From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-Reflections On A Fierce Head Wind Dream Night

Desperately clutching his newly adorned  white flags, his 9/11 white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, and careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this was no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say that old 19^th century guy, oh yes, struggle.

White truce flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, just one more war-weary dastardly fight against big car-fueled Persian Gulf oil-driven time. Against a bigger opponent this time, hell, take the beating, the manly beating and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other guy, some long time ago guy, he said struggle, struggle. Yah, easy for you to say brother.

Lashed against the high-end double seawall, bearded, slightly graying against the forlorn time, a vision in white not enough to keep the wolves of time away, the wolves of feckless petty larceny times reappear, reappear with a vengeance against the super-rational night sky and big globs of ancient hurts fester against some unknown enemy, unnamed, or hiding out in a canyon under an assumed name. Then night, the promise of night, a night run up some seawall laden streets, some Grenada night or maybe Lebanon sky boom night, and thoughts of finite, sweet flinty finite haunt his dreams, haunt his sleep. Wrong number, brother. Yah, wrong number, as usual.    

A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard Square civilization, some singer belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe, some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Yah that seems right, right against the oil-beggared times, right.

Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag, Mexican tourista style, in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.

He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle as if to emphasize his point. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1917, he said it in 1973.  What an old guy, huh. 

Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Campobellos, Moncktons, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas flats, pueblos,  Joshua Trees, embarcaderos, golden-gated bridges, malibus, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. And enough of short-wave radio beam tricky dick slaughters south of the border in deep fall nights. Enough, okay.

Bloodless bloodied streets, may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.

The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, not Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this is a road less traveled for reason, and not ancient robert frost to guide you… Just look at blooded Kent State, or better, blooded Jackson State. Christ.    

Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no on hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. He falls down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, no earthy good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast, but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light.        

Drunk, whisky drunk, whisky rotgut whisky drunk, in some bayside, atlantic bayside, not childhood atlantic bayside though, no way, no shawlie way, bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs  weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish although who could have known that then.  Who could have known that tet, lyndon, bobby, hubert, tricky dick war-circus thing then. 

Multi-colored jacket worn, red and black, black and red, some combination reflecting old time glories, or promises of glory, cigarette, Winston small-filtered, natch, hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee, if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Move out the act onto Boston fresh streets. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of the big fame game, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss of non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson learned, very tough. And not yet twenty years old.  

Main street walked, main street public telephone booth cheap talk walked searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Diana, blonde Diana, cashmere-sweatered, white tennis –shoed Diana, million later Dianas although not with tennis shoes, really gym shoes fit for old ladies to do their rant, their lonely rant against the wind. Seeking, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out; nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore  submarine races, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on senior errands (high school senior and not ARRP stuff, Christ). No way, no way and then red-faced, alas, a red-faced “no” known even red-faced forty years later. Wow.

Sweated dust bowl run nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic cheerleader glance nights but something else, something not endless walked about, something done, or with the promise of done, for something inside, for some sense of worth in the this moldy white tee shirt, mildewy white shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, Chuck Taylor sneakers pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval, watch tick in hand, looking, looking he guessed for immortality, immortality even then.  Later, in bobby darin times or percy faith times (early 1960s for the unknowing), who knows, sitting, sitting high against the lion-guarded pyramid statute front door dream, common dreams, common tokyo dreams, all gone asunder, all gone asunder, on this curious fact, no wind, Irish or otherwise to drive him. Who would have figured that one?    

Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, maybe later, just some junior league dream fuss though, some future cheerleader football dame though, some sweated night pastry crust and he, too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Such is the new decade a-borning, a-borning but not for me, no president jack swagger, or bobby lawyer goof as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. He, he would gladly take exotics, or lindos, if they ever crossed his path, his lonely only path     

A bridge too far, an un-arched, un-steeled, un-spanned, unnerved bridge too far. One speed bicycle boy, dungarees rolled up against dog bites and meshed gears , churning through endless heated, sweated, no handkerchief streets, names, all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea, names. Twelve-year old pedaled hard churned miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifter petty larceny friends, that’s all it was, petty and maybe larceny, hard against the named ships, hard against the named seas, hard against the named fishes, hard against the named fauna, hard against the unnamed angst, hard against those changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once like some mack the knife smack devilish thing

City square no trespass standing, low-slung granite buildings everywhere, granite steps leading to granite doors leading to granite gee-gad counters, hated, no name hated, low-head hated, waiting slyly, standing back on heels, going in furtively, coming out ditto, presto coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat, no russkie Sputnik panel glitter for his efforts such is the way of young lumped crime, no value, no look, just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark, dark  night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dreams make no more sense that this bodily theft.  

Walks, endless waiting bus stop non-stop walks, up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets, deeply gouged, one-lane snow-drift hassles, pass trees are green, coded, endless trees are green secret-coded waiting, waiting against boyish infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times, gone now, for one look, one look, that would elude him, elude him forever such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. And no dance either, no high school confidential (hell this is elementary school, man), handy man, breathless, Jerry Lee freak-out, at least no potato sack stick (read: girls with no shape teen lingo)dance with coded name brunette. That will come, that will come.   

Endless walks, endless sea street seawall walks, rocks, shells, ocean water-logged debris  strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat to the left making hard the way, the path, okay, to uptown drug stores, Rexall’s drug store, grabbing heist-stolen valentine, ribbon and bow valentine night bushels, signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, if only she, about five candidates she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet.

Nighttime fears, red-flagged Stalin-named fears, red bomb unnamed shelter blast fears, named, vaguely named, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg hated stalinite jews killed fears, jews killed our catholic lord fears and what did they do anyway fears against the cubed glass glistening flagless flag-pole rattling dark asphalt school yard night, alone, and, and, alone fears avoidance, clean, clear, stand-alone avoidance of old times sailors, tars, sailors’ homes AND deaths in barely readable fine- marked granite-grey lonely seaside graveyards looking out on ocean homelands and lost booty. Dead.      

A cloudless day, a cloudless Korean War day, talk of peace, merciless truce peace and uncles coming home in the air, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, fields for slides and swings, diamonded baseball, no, friendlier softball fields the houses are too close, of gimps, glues, cooper-plated portraits, of sweet shaded elms, starting, now that he too, that nose-flattened brother, has been to foreign places in the time of his time, to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means that, and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes, but changes.

Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window apartment project hang your hat dwelling, small, warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother kinship sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching as he, that older brother, goes off to foreign places, foreign elementary school reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic places and, he, the nose flattened against the window brother, is left to ponder his own place in those kind of places, those foreign-sounding places, when his time comes. If he has a time, has the time for the time of his time, in this red scare (but what knows he of red scare only brother scares), cold war, cold nose, dust particles in the clogging air night.  

His mind went back, back to womb times maybe and he thought, thought hard. Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling. Frank (read: future Peter Paul Markin, and a million, more or less, other guys) had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde, frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Peter Paul swears, swears on seven sealed bibles that he yelled at the screen for Frank to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end. Ah, life.

One more battle, one more, please, one more, one fight against the greed cowboy and Indians night, one more questing for the blue-pink great American night dream, and one more struggle against no dreams. He, maybe a little punch-drunk, maybe suffering egg-scrabbled brains after one too many fights, chained himself, well not really chained, but more like tied himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief. Gone are retreat flags, sullen retreat and pondering armchair potato flags. Another guy, shaking the clotting snow off his old army jacket still useful against driving winds and off-hand city snows, did the same except he used some plastic hand-cuff-like stuff. A couple of women, bundled knowingly against all weathers just stood there, hard against that ebony-etched fence, if can you believe it, they just stood there. Others, milling around, disorderly in a way, started chanting after someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene was now complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knew, knew for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his black and white television child dream was a different thing altogether. A ruse. And he had no longer to worry about flags, white or red.  Just keep pushing against immortality. But who, just a child, could have known that back then.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-Time Is Not On Our Side

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

He, Peter Paul Markin to give him a name although many of the generation of ‘68  had been on the same quest, for a whole number of reasons both personal and political, had been on the trail of his roots, including trips to the old working- class neighborhoods where he came of political age. Through various methods, including extensive use of the glorious Internet, he was able to track down a couple of guys from the old neighborhood whose family story had gripped him in olden times.

