leave the family house and strike it on his own, on his summer of love terms if possible, since he had sensed that wind that storm swell coming for a while and was as ready as any “hippie” (quaint term, although he did not, and never did, consider himself a hippie but rather traced his summer of love yearnings to beat times, to be-bop boys and girls with shaded eyes and existential desires) to run with the tide. She related in detail her devil father, with seven prayer books in all his hands on Sunday and a thwarted creep up to her room every other day, and of his bend bracero hatred short-changing the wages of the wetbacks who came via train smoke and dreams to bring in the crop (or have the complaisant county sheriff kick them out wage-less, or with so many deductions for cheap jack low rent shack barely held together against the fury of prairie winds room and board, food just shy of some Sally, Salvation Army, hand- out in some desolate back street town (and he knew of such foods, and of kindly thanks yous but that was give away food not sweated labor food) that it made the same thing. Justified of course by some chapter and verse about the heathens (Catholic heathens and he, the father , still fighting those 16^thcentury wars out on prairie America and, and, winning against hard luck ,move on to the next shack and hand-out worthy food harvest stop, endlessly, braceros), and their sorrows .

And they didn’t , didn’t act like their parents, their he and she parents, that summer of love, that overblown ,frantic , wind-changing summer of love, when they sensed that high tide rolling in, hell, more than sensed it, could taste it, taste in the their off-hand love bouts not reserved for downy billows (and he glad, glad as hell, that she, his little temptress she, had freely offered herself to him up on those rugged cross rocks so that he, when he needed a reason, easily coaxed her to some landlocked bushes, or some river, some up river ,Charles River, of course hide-out and she, slightly blushing, maybe, with the thought of it, followed along giggling like a schoolgirl),taste it is the sweet wines handmade in some friend experiment , hey try this (and experiment yogurts, ice cream, dough bread, and on and on, too) , taste it in the tea, ganga, herb, hemp smoke curling through their lungs and moment peace, or later, benny high to keep sleep from their eyes on the hitchhike road, or later too, sweet cousin cocaine, cheap, cheap as hell, and exotic to snuffed noses to take away the minute blues creeping in, taste it in the new way that their brethren (after all not everybody got caught up in the minute, some went jungle-fighting, some went wall street back-biting, some went plain old ordinary nine to five-routining, some went same old same, old love and marriage and here come X and Y with a baby carriage (and mortgages , and saving for junior’s college and ,and…)offered this and that, free, this and that help, this and that can I have this free, taste it in, well, if you don’t want to do that, hell, don’t and not face Ma, or kin, or professional wrath (or she father fire and brimstone), taste it out in those friendly streets, no not Milk Street, not Wall Street, not the Loop, but Commonwealth Avenue, Haight Street, Division Street, many Village streets, many Brattle streets, many Taos streets, Venice Beach streets, all the clots that make the connections, the oneness of it all, the grandness of it all, the free of it all.

And they, they made the kindness, the everyday kindness of it, the simple air-filled big balloon kindness of it like some Peter Max cartoonish figure, and when they filled that balloon with enough kindness and against the slut remarks of high Catholic Ma disapproving of heathens (see not all bigots were out in the prairie wheat field strung out on the lord and, wheat profits) and she Pa disapproving of hippie (never was , beat, beat, yes) they married , justice of the peace high wind Perkin’s Cove- consummated married she all garlanded up like some Botticelli doll model picture (his mistress, his whore, from what they had heard, and Diana blushed at that knowledge), flowered, flowing garment, free hair in the wind and he some black robe throw around , and feasting, feasting on those rugged cross rocks . Too much.

And for as long as they could see some new breeze blowing that they felt part of they were kind to each other (and others of course). Then the winds of change shifted, and like the tides the ebbs set in, maybe not obvious at first, maybe not that first series of defeats, that Loop madness in ’68, that first bust for some ill-gotten dope and some fool snitch to save his ass from stir turned on him, some brethren (he hated snitch, the very word snitch, from that time down in that rolling barrel slope in the water episode with his older brother, his older brother now name-etched in black marble in Washington along with other old neighborhood names), that first Connecticut highway hitchhike bust as they headed to D.C. for one more vain and futile attempt to stop the generation’s damn war, that several hour wait in Madison for some magnificent Volkswagen bus to stop and get them from point C to point D on their journey to this now very storm- driven San Francisco spot (a few blocks up over in North Beach the old beat blocks, Haight Street hippie having turned into a free-fire zone, that “no that is six dollars for those candles , not free brother” sea-change, and the decline of kindness, first casualty their own kindnesses, their own big balloon kindnesses more less frequently evoked, more tired from too much work, more sorry but I have a headache ,he too, and less thoughts about trysts in hidden bushes, or downy billows for that matter. Worse, worse still, he went his way, and she went hers, trying to make it (no longer their “making it” signal to chart love’s love time) in the world, hell, nine to five routining it but it was the kindnesses, those big ball kindnesses that went (and that they both spoke of, marriage counselor spoke of, missing), and seventeen differences, substantial differences, and sixteen almost reconciliations,, they grew older and apart, and…

She left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, a man who hated the outdoors, hated the thought of the ocean (he grew up in lobstertown Maine and had his fill of oceans, of fierce winds, of rubber hip boots, and of rugged cross rocks thank you, she told him of the other man) when she called it seventeen times is enough quits after they had spent a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage that he insisted they go to reconcile after the last difference bout where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin ( big old sadness at that remark by him for he never said, kindness said, anything about that, or never said he could stop the ravages of time), and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train, unquote. Yah, she up and left him. Damn, and he had had thoughts of eternity, of always being around that smile, that quizzical smile, or the possibility of that smile, that he first latched onto that first Harvard Square night when he had smiled at her across the room, and she had smiled that smile right between his eyes at him.

Or that time later with Sarah, jesus has it been twenty years now, as the winter seas once again bore down their fury when they, at her insistence she from coastline Oregon near Coos Bay, had moved to water’s edge Marblehead outside of Boston away from city crowds and city concerns and city madnesses and city doubts and too city delights, and the seas came up over a painfully constructed double seawall (watched over time turn from single storm blasted sea wall), damn double seawalls and still not enough, and almost touched the top of their front door steps. And they seeking shelter again in a make-shift home school like he in in kid time and spending obligatory weeks with bleach and mop buckets. She, Sarah she, too eventually calling it quits, although not over another man, or over his man and nature obsession, or over that breeched double sea-wall but just her calling it Sarah quits. Just like the way she came in to that meeting, the Park Street church meeting, some pressing urgent meeting to stop another generation’s war and they connected like the passing air that night they met, both on the hurt rebound, and both clingy, clingy as hell, and both without a word shortly thereafter, maybe a couple of days not more than a week, deciding quickly to stay together for a time, not kid foolish eternity time, an indeterminate time. And she brought forth a rebirth of kindness in him (she was organically kind, needed no winds of time shift, no big world- historic motion motive to do that) and of shared funny times, mature now (ragged bushes, and up river hide-aways just a laugh and tingle memory), although rugged cross rock still travelled, mature travelled and no fair maiden rescues. And he sorry, end of youth, end of mystery awe, end of mad adventure sorry, strangely more than Diana sorry, when she left.

Or that Maine time a few years back when, alone to clear some troubled thoughts after the end of his last marriage (and last marriage), a sudden winter storm came up the coast of Maine and he was stranded in his Thoreau-like lean-to shack not build for heavy gales but summer frolic for a couple of days when Mile Road the sole road in or out, drowned smothered flooded marshland on both sides and so no escape except for the boat-worthy , was cut off sunken under five feet of water, he short of supplies and house fuel not having heard any forecast, his life-long sea trouble radar apparently failing him or maybe unadorned hubris from his quick decision to head north against all cautions after he gathered himself together post-court battle, and he finally knew what it was like to be totally dependent on happenstance, to siren call Mother Nature, on others, and, in the end on his own devises.

Or tonight, the winds blasting away against the open air door to his room, rain splashing down the wind -battered door seeping into the room a little, torrents of rain, torrents of thoughts, momentarily left to his own devises, left to his own thoughts. Just then he thought, that no, no he had been wrong, he really had been searching for that metaphor, that metaphor, that mighty storm metaphor, that would sum up his life.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Elegy For A Drunken Man - For Jean Bon Leclerc

 

Drunk, Sunday night, early Monday morning drunk, drunk against the new week, against the nine to five grind, against another book in need of reading, against the loneliness of Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, early Sunday afternoon, but mainly against the new reality of a joyless Joyell-less world, to give the against a name, a human name now vanished or rather vanishing before his drunken eyes (she had said they were blue, bedroom blue, she from a brown-eyed world and so delighted, that is the very word she used , to be with her pagan blue-eyed boy but that too was vanishing, the thought of it anyway). Sitting, same sitting at this same sitting bar, on this same sitting bar stool drinking, the last four, or was it five, Sundays  running that too vanishing when he was given his walking papers. Yah, he was a walking daddy, walking daddy, a be-bop non-stop walking daddy since she had decided to go back into her safe brown-etched world and leave her blue-eyed, hell, she really did say bedroom blue-eyed, walking daddy to walk alone (and that thought that profound bedroom blue –eyed thought of hers would be retailed many times later, from many other brown-world-women looking for blue-eyed kicks before leaving daddy behind. Leaving that drunken trouble behind, leaving that white lies world behind, leaving those fumbled grand larcenies behind, but that was later this was his first blue-eyed exit and so it hurt.

And so he drank, Sunday night, really afternoon, maybe three or four, catching, cadging when he was short on dough, girl or girl-less, drinks from fair weather drinkers, or drinking exiting customer drinks before the bar maid (quaint, huh) or bartender swooped up the wet napkin liquor as he mopped his section of the cigarette- scarred, ancient glass ring embedded circles of the brown mahogany counter  (high class joint two bartenders, and on Sunday afternoon to increase his misery a fetching blonde, unfortunately not interested in has-been blue-eyed  silent drinkers) at some Commonwealth Avenue Kit Kat Club “happy hour”  to un-silence him. But that is all preclude, all so many extra drinks, collared, cadged, stolen (small larcenies though). At that hour he was drinking  low-end whisky neat (maybe with a water chaser, maybe hold the water, gone are the rumble days with Johnnie Walker some color and a beer chaser one guy buying another round until equality and maybe a floor rest, or simmering beef exploding on that ancient ring- stained (and not wiped) brown mahogany counter, a counter filled with pickled eggs, and seven kinds of  jerky, an old trick to increase the unslaken (nice) thirst in some South Boston dump bar, ladies by invited escort only, and so only manly rounds, and maybe a few broken glasses, such is life).            

This afternoon is ancient history though, a dozen drinks ago, a mile of utter useless chatter to college girls seeking Sunday afternoon thrills before heading back to books further up Commonwealth Avenue, and schools heavy with co-eds, with boyfriends and who knows, brown-eyed worlds that he would  never know. Once in a while, a Joyell, once in a while, maybe some girl looking for negro kicks, negro kicks before Malcolm turned them black. The Kit Kat Club intersected, well a lot of things, including be-bop jazz and bop-bop rock and the edges of black town and so the joint had a mix, hipsters, black and white, white mainly wanting to be black hipsters, college girls previously thrill-mentioned, and working- class guys, some drunks some just working away their silences. So some of the girls were thinking dreamy black thoughts, no blue-eyed thoughts to disturb their brown-eyed sleep but some black adventure, some black street adventure before the night sets in. Or daddy finds out, and not walking daddy either. That was how he met Joyell, over at the Red Top Club, another intersecting club, where she was slumming looking for black-eyed guys and where a blue-eyed guy could still hang with heavy-handed, heavy hipped, black angels who know all the angles, all the white man’s angles and be-bopped them away. So she, slumming, came up blue-eyed. But that was a river of drinks ago.

Now downtown bound and done, after Kit Kat memory Joyell done, Carousel bound, bound  by mad drunken stools bound, reserved for in the chips customers and hidebound heavy drinkers, say from noon on, and not just on Sunday,  bound by four, or was it five weeks SundayafternoonSundayeveningearlyMondaymorning  tradition, bound by Edie sitting next to him met on one of those previous Sunday bouts, more on that later, bound by that river of drinks, now step up, Edie step up Canadian Club mid-shelf blends (remember water chaser or neat, Tom, friendly Tom, Tom the everyman  bartender,  no not cool beer chasers and South Boston mucks, not at the Carousel, the bloody Carousel, where everything is connected, you know c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d in your face connected from the bouncers, now of surly looks and beef-eater physiques and no nonsense moves, or out you go, tumbled out onto some garbage can when you wake up, not like the ex-football players that people the security squad at uptown Kit Kat Clubs and places where college girls, adventurous college girls to be sure, go seeking safe negro kicks). Live music coming from the professionally built stage, stage lights beaming and all, now bare except the plethora of musical instruments used to keep the customers restless. (Of course, jukebox heavy, connected three for a quarter jukebox heavy for when the boys, this night boys, Mason-Dixon and the Line filled with plenty of brass and jazzy sounds, and filled with Edie-heavy Motown sounds, take their heavy breather breaks out in back lot automobiles that smell of, but he was no snitch, smell of the stuff of dreams, minute dreams. And fugitive dreams too.       

He, walking daddy, walking with the king now, walking with the king after shortly before coming out of one of those Mason-Dixon cars (met, tradition met, on that first Sunday drunk night tradition , having lost all his dough to demon whiskey, and some bitch proctoress, some felon schoolteacher slumming as a bar maid to be with her man on dreary afraid to be alone Sunday, who then went home with her boyfriend, the bouncer, that surly one with the black hair and  black heart now standing not ten feet away who all the other bouncers look to for their nods, for his nods and, he, parking lot chased had been saved by the drummer who lived only minutes from his house and who first showed him how to walk with the king), ordered  a pair of drinks, Edie and he drinks, what are you having, whatever, he is having, whisky neat (the stale water in the thumb-print heavy  tumbler warning him to go neat, or go beat). Beat, beat down, beat around, blessed beatitude beat, but beat. Just then he, now three, or was it four weeks she met, she met right at these very stools evoking nostalgic memories for just a minute, reached his hand over to her thigh and began a gently meaningful rub. She, for a few pats, let him go through the now familiar paces, and then firmly pushed his hand away, he tried again but though better of it.