As an unintended result of that research he have also come in contact with some helpful old high school classmates, North Adamsville High  School (that’s in Massachusetts) Class of 1964  . One such helpful person, a class officer back in the day, had asked him to answer some questions that her committee was putting together for his high school class with an eye to the upcoming 50^th anniversary reunion. You know the “what the hell have you done with your ill-begotten life for the past half century,” how many kids, grandkids, egad, great-grandkids do you have; don’t lie about anything in any answer because we have ways of finding out the truth of your silly life. How do you think we found you after all these years anyway?  (Although, as simple matter, a glance a local telephone book would have provided the answer.)

Got it. Peter Paul got it alright. He had answered some of the more pertinent questions, the dream questions, like how did things actually work out as against one’s totally inflated and obscenely optimistic teenage dream goals, as truthfully as possible, or as any of the old gang needed to know and gave forth with the expected fair percentage of lies, half-lies, and bizarre falsehoods that they should have expected for him, despite the fore-warnings. And they, in turn provided their inflated estimates. No foul, no harm.  He dutifully posted those on the class website, although not without noting that this “memoir” excursion was getting to be a seemingly endless task as the more questions he  answered the more they (really she, she unnamed she, just in case legal action becomes necessary) kept sending him.  Such is life. But, through some of the interchange correspondence he uncovered more information about his roots coming from an earlier period, the dark “projects” coming of age period. Such is life, indeed.

He told me, one melancholy barroom veranda afternoon, some of the details of his “discovery.” How his family had started life in a housing project in Adamsville with all that implied, then and now. By the beauties of the Internet social networking he had come in contact with someone who remembered him (or rather his brother, his older brother, Prescott- she was sweet on him in elementary school), a woman named Sherry. She had lived in that housing project during his family’s stay there and for many, many year after his family had left (to move to the other side of town in a broken down single, well, shack was the only work he could think of to describe it) , and saw its transformation from a temporary way station for returning World War II veterans as had been its original intention to a classic drug-strewn crime-ridden ‘den of iniquity’ as portrayed in subsequent media accounts, She agreed to be his ‘hood historian. Moreover she had brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren who had memories from that place and she agreed to pump them for their remembrances.

And that is where I came in. Peter Paul, my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour brother from the 1960s summer of love (summers of love?) generational break-out since we met on the West Coast one sunny year called on me to work out some of the kinks in the stories, something he felt was too close to believe that he could do them some small measure of justice. He presented the concept as something that could very well be a slice of life series on the trials and tribulations of members of the marginally working poor, a section of the working class with which I am also very familiar coming from old time mill town Olde Saco up in Maine. See too from my vantage point the thing could have produced a study, with all its inherent limitations, of the decline and disintegration of working class political consciousness in America since World War II. I had (have) written other stories from the Olde Saco days that played out one way with a section of the working class that was slightly above the one that Peter Paul came from, but just above, the steadily employed working people who dotted the coastal Maine landscape back then. That saga did not paint a pretty political picture. Nor would this one, I feared.  But, damn, we both agreed, why shouldn’t these people have their stories told, warts and all.

Again, like that Olde Saco series (with a ponderous series title of History and Consciousness, H&C, I have gotten better with my titles since then, thank you), this series would really narrate a very prosaic working class set of stories. I planned, however, to organize these stories differently because now I know what I am looking for and each story will be able to stand on its own. In H&C the stories as they unfolded piecemeal, frankly, got out of control and I do not believe that when I put all the parts together at the end that it had the power that I wanted it to have, and that it did have for me as they unfolded.