Strange pattern, strange woman, but right that moment he was tied to her, tied to her by ten thousand lonely desires, ten thousand tough breaks, and maybe ten thousand pats and pushed away hands. She, one, never told him her last name (and he was not altogether sure that Edie was her name, somebody had once called out to her, Maria, she waved, and then ducked her head), two, never told him where she lived other than some over there Cambridge reference (although on previous partings she had headed toward the Massachusetts Turnpike entrance lane nearby), three, never mentioned very much personal information at all, nothing about work or school or family or where she had, or hadn’t been, or where she was going (and went to pains, great pains, to emphasize that they should live in the moment, the bleary-eyed, whisky-sotted moment, and dig those horns, those sexy saxes coming from the stage) and, four, she did tell him  she had a boyfriend who was ready to marry her tomorrow , if she was ready, although she said she wasn’t, and that boyfriend had no problem with that either. He figured either she was a whore on a night off, still capable of working a guy for dimes and drinks just to keep in shape for the heavy week ahead or she was being kept by some out- of- town married guy who showed up for business conferences every once in a while and she worked her hands a different way with him. Each week he would lean toward one theory or the other, although by the end of the night the previous week he thought she might just be a “lessie,” a dyke, queer with a big thirst and an itch to make blue-eyed guys crawl before her. But he was tied to her, tied to her in a way that he would have to play out, play out at the cost of a few shared whiskies           

A few more pairs of whiskey, one with a water chaser to slow down the pace, and the band came on for the last set, the now familiar max daddy set that gets everybody kind of sexed up, or thinking about the sex they are going to get in an hour or two, if they can make it up the bedroom stairs. These guys are good, whiskey fever good, evoking old time memories of Tommy Dorsey, or Jimmy Dorsey, he never could quite get the difference (except on mother-loving Tommy Tangerine from deep in the heart of World War II, waiting lonely waiting for news of dad, and the fate of the world), Harry James, or the be-bop daddies of the 1950s except they have taken that basic knowledge and applied it to 1966 blast out sound coming from Motown.

They bring the house down with stuff like Wilson Pickett’s Hold On I’m Coming and every guy in the place hopes to high heaven, to some big bopper high heaven, that   he is sober enough to do just that (and every girl hoping she is drunk enough to take it, take that thing easy, since she was a little sore the last time she did it and hopes that he will just ask to put a little sugar in her bowl and not want her to get all karma sutra crazy like last time  since she has to work in the morning) and then finishes up, encore finishes up with Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman and he could see guys on the dance floor dropping their hands down a little to get some ass. Further down the bar, a few seats away a guy was putting his hand on his girl’s thigh and she was helping him slide it toward her private turn-on spot with a little sigh(he thought that pair may not make it to those upstairs, and later out in the a parking he noticed them, just shadows then, except the guy’s bright yellow shirt reflected in the moonlight, against his car, she on her knees doing her thing furiously, a karma sutra woman, Good luck brother he snickered).                

The lights then came on. They finish their drinks as the Cossacks start pushing people out the door. He asks Edie to come home with him, then, when she refuses, for him to go home with her. No soap, no karma sutra night, again. He was very drunk, so drunk that night he did not make an issue out of it. He ramble-scramble, no walking daddy now, escorted her to her car, a deep green Triumph, an import from Britain which she had given him a ride in before but, mystery girl, no this night, this night she is miffed at something, not him, he doesn’t figure in the miffed department (maybe the one of horn-player was off, or something like that), so no ride. Adios, this night he knows she is somebody’s whore, probably has an assignation (nice) in the morning and no time for hard-on heavy, blue-eyed French-Canadians who spot girls drinks, whiskey neat drinks.         

He walked out of the parking lot, wobbling a little (in the direction where he saw Mr. Yellow Shirt getting his preliminary ashes hauled, preliminary since by the time she gets him home he will be well again, hungry for what she has ready for him again and she looked like she had plenty more to give him, if he wanted it. He had half a thought to go over and see if she was ready for more serious stuff, to spread the wealth with a lame walking daddy,  but he, frankly, by then was feeling just too loaded down with drink to press the issue. But he would remember her face, just in case, some other time, always some other time, when she was solo and looking for some kicks, some one night stand when daddy was away or too tired to fill her need and she was like tonight ready for just about anything), feeling in his pocket for cab fare before hailing one. Nothing, no dough, not even change. Flush.  Christ, at two in the morning he will have to walk home, walk home through those fugitive streets, no work for him tomorrow or if so, misery.

He begins slowly walking in straight line, consciously aware that he needed to do so in case a stray Boston cop, lonely before checking into Anna’s Diner for his nightly coffee and cakes, or short a few arrests on his monthly quota pulled him over for “vag” or disorderly conduct or some mickey mouse thing. And he just a few moment ago ready to go mano y mano with some sex-hungry chick (he remembered back to that voyeur moment when she practically forced Mr. Yellow Shirt’s hand up her bare thigh, under her short skirt and to her temple of delights, he could almost hear her gulp again when that hand hit pay dirt) who looked like she might enjoy a couple of guys at a time (strictly amateur stuff though, the look of a bored secretary trying to face Monday with a little promise and maybe an adventure to tell the girls at the water cooler at coffee break, a girl just looking for kicks, and finding them where she could) and maybe he should go back to that parking lot(delusion, two o’clock delusion). No they are long gone, long gone by now.

He continued to walk, walk haphazardly but not like a solid drunk, more like a man with an odd-ball purpose, walked pass Anna’s, no good tonight, no dough no good tonight, walked down those fugitive negro streets that separate his white enclave from the encroaching ghetto (and later barrio and later still Little Saigon) , sobering up enough to keep an eye out for jack-rollers, for bad ass guys out to be just bad ass (worse than jack-rollers who just take dough and forget it). No whores around Fields Corner, too late and too Monday. No trade this late out as the negro streets turn to the fugitive mick Irish streets. (He knows, he knows a couple of very good pros over across the street from Saint Anne’s who would show that amateur girl tonight many things, many expensive things, to while away her boredom, and then she would really have plenty to tell the giggling girls at the cooler come Monday, more than how she did her guy out in the parking lot with his pants down and the whole world watching if they wanted to watch, and no lies either. And a lot to tell Edie about how she should treat a guy who buys the drinks week after week but that is water under the bridge, done, done for the night.) He heads up Ashmont Street and home, his rooming house home, the bed, and the sleep, the sound sleep of a drunken man.                    

***From The Occupy Boston Woman’s Caucus March And Celebration-December 4, 2011

Josh Breslin comment:

“Hey, what time is the Women’s Caucus March starting?, asked, asked softly and politely, a young, maybe mixed spanishblackwhiteindian, woman dressed in what I would describe as modern young women casual elegant, student division, but what do I know of such North Face fashion trends, as I approached the tent full gravel walkway entrance that leads into the Occupy Boston encampment on the kitchen tent side. I answered softly and politely not out of instinct, or mannered effect, but from hoarsed-out chanting-“Whatever we wear, Wherever we go, Yes means Yes, No means No!” – “Consent in the sheets, Dissent in the streets!” – “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!,” words that rang in the streets that Sunday afternoon as the Women’s Caucus and their allies, including me, marched through Boston. A little change of pace from the generic national anthem-like “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” slogans of late, but necessary to show, show manly show, solidarity with the women of this encampment who have led the struggle against male chauvinism and sexual harassment in general-and, disturbingly, in the camp.