That said, if this time last year somebody asked me, including Peter Paul, if I would be doing another series like H&C I would have said they were crazy. I then wanted to discuss the finer theoretical points of organizing to push for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan Iraq or building a workers’ party in this country. But this series seemed like finding the philosopher’s stone. This was the “real deal” down at the base of society; from a time when with a little tweaking things could have gone in another direction.

I prepared the first story (since published) that dealt with how this poor woman Sherry, Peter’s ‘hood historian, was humiliated by other students (girls mainly) at his elementary school for the mere fact of being from “the projects.” This writer was painfully aware of that type of humiliation as he faced the same thing up in Olde Saco. I expected to use that introductory story to draw some political conclusions, if possible.  Again, as I had in H&C, I asked the question- will there be political lessons to be learned? I did not believe so, directly. However, real stories about the fate of the working class down at the base can help explain the very real retardants to working class political consciousness that we face as we try to organize here in America to take back the republic. I have spent a lifetime quoting radical socialist principles, chapter and verse, elsewhere. These stories desperately need to be told. Sadly, after that first story though Sherry passed away and we, Peter Paul and I, have been left a little rudderless. Time is not always on our side.  Sherry from the ‘hood, RIP.

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-Hard Times In Babylon

One night, one early 2007 night, Peter Paul was in a pensive mood. He had just written, half-tear written for lost youth and fallen youth comrade a personal commentary about a childhood friend, Kenny Callahan, from back in the old neighborhood in North Adamsville where he grew up in the 1950s and who had passed away some time before. He had also at that time been re-reading the then recently deceased investigative journalist David Halberstam’s book, "The Fifties," that covered that same basic period of his teary remembrance. Strangely Halberstam’s take on the trends of the period, in contrast to the reality of his own childhood experiences as a child of the working poor that missed most of the benefits of that ‘golden age,’ rekindled some memories, a few painful.

 

It was no exaggeration to say that those were hard times in Babylon for the Markin family (or the Breslin family either up in textile mills-dependent Olde Saco, Maine). Not so much for individual lacks like a steady (and reliable) family car in order to break out of the cramped quarters, house on house, where he lived once in a while. Or the inevitable hand-me-down clothes (all the way through high school, almost), or worst the Bargain Center bargains that were no bargains (the local “Wal-Mart” of the day to give you an idea of what he meant). Or even, for that matter, the always house coldness in winter (in order to save on precious fuel even in those cheap-priced heating oil times) and hotness in summer (ditto, to save on electricity so no A/C, or fans).

 

Those, and other such lacks, he noted, all had their place in the poor man’s pantheon of hurts and lacks, no question. That was not the worst of it though, not by a long shot when he thought back on those red scare cold war times (but what knew he then of such connections). No, what, in the end, make things turn out  badly for him and his kind, was  the sense of defeat that  hung, hung heavily and almost daily over the household, the street, the neighborhood at a time when others, visibly and not so far away, were getting ahead. 

 

Some sociologist, some academic sociologist, for, sure, would call such a phenomenon the death of “rising expectations.” And for once they would be right, or at least on the right track. Thinking back on those times had also made him reflect on how the hard anti-communist politics of the period, the “red scare” had left people like his parents high and dry, although they were as prone to support those repressive governmental policies, as reflex action if nothing else, as any American Legion denizen. Moreover the defeat and destruction of the left-wing movement then, principally the pro-communist organizations of that period, has continued to leave a mark, and a gaping vacuum, on today’s political landscape, and on him.