“Sorry, you just missed it, we are just finishing up,” I told her. She responded that she thought the thing started at two (another of those snafus that are intrinsic to makeshift social movements, even movements hard-drive driven by modern computer technology), it said so in the Occupy Daily Calendar and she had rushed over here to make it in time. “That is when the music and poetry was listed to start. In fact they are underway down at the main stage now. I’ll walk you down” “Oh, I hope I didn’t miss Letta Neely reading her poetry, that is really why I came. She speaks to me, speaks to me a lot.” I replied that I was not familiar with this woman’s work. “Oh she is a sistah, a black beautiful lesbian sistah, who writes about stuff I feel, feel deeply, being a mixed-race, mixed-up, bi-sexual woman.” I gulped, and smiled, smiled inside, not at what she said but at what infinite number of words would have to go into righteously describing this young woman with that new information added, and of her search for space. I gave up as we approached the main stage and listened to a woman who described herself as PuertoDom ( I hope I am spelling this right, Puerto Rican and Dominican, okay) reading her poetry. Very sharp, witty, and politically to the point poetry. Then Letta Neely came on. Check this out:

From Juba:poetry/by Letta Neely, Wildheart Press, copyright 1998

juba

for renita

u be a gospel song
some a dat
ole time religion
where the tambourine git goin
and the holy ghost sneak up
inside people's bones and
everybody dancin and shoutin
screamin and cryin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and the people start to clappin
and reachin back to african rhythms
pulled through the wombs of
the middle passage
and women's hats start flying
while the dance,
the dance they do gets hotter and holier
and just the music has brought cause for celebration
yeah, u be a gospel song, girl
like some a dat ole back in the woods, mississippi river kinda
gospel
and i feel the holy ghost when you is
inside me
and the tambourines keep goin
and folks is stampin they feet
and oh no,
it's the neighbor knocking on the door
askin is we alright
say we was screamin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and i heard us but i
didn't hear cuz
i was being washed in the gorgeous wetness of
your pussy
being baptized w/ole time religion
the oldest religion there
is
2 women inside the groove
of each other
we come here
we come
we come here
to be
saved

Or feast on this beauty:

Connections

There are connections between us
between the lines we've needed or been forced to draw with our
blood
across
time space words wounds
On these new york streets i've seen cracks in the sidewalk and
grass spurting through like revolution holding fast
to one creed only: "keep going, keep going baby, keep going."
The crabgrass makes me think about where we, you and i
are going
it's a hard day when i realize i don't know any of my enemies
personally
It's my friends i'm speaking to
somehow we keep fighting the same battles over and over again
and arguing over
who's got it worse who's on the bottom of the totem pole
and i don't mean to
proselytize
but we're killing each other
and
the totem pole is still standing
and
we're still using it
not knowing it's an ethnic slur
Me, i feel trapped in the middle of all this whirlpool
i feel like i'm on top of three mountains
shooting
at myself
I went to the march on Washington and saw a lot of white men
together
talking about we will no longer sit on the back of the bus and
somebody had the nerve to say:
"there are a million rosa parks' here"
and i thought
it's not about white guilt or even gay pride
but make sure the
truth
is being told
Cuz the rosas couldn't make it to the march and
as for the back of the bus
whoever thought it up probably
flew
first class
So, i'm not talking bout not aligning with the struggles of my Blk peoples cuz i understand the connections all too well just remember to take Emmit Till, Atlanta child murders, Smallpox blankets, Stonewall, the treatment of Chinese railroaders, and Apple pie all together
Every day in harlem i face a different kind a fear other Blk peoples screaming at me with their eyes cuz i'm in love with way a womon is
One time a man said to my friend, he stood next to her and said,
"I love you
cuz you Blk and you my sistah, but I think all faggots and dykes
should die."
One time a "friend" said to my sister in the presence of enemies,
"You're not natural"
and then wanted to know
why she felt
unsafe
I want to know does anyone fully comprehend this tapestry
does anyone know how to sew all this together without mixing
histories or
trading truth for slogans.
We are not all hanging from trees
standing in welfare lines neck deep in sand getting our heads kicked off into the sunset
(these things are being done as we speak) We are not all getting beat down at Stonewall We are not all being dragged from our homes by our hair being raped by husbands or friends or lovers
We are not all dying the same way. But we are all fighting to breathe
fighting to breathe

I, an old white man who spend his 1960s drug-drenched be-bop nights summers of love chasing women (young girls really, as I was a young boy) and running away from my old working-class Olde Saco, Maine oceanside white bread roots, am probably separated by entire gulfs of time, of age, of politics, of means streets, hell, of opposite sexual preference, and who knows, loves, hates, desires, and foods liked, but know this, my new-found young mixed and matched -up woman friend was right. Letta Neely is a sistah.

***Out In The Be-Bop, Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Great San Francisco Summer Of 1967 Love Explosion

YouTube film clip of Jim Morrison and The Doors performing their signature “acid” rock classic, The End.

Phil Larkin, just then road-weary “Far-Out” Phil Larkin, for those who want to trace his evolution from North Adamsville early 1960s be-bop night “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the vocal terror of every mother’s daughter from six to sixty to full-fledged merry prankster, sat on a June such-and-such a 1967 be-bop night a nameless San Francisco. [Markin: And, occasionally, secret delight of some girls, secret delight of one Minnie Callahan, damns him, for just one example of such girl classmates with his foul mouth back in that North Adamsville night.] Along side him sat new conquest, not conquered with his old time wicked corner boy devil-inspired charm but with mere patter (and dope), new flame Butterfly Swirl met on a La Jolla beach a month or so back, not entirely by accident. And next to her his old flame, old in that quickly met moment, this merry prankster bus flame met in Ames, Iowa last year, accidentally except to those cosmically inclined, and Phil was not one of them not one bit, Luscious Lois. Lois, however, now transformed into Lilly Rose, transformed at the flip of a switch, as was her way when some whim, or some word in the air, hit her dead center. Along the road west, again by whimsy she had been variously, Lupe Matin, Loretta Nova, Lance (figure that one) Opal, and so on. (Phil just got to calling her honey, or sweet pea, and left it at that)

[Markin: Sometime, but not now, remind me to give you my take on this name-changing epidemic. Not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. Hell, I got caught up in it myself, and was, for a time, Blackie Saint James. Yes, remind me.]

Yes, it had been one long roller coaster year for Foul-Mouth. [Markin: Alright, let’s split the difference since I knew him way back when in that weird early 1960s corner boy night when he didn’t know from nothing about which way the winds were blowin’, could have cared less which way they were blowin’, or if they were, and made fun of me, as did Frankie Riley, and a couple of others, although not Sammy Russo, when I said some big changes were coming that would throw off our school, work, green lawn little white house with picket fence, two point four children, mongrel dog futures, and call him Phil from here on in. Foul-mouthed or far out he was some hell-bound character then.) From the bowels of despair rank and file no serious future retail clerk hustling mens’ apparel up at Raymond’s Department Store in slowing dying (dying from suburban mall-itis, then all the rage) Adamsville Center, harassed beyond endurance at home for lacking some unfathomable ambition from dear mother, with an occasional assist from dad (that ambition entailing pursuing some low-rent, GS-10, government job with security unto the grave, egad), and a late sniffing of that wind that this fellow corner boy had predicted was coming although he, this corner boy, was vague on the contours of that change Phil broke out one night.

Literally late one night, one May 1966 night. Around two in the morning, with his earthy belongings on his back in a old time World War II army knapsack picked up at Bill’s Army &Navy Store Phil lit out like Walt Whitman way back when, 19th century when, to places unknown and Jack Kerouac and his gang just a few years, late 1940s when, before for the coast, although if you had mentioned those names to him then he would have stared blankly back at you. Maybe now too. But here, let’s let Phil tell the story for a while about how he got to ‘Frisco and then we’ll see what is up with him and his “family” (okay, okay, Butterfly Swirl and Lilly Rose, if that is her name by the time we back) on that nameless 1967 San Francisco hill:

“Hey, I am no slave to convention, whatever the conventions are, but in those days I looked like a lot of young guys. Longish hair, a beard, a light beard at the time, blue jeans, an army jacket, sunglasses, a knapsack over my shoulder, and work boots on my feet. Sandals would not come until later when I got off the road and was settled in a “pad” [Markin: house, rented or maybe abandoned, apartment, hovel, back of a “free” church, back of a store, whatever, a place to rest those weary bones, or “crash”] in La Jolla and were, in any case, not the kind of footwear that would carry you through on those back road places you might find yourself in, places like Deadwood, Nevada at three in the morning with a ten mile walk to the nearest town in front of you. I mention all this because that “look” gave me the cache to make it on the road when I headed out of the house that Spring 1966 be-bop night after one final argument with dear mother about where I was going, what was I going to do when I got there, and what was I going to do for money. Standard mother fare then, and now I suppose.

So short on dough, and long on nerve and fearlessness then, I started to hitchhike with the idea of heading west to California like about eight million people, for about that same number of reasons, have been heading there since the Spanish, or one of those old time traveling by boat nations, heard about the place. Of course, nowadays I would not think to do such a thing in such a dangerous world, unless I was armed to the teeth and that would take a little edge off that “seeking the newer world” Markin has been blabbing about since about 1960. But then, no problem, let’s get going. Especially no problem when just a few miles into my journey a Volkswagen mini-bus (or van, neither in the same league as the yellow brick road school bus, no way, that I will tell you about later but okay for a long ride, and definitely okay when you are in some nowhere, nowhere Nebraska maybe, back road, hostile territory dominate by squares, squares with guns and other evil implements and they, the VW-ites, stoned, stoned to the heavens stop to ask you directions because they are “lost” and invite you on board) stopped on Route 128, backed up, and a guy who looked a lot like me, along with two pretty young girls said, “where are you heading?” (Okay, okay, Markin, young women, alright.) West, just west. And then the beatified words, “Hop in.”

Most of the road until the Midwest, Iowa is the Midwest, right, was filled with short little adventures like that. A mini-bus frolic for a few hours, or a few days. Maybe a few short twenty miles non-descript square Chevy rides in between but heading west by hook or by crook. Did I like it? Sure I did although I was pretty much an up-tight working class guy (that was what one of those pretty girls I just mentioned called me when I “passed” on smoking a joint and, hell, she was from next door Clintondale for chrissakes) who liked his booze, a little sex [Markin: Phil, come on now, a little?], and just hanging around the old town waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I could see, after a few drug experiences, no, not LSD, that I was starting to dig the scene. And I felt every day that I was out of North Adamsville that I was finally shaking off the layers of dust that I had acquired from that place.

Then one night, sitting in the front seat of a big old Pontiac (not everybody, not every “hip” everybody had the mini-bus, van, or school bus handy for their “search” for the great American night), Big Bang Jane between us, the Flip-Flop Kid driving like god’s own mad driver, smoking a joint, laughing with the couple in back, Bopper Billy and Sweet Pea, we headed into a pay-as-you go roadside camp near Ames out in Iowa. And at that campsite parked maybe five or six places over from where we planted ourselves was god’s own copy of that day-glo merry prankster bus I mentioned before. I flipped out because while I had hear about, and seen from a distance, such contraptions I hadn’t been up close to one before. Wow!

Markin had it just about right when he described that old bus after I told him about it so let me crib what he said:

“A rickety, ticky-tack, bounce over every bump in the road to high heaven, gear-shrieking school bus. But not just any yellow brick road school bus that you rode to various educationally good for you locations like movie houses, half yawn, science museums, yawn, art museums, yawn, yawn, or wind-swept picnic areas for some fool weenie roast, two yawns there too, when you were a school kid. And certainly not your hour to get home daily grind school bus, complete with surly driver (male or female, although truth to tell the females were worst since they acted just like your mother, and maybe were acting on orders from her) that got you through K-12 in one piece, and you even got to not notice the bounces to high heaven over every bump of burp in the road. No, my friends, my comrades, my brethren this is god’s own bus commandeered to navigate the highways and by-ways of the 1960s, come flame or flash-out. Yes, it is rickety, and all those other descriptive words mentioned above in regard to school day buses. That is the nature of such ill-meant mechanical contraptions after all. But this one is custom-ordered, no, maybe that is the wrong way to put it, this is “karma”-ordered to take a motley crew of free-spirits on the roads to seek a “newer world,” to seek the meaning of what one persistent blogger on the subject has described as the search for the great blue-pink American Western night.”

“Naturally to keep its first purpose intact this heaven-bound vehicle is left with its mustard yellow body surface underneath but over that primer the surface has been transformed by generations (generations here signifying not twenty-year cycles but trips west, and east) of, well, folk art, said folk art being heavily weighted toward graffiti, toward psychedelic day-glo splashes and zodiacally meaningful symbols. And the interior. Most of those hardback seats that captured every bounce of childhood have been ripped out and discarded who knows where and replaced by mattresses, many layers of mattresses for this bus is not merely for travel but for home. To complete the “homey” effect there are stored, helter-skelter, in the back coolers, assorted pots and pans, mismatched dishware and nobody’s idea of the family heirloom china, boxes of dried foods and condiments, duffle bags full of clothes, clean and unclean, blankets, sheets, and pillows, again clean and unclean. Let’s put it this way, if someone wants to make a family hell-broth stew or a made-up bed there is nothing in the way to stop them. But also know this, and know it now, as we start to focus on this journey that food, the preparation of food, and the desire, except in the wee hours when the body craves something inside, is a very distant concern for these “campers.” If food was what you desired in the foreboding 1960s be-bop traveling night you took a cruise ship to nowhere or a train (if you could find one), some southern pacific, great northern, union pacific, and worked out your dilemma in the dining car. Of course, no heaven-send, merry prankster-ish yellow brick road school bus would be complete without a high- grade stereo system to blast the now obligatory “acid rock” coming through the radiator practically.”

After we settled in at our campsite, the Flip-Flop Kid (and the guy really could never make up his mind about anything, anything except don’t go too close to Big Bang Jane, no kidding around on that), Bopper Billy (who really thought he was king of the be-bop night, but, hell in the North Adamsville corner boy night Frankie Riley, hell, maybe even Markin, would have out be-bopped him for lunch and had time for a nap), Big Bang Jane (guess what that referred to, and she gave herself that nickname, but I never tried to make a move on her because she was just a little too wild, a little too I would have to keeping looking over my shoulder for me then, probably later too when things got even looser. And then there was the Flip-Flop Kid’s warning ), and Sweet Pea (and she was a sweet pea, if Bopper Billy, wasn’t around, well we both agreed there was something there but in those 1966 days we were still half tied up with the old conventions of not breaking in between a guy and his girl, well that was the convention anyway and whether it was generally honored or not, I did honor it) we headed over once we heard the vibes from the sound system churning out some weird sounds, something like we had never heard before. (Weird then, little did we know that this was the wave of the future, for a few years anyway).