 

There are many myths about the 1950’s to be sure, some media-driven, some simply misty time-driven. However, one cannot deny that the key public myth was that those who had fought World War II and were afterwards enlisted in the anti-Soviet Cold War fight against communism, gladly or kicking and screaming, were entitled to some breaks. The overwhelming desire for personal security and comfort on the part of those who had survived the Great Depression and fought the war (World War II just so there is no question about which in the long line of American wars we are talking about) was not therefore totally irrational. That it came at the expense of other things like a more just and equitable society is a separate matter. Moreover, despite the public myth not everyone benefited from the ‘rising tide.' The experience of Peter Paul’s parents is proof of that. Thus this commentary is really about what happened to those, like his parents, who did not make it and were left to their personal fates without a rudder to get them through the rough spots. Yes, his parents (and mine) were of the now much ballyhooed and misnamed ‘greatest generation’ but they were not in it.

 

Peter Paul did not want to go through all the details of his parents’ childhoods, courtship and marriage for such biographic details of the Great Depression and World War II were (and are) plentiful and theirs fit the pattern. (Moreover, he was uneasily aware that he did not know, know for sure, many of the specific details like where they first met and stuff like that.) One detail is, however, important and that is that his father grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky, Hazard, near Harlan County to be exact, coal mining country made famous in song and story and by Michael Harrington in his 1960s book “The Other America.” This was, and is, hardscrabble country by any definition. Among whites these “hillbillies” were the poorest of the poor. There can be little wonder, he emphasized (and made a little joke about it too, about his father telling him between the Pacific War bloodbath and the mines he took his chances with the former) that when World War II began his father left the mines to join the Marines, did his fair share of fighting in the Pacific, settled in the Boston area and never looked back.

 

By all rights Peter Paul’s father should have been able to take advantage of the G.I. Bill and have enjoyed home and hearth like the denizens of Levittown (New York and elsewhere) described in Halberstam’s book and shown on such classic 1950s television shows as “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave It To Beaver.” But life did not go that way, not at all.

 

Why? He had virtually no formal education. Furthermore he had no marketable skills usable in the Boston labor market. There was (and is) no call for coal-miners there. And moreover he had three young sons born close together in the immediate post-war period. Peter related that his father was a good man. He was a hard-working man; when he was able find work. He was an upright man. But he never drew a break. Unskilled labor, to which he was reduced, is notoriously unstable, and so his work life was one of barely making ends meet. Thus, well before the age when the two-parent working family became the necessary standard to get ahead, his mother had gone to work to supplement the family income. She too was an unskilled laborer. Thus, even with two people working they were always “dirt poor.” I have already run through enough of the litany of lacks to give an idea of what dirt poor meant in those hard times so we need not retrace those steps as they apply to the Markin family...

 

That little family started life in the Adamsville housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell-holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the Valhalla of the newly emerging suburbs. By clawing and scratching his parents had eventually saved enough money to buy an extremely modest single-family house. Hell, Peter blurted out to me while relating this part, why pussyfoot about it, a shack. The house, moreover, was in a neighborhood that was, and is, one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped, and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950’s, his parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off into decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder.

 

But suddenly Peter Paul turned to me to said enough of all that. He was finished, or as finished with the details as he was going to be. Where in this story though is there a place for militant left-wing political class-consciousness to break the trap? Not in an understanding of the sense of social inferiority of the poor before the rich (or the merely middle class). Damn, there was plenty of that kind of consciousness in his house (and painfully mine as well). A phrase from the time, and maybe today although I don’t hear it much, said it all “keeping up with the Jones.’” Or else. But where was there an avenue in the 1950’s, when it could have made a difference, for a man like Peter’s father to have his hurts explained and have something done about them?

 

Nowhere, nada nunca nada. So instead it went internally into the life of the family and it never got resolved. One of his sons, my friend Peter Paul, has had “luxury” of being able to fight essentially exemplary propaganda battles in small left-wing socialist circles and felt he has done good work in his life. His father’s hurts needed much more. The "red scare" aimed mainly against the American Communist Party but affecting wider layers of society decimated any possibility that he could get the kind of redress he needed. That dear reader, in a nutshell, is why Peter Paul made a point, made a big point, as we ended our talk of saying that he proudly bore the name communist today. And the task for him today? To insure that future young workers, unlike his parents in the 1950’s, will have their day of justice. Good luck, Peter Paul.