Naturally, well naturally after the fact, once we learned what the inhabitants of the bus were about, they invited us for supper, or really to have some stew from a big old pot cooking on a fireplace that came with the place. And if you didn’t want the hell-broth stew then you could partake of some rarefied dope. No, again, no on the LSD thing. It was around, it was around on the bus too, among its various denizens, but mainly it was a rumor, and more of a West Coast thing. In the self-proclaimed, tribal self-proclaimed Summer of Love and after that is when the acid hit, and when I tried it, but not on this trip. This trip was strictly weed, hemp, joint, mary jane, marijuana, herb, whatever you wanted to called that stuff that got you high, got you out of yourself, and got you away from what you were in North Adamsville, Mechanicsville or whatever ville you were from, for a while.

So that night was the introduction to the large economy size search for the freedom we all, as it turned out, were looking for. I remember saying to Sweet Pea as we went back to our campsite (and wishing I wasn’t so square about messing with another guy’s girl, and maybe she was too, maybe wishing I wasn’t so square about it) that we had turned a corner that night and that we had best play it out right then for the chance might not come again.

The next day, no, the next night because I had spent the day working up to it, I became “Far-Out” Phil, or the start of that Phil. Frankly, to not bore you with a pipe by pipe description of the quantity of dope that I smoked (herb, hashish, a little cocaine, more exotic and hard to get then than it became later) or ingested (a tab of mescaline) that day, I was “wasted.” Hell I am getting “high” now just thinking about how high I was that day. By nightfall I was ready for almost anything as that weird music that crept up your spine got hold of me. I just, as somebody put a match to the wood to start the cooking of a tonight pot of stew to keep us from malnutrition, started dancing by myself. Phil Larkin, formerly foul-mouthed Phil, a cagey, edgy guy from deep in corner boy, wise guy, hang-out guy, never ask a girl to dance but just kind of mosey up world started dancing by myself. But not for long because then he, me, took that dance to some other level, some level that I can only explain by example. Have you ever seen Oliver Stone’s film, The Doors, the one that traces the max-daddy rocker of the late 1960s night, Jim Morrison’s career from garage band leader to guru? One of the scenes at one of the outdoor concerts, in a canyon somewhere I think, had him, head full of dope, practically transformed into a shaman. Ya, one of those Indian (Markin: Native American, Phil] religious leaders who did a trance-dance. That was me in late May of 1966, if you can believe that.

And see, although I wasn’t conscious of it first I was being joined by one of the women on the bus, Luscious Lois, whom I had met, in passing, the night before. This Lois, not her real name, as you can tell not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. [Markin: Nice point, Phil, although I already ‘stole’ that point from you before.] Her real name was Sandra Sharp, a college girl from Vassar who, taking some time off from school, was “on the bus” trying to find herself. She was like some delicate flower, a dahlia maybe, like I had never encountered before. I won’t bore you with the forever have to tell what she looked like thing because that is not what made her, well, intriguing, maddeningly intriguing, like some femme fatale in a crime noir film that Markin, from what I can gather, is always running on about. She was pretty, no question, maybe even a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty if it came to a fair description in the light of day but what made her fetching, enchanting, if that is a different way to say it, was the changes in her facial expressions as she danced, and danced provocatively, dance half-nakedly, around my desire. And I danced, shedding my shirt although I do not remember doing so, and danced half-naked around her desire. Then, faintly like a buzz from some hovering insects, maybe bees, and then more loudly I kept hearing the on-lookers, half-mad with dope and with desire themselves, yelling far out, far out. And Far-Out Phil was born.

Oh, as for Luscious Lois and her desire, well, you figure it out. I might not have been wise to the ways of the Vassar world in those days when such places were bastions to place the young women of the elite and keep them away from clawing upstarts from the corner boy night as I should have been but the rest of my time on the bus was spend hovering around Lois, and keeping other guys away. I even worked some plebeian “magic” on her one night when I started using certain swear words in her ear that worked for me with every Sunday after Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Millie Callahan, back in the day. Far-Out Phil got a little something extra that night, proper Vassar girl or not.

No offense against Iowa, well only a little offense for not being near an ocean, I think. No offense against the university there, well only a little offense for not being Berkeley, but after about a week of that campsite and its environs I was ready to move on and it did not matter if it was with Flip-Flop and his crowd or with Captain Crunch (the guy who “led” his merry pranksters, real name, Samuel Jackman, Columbia, Class of 1958 who long ago gave up searching, searching for anything, and just hooked into the idea of taking the ride). Captain Crunch, as befitted his dignity (and since it was “his” bus paid for out of some murky deal, probably a youthful drug deal, from what I heard), was merely the “leader” here.

The driving was left to another guy. This driver was not your mother-sent, mother-agent, old Mrs. Henderson, who prattled on about keep in your seats and be quiet while she was driving (maybe that, subconsciously, is why the seats were ripped out long ago on the very first “voyage” west) but a very, very close imitation of the god-like prince-driver of the road, the "on the road” pioneer, Neal Cassady, shifting those gears very gently but also very sure-handedly so no one noticed those bumps (or else was so stoned, drug or music-stoned, that those things passed like so much wind). His name: Cruising Casey (real name, Charles Kendall, Haverford College Class of ’64, but just this minute, Cruising Casey, mad man searching for the great American be-bop night under the extreme influence of one Ken Kesey, the max-daddy mad man of the great search just then). And Cruising was, being just a little older, and about one hundred years more experienced, was also weary, very weary of co-eds, copping dope and, frankly, staying in one place for so long. He also wanted to see his girlfriend or his wife, I am not sure which, in Denver so I knew that was where we were heading. So off we go, let’s get going.

And the passengers. Nobody from the Flip-Flop Express (although Flip-Flop, as usual lived up to his name and hemmed and hawed about it), they were heading back east, back into the dark Mechanicsville night. I tried, tried like hell, to get Sweet Pea to come along just in case the thing with Lois fell apart or she took some other whim into her head. See, re-invented or not, I still had some all-the-angles boyhood rust hanging on me. We knew for sure that Casey was driving, and was still driving effortlessly so the harsh realities of his massive drug intake had not hit yet, or maybe he really was superman. Others whose names I remember: Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Michigan, Class of 1959, ditto on the searching thing), Captain Crunch’s girl friend, (although not exclusively, not exclusively by her choice, not his, and he was not happy about it for lots of reasons which need not detain us here). Most of the rest of the “passengers” had monikers like Silver City Slim, Penny Pot (guess why), Moon Man, Flash Gordon (from out in space somewhere, literally, as he told it), Denver Dennis (from New York City, go figure), and the like. They also had real names that indicated that they were from somewhere that had nothing to do with public housing projects, ghettos or barrios. They were also, or almost all were, twenty-somethings that had some highly-rated college years after their names, graduated or not. And they were all either searching or, like the Captain, were at a stage where they were just hooked into taking the ride.

As for the rest. Well, no one could be exactly sure, by the time the bus approached the outskirts of Denver, as this was strictly a revolving cast of characters depending on who was hitchhiking on that desolate back road State Route 5 in Iowa, or County Road 16 in Wyoming, and desperately needed to be picked up, or face time, and not nice time with a buzz on, in some small town pokey. Or it might depend on who decided to pull up stakes at some outback campsite and get on the bus for a spell, and decide if they were, or were not, on the bus. After all even all-day highs, all-night sex, and 24/7 just hanging around listening to the music is not for everyone. And while we had plenty of adventures on those strange day roads winding up the crest of the rockies to Denver, thinking back on it now, they all came down to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, with a little food on the side.

Well, except that one time, camping on a primitive clearing, not really a campsite, not a commercial site, no way, near ranch land in some Wyoming Podunk we got the hell scared out of us by some ranchers, some nasty-looking cowboys. Three or four but that was all it took, if you to want to know the truth, who moseyed (and that is exactly the right word because this was THEIR god’s country and moseying was just exactly the way you moved when that hard fact was involved. No city scratching and scrambling to claim your little corner, not for these boys). We could see they were armed, armed to the teeth, not on the off-hand chance they would run into some merry prankster dangers, but carrying that full array of armament was just their normal work conditions, god’s country or not.

This is one time that Captain Crunch really showed his mettle, and acted as an upfront leader. Most of the time he was in a running battle with Mustang Sally over who she was, or was not, sleeping with or he was just controlling the action of the bus indirectly. One maneuver was to always, always, slip off to Cruising any questions about where we were headed or could we stop here or there to see some long lost friend, some scenic view, or any one of a thousand things that come up on a prankster trip, or as I found out later even a square’s kiddies–laden family trip. Straight up Captain, who was not skinny guy and was probably pretty well built before he started his prankster gig although there was some sag now, yelled at the top of his lungs, “You, boys hungry?, We’ve got plenty of stew if you are.” Well, for always lean times, eating from the hip cowboys the idea of having plenty to eat right there in front of you must have been appealing. But the lead cowboy, Joe Bob Buck, was his name, I swear, said in that slow drawl Sam Shepard way, “Nope, but we heard that you guys had some decent dope. Is that straight?” Well, of course that was straight. And in a flash a big pipe of the Captain’s finest was heading Joe Bob’s way. Hey, I guess this was a dope story after all so, ya, I guess it did all come down to just drugs, sex, and rock and roll. But if you want to know what the sixties were about a little if you just think about a clan of hippies sharing a pipe of high-grade Panama with some lonesome cowboys out in Podunk Wyoming and thought nothing of it then you have got the idea.

Oh, sure, we also had our share of “casualties” of war and basket-cases on that trip. It wasn’t all cowboy peace and rockies vistas. I remember, more than once, we had to leave people behind in various emergency rooms suffering from anything from a “bad trip” to normal medical problems or make that call home that spelled the end of the road for some half-dazed kid. Come pick up the wreckage, mom and dad. The worst was some poor bedraggled girl, who probably should not have been allowed to stay because she was a little wacky coming in, who we picked up near some rural bus stop. Captain had a big heart on this “on the bus” question, and unless you proved to be some kind of thief, or something like that you stayed if you wanted to. Anyway this young woman, hardly more than a girl, just started screaming one day, no drugs involved that we knew of , just started creaming and even Captain and Sally couldn’t stop her. We left her in Cheyenne but like a lot of things from that transient time I never did find out what happened to her. Just like some people can’t live in the high altitudes not everybody could survive on the bus. Living out on edge city, and no question we all were, maybe not 24/7 but enough to know that city was our home, is a high wire act and not for the faint of heart.

We, the core of Captain Crunch’s crew anyway, stayed in Denver for a while, for as long as it took Cruising to have his "fill" (his word) of his wife, or girlfriend, or maybe both and was ready to hit the road again. As fall approached the time was the time and we started heading west again, well southwest because Cruising did not want to get catch up in some rockies October whiteout and the rest of us wanted to get the warmth of some desert sun under our skins. Most of us, including me who had never been west of New York City and then just for a moment, had never seen the desert although we all, children of the television 1950s, had ‘seen’ it on the screen in the Westerns. So we were all pumped for desert stones, desert “stones,” and seeking the ghost of the lost tribes, the lost tribes whose shamanic powers has us in thrall. I, personally, was looking forward to investigating some ghost-dancing that I had heard about in Denver and which, as I became more drug-steady, I was dying to “see” a vision of off some wayward canyon wall before some blazing fire evoking dream-trance images.

And so Cruising did his merry prankster bus magic (he really was some zen master with that damn bus, especially for a college guy, and especially when we hit some tough spots where the damn thing would give out and he would “breathe” live back into the thing, like, well, like some zen master). A one time example will suffice. We were heading to Gallup, New Mexico in the heart of Indian country [Markin; Native American, Phil], maybe fifty miles away and not really close to anything like a full-service gas station, when the clutch seized, just seized. Nada, nunca, nada, nothing as we used to say in our corner boy days. Cruising gets out, opens the hood, fools around with this and that and maybe forty-five minutes later we are on the road again. And whatever he did, whatever zen thing he had with that fickle bus, lasted all the way until we hit La Jolla and he had the whole thing worked on. Magic. Captain Crunch mapped out our itinerary and the rest of us got the bus travel-ready, travel-ready being a good cleaning, a re-ordering of the mattresses, and a checking out (and chucking off) of what was necessary and what was not for the trip westward, westward down to New Mexico first.

The desert was all that it was cracked up to be except, being the fall it wasn’t as hot as Cruising said it was when he went through various times in the early or late summer (mid-summer, as I later found out, forget about even in the cooler high desert, low desert, Death Valley desert, forget about you, abandon all ye who enter), the Grand Canyon magnificent, if overused even then, and after that the high desert in California. By then I was getting homesick, no, not homesick for North Adamsville (that would not come until many, many years later), but for my homeland, the sea. I hadn’t been away from an ocean breeze for that long ever and so I missed it. And out in that high desert, high Joshua Tree, Twenty-Nine Palms desert I started to “smell” the ocean. I now had some “rank” on the bus, some say in what we did, or didn’t do, and the Captain liked me, or liked the idea that a working-class kid with some brains and some thoughts (mostly stuff “cribbed” from what Markin use to talk about in those sometimes long, seemingly boring Salducci’s Pizza parlor corner boy nights but it went over, if you can believe that) was traveling along side him. So when I started my “campaign” to head to the ocean, and gained some allies, especially Lois, just then, going under the name Lupe Matin, I think, and Mustang Sally and, most importantly, Cruising didn’t raise an objection I was home free. Come on, let’s get moving.

We wound up in La Jolla, after a few weeks of stopping here and there to see people the Captain (or Sally) wanted to see in Los Angeles ( I never called it LA or La-La Land then just Los Angeles, city of angels) and down in Laguna. Needless to say the Pacific Ocean around La Jolla, and places like that, made our East Coast puddles look sick. La Jolla- English translation, surfers’ paradise, says it all. But the two most important things about La Jolla were that, after months of bus life, we finally were settled in a “pad.” [Markin: house, in this case, or rather something like an ocean view semi-estate owned by some wealthy drug lord known to the Captain, according to the way Phil told it.] Real toilets, real showers, real fireplaces, real everything. Nice, very nice for a poor old working- class boy who a few months earlier was scratching for change to give dear mother some rent for his two by four room. This was to be our winter quarters (and as it turned out spring one as well) and all we had to do was act as caretakers, not real caretakers, like servants, but just make sure nobody stole the family silverware, stole the place, or decided to “squat” there.

This was also where important thing number two came in. Walking along the rock-strewn cove in front of downtown La Jolla, is where I met Butterfly Swirl, my blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel who was just sixteen at the time, a high school student from up in Carlsbad. She was down in La Jolla trying to “find” herself while tagging along with her boyfriend, some eternally blonde, blue-eyed surfer guy from Del Mar, christ. Just then said surfer boy was out looking for the perfect wave, or something, and so I invited Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968) over to La Grande (the name of the estate, hell, they all had names like that) to smoke a little dope. She brightened at that.

Well, of course, I could see where this was heading, if it was heading anywhere what with my one girl-one guy rule (although I admit, admit now not then, now that I think the statute of limitations is probably over on lying to 1967 girlfriends, I went astray a couple of times in Denver and Joshua Tree but those weren’t really girlfriend-worthy trysts). I brought her home, anyway. We had some dope, and had some sex. Simple. And just when I thought I had her safely out the door (literally and figuratively) Lupe stepped into the room. Instead of exploding though, after checking out Butterfly with a bemused look, she said, “Is she staying?” And before I could get word one out Butterfly chirped out, “Yes.” And Lupe said, “Good” in a kind of distracted way. The new age had dawned, praise be. But that was later. Then I just said out loud to no one in particular, “Damn women, I will never figure them out.” And I never have. [Markin: Brother Phil you are preaching to the choir on that one.] That is why, when we headed north for the rumored summer of love in San Francisco a month or so later, I had my angel-devil girlfriends, my “family” as Captain Crunch called them, with me."

Now you are filled in on the what and the why of Phil’s being on that nameless San Francisco hill mentioned a while back. A nameless hill, nameless to first time ‘Frisco Phil, although maybe not to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working it way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away. Right then though a tall young man, well taller than Phil, lanky, maybe not as lanky as Phil with his drug stews diet having taken some pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well, dressed in full “hippie” regalia (army jacket, blue jeans, bandanna headband to keep his head from exploding, striped flannel shirt against the cold bay winds, against the cold bay winds even in summer, and nighttime colds too, and now that we are on the West Coast, roman sandals) walked up the street that paralleled the hill the entourage was then planted on, cast a glance as that company, nodded slightly, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on Butterfly, “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have been Phil’s brother, biological brother.

That line, that single line, could have been echoed a thousand times, maybe ten thousand times, that day along a thousand hills (well maybe not that many in San Fran), aimed at any small clot of like minded spirits. And Phil sensing that just that one sentence spoke of kindred said, “Sure, a little Columbia Red for the head, okay?” And so started the long, well hippie long, 1960s long anyway, relationship between one Phillip Larkin and one Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love, although don’t hold it against him now if you know, or have seen, Josh lately). And the women, of course.

And, of course, as well was that sense that Far-Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred was based on the way that the prince posed that first question. His accent spoke, spoke hard of New England, not Boston but farther north. And once the pipe had been passed a couple of times and the heat of day started getting everybody a little talkative then Josh spilled out his story. Yes, he was from Olde Saco, Maine, born and bred, a working class kid whose family had worked the town mills for a couple of generations, maybe more, but times were getting hard, real hard in those northern mill towns now that the mill-owners had got the big idea to head south and get some cheaper labor, real cheap. So Joshua, after he graduated from high school a few weeks before decided, on a whim (not really a whim though), to head west and check out prospects here on the coast. Josh finished up his story by saying, “And here I am a few weeks later sitting on Russian Hill smoking righteous dope and sitting with some sweet ladies. (Markin: Phil never said what his reaction to that last part was which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old corner boy Phil menace, hell Markin menace too, would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer it just passed by like so much air) Everybody else giggled now that they knew the name of this hill that they had been trying to guess the name of for the last half hour when he blurted that out. Naturally Phil, a kingly road warrior now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited Josh to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Josh was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.

But enough of old-time visions, of old time rites of passage, and of foundling dreams. Phil, and his entourage (nice word, huh, no more girlfriend solo, or as here paired, lovingly paired, to be hung up about, just go with the flow). Phil, Butterfly, hell, even jaded Lilly Rose (formerly known as Luscious Lois in case you forgot, or we not paying attention), and now Prince Love, are a “family,” or rather part of the Captain Crunch extended intentional family of merry pranksters. [Markin: Small case, so as not to be confused with their namesakes and models legendary mad man writer Ken Kesey and his La Honda Merry Pranksters, okay] Just yesterday they hit ‘Frisco and had planted their de rigueur day-glo bus in the environs of Golden Gate Park after many months on the road west, and some sitting down time down south in La Jolla. Hearing the siren call buzzing all spring they have now advanced north to feast on the self-declared Summer of Love that is guaranteed to mend broken hearts, broken spirits, broken rainbows, broken china, and broken, well broken everything. The glue: drug, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll, although not just any old-timey be-bop fifties rock and roll but what everybody now calls “acid” rock. And acid, for the squares out there, is nothing but the tribal name for LSD that has every parent from the New York island to the Redwood forests, every public official from ‘Frisco to France, and every police officer (I am being nice here and will not use the oink word) from the Boston to Bombay and back, well, “freaked out” (and clueless). Yes, our Phil has come a long way from that snarly wise guy corner boy night of that old town he lammed out from (according to his told story) just about a year ago.

Or had he? Well, sure Phil’s hair was quite a bit longer, his beard less wispy and more manly, his tattered work boots and later Chuck Taylor sneakers transformed into sensible (West Coast ocean sensible) roman sandals and his weight, well, his weight was way down from those weekly bouts with three-day drug escape, and fearful barely eaten four-in-the-morning open hearth stews, and not much else. And as he sat on that Russian Hill looking out into that bay with his brood he could not even look forward, as he originally planned, to the expectation of just trying LSD for the hell of it in ‘Frisco, having licked it (off a blotter), or drank it (the famous, or infamous, kool-aid fix), several times down in La Jolla. In those lazy hazy days watching the surf (and surfers) splashing against the Pacific world with blond-haired, blue-eyed, bouncy Butterfly, and the raven-haired, dark as night-eyed Lilly Rose, or both listening to the music fill the night air. Not square music either (anything pre-1964 except maybe some be-bop wild piano man Jerry Lee Lewis, or some Chicago blues guitar fired by Muddy Waters or microphone-eating Howlin’ Wolf), but moog, boog, foog-filled music.

Just that Russian Hill minute though, and to be honest, while in the midst of another acid trip (LSD, for the squares just in case you forgot), Phil sensed that something had crested in the approaching blue-pink Pacific night and that just maybe this scene would not evolve into the “newer world” that everybody, especially Captain Crunch, kept expecting any day. Worst, now that he knew that he couldn’t, no way, go back to some department store clerk’s job, some picket-fenced white house with dog, two point three children, and a wife what was to happen to him when Butterfly, Lilly Rose, Joshua, and even Captain Crunch “find” themselves and go back to school, home, academic careers, or whatever. For now though he will just take it all.
***********
The End Lyrics
The Doors
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you

C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end