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-No More Retreats?

Who knows when the ebb starts, that start to the be-bop king hell king slide down, the question of when the struggle for the top, for being top dog, for being top dog among you and yours, turns from kid (well young man anyway) great blue-pink cloud puff nights to sober star-filled wonders about immorality, your place in the sun, whether it will happen and whether you have enough wherewithal to stand the gaff, the grift, or just the drift toward the infinite. More importantly when the “this and that” of life, the ordinary muck, always present, always damn present from the cradle, takes over.

Let’s put it like this, okay. That minute when you call an armed truce (no, a thousand times no don’t say surrender, please, be like Bob Marley, stand up, stand up, stand up for your rights, don’t give up the fight), to that thing that in 1960 got you running the streets, got you running into Park Street and massive scorn, or some hard stir time courtesy of Uncle Sam, or crushed beneath the May Day red tide. (Ya, Bob had it right, don’t give up the fight.) When you didn’t retire exactly but just kind of ran out of opponents who were ready to beat  you down on their way up and of sparring partners, rubber tube around the middle just like you,  who decided to take up gardening or whatever third-rate guys do when they move on, move uptown as you always said. But one last call calls.  And this…   

White truce flags neatly placed in right pocket. Well placed in that right hand pocket in order, right-handed man, pocket ready to call a, uh, strategic retreat  from this day’s errands at the drop of that handkerchief, an orderly retreat but a retreat, one of many, nevertheless. Then folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against the feckless oil-driven times.

This time a mismatch, a mismatch based  a little on that rubber tire around the middle, a little greyness in the hair , a little white in the beard, a little ache here and a  pain there, once brushed off , and forward in day but now, weeks ache, and months pains. The bigger opponent, mighty muscled, sleek, stealthy, lots of money backing him, the “smart” money, no question. But he had contracted for this one fight, take whatever comes and then, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy.

The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly, a little rubber tire around the middle wobbly, but moving in and out to avoid the bigger man’s fearsome blows. Hell the guy is not even winded. Damn it’s like a phalanx of something driving him to the ground, or about six corner boys from his youth, his sullen youth when six guys decided that he was, what?  Mush? A fag? Stupid?  Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. He stagger on his knees and then up on the eight count.  Another barrage.  Back up again on nine. Close. Then another. He wobbles, knees akimbo, if that is possible and after this mauling it probably is.  Face down, stay down. A distant muted echo hits his brain, his egg- scrambled brain, don’t give up the fight. Nah, tomorrow is another day. Hell, there are always other days. If not me then some young hungry guy, some barrio guy, some ghetto guy, hell, maybe both. His brain says…  Out. He ran right out of time, Christ.  

Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the proud white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. His handler, his woebegone handler, some ancient guy picked up on the cheap, a guy who looked pretty weather-beaten but what are you going to do when you make a match with no up-front dough, no real dough, and just a few fans who remember you from the old glory days, the days when, no kidding, you could have been a contender.  This old guy, met, or guys like him, met long ago said going into the damn fight and I quote, he said struggle, struggle. Yah, it’s easy for you to say, buddy.  You didn’t have to go two rounds with the guy. Jesus he never worked up a sweat. Give me those damn white flags, jesus. And I want my option rematch just like the contract says. Jesus.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The High White Note -2007

Markin comment:

The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.

Scene Eleven: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The High White Note-2007

The High White Note, The High White Western Night and The High White Wave Merged

I am a driven man. I am a driven man, imprisoned, six by twelve room driven, but more by a mental six by twelve internal, eternal, infernal almost paternal quest, and that is the only word that fits for the elusive high white note, or the high white something, that I have spent a lifetime searching for. Certainly longer than that other search, that more physical search for the blue-pink great American West that disturbed my youth, and beyond, and pushed me through many a long, lonesome highway hitchhike mile. But you know that story already now that you have read the previous sketches.< br />

This one is more wistful, although I have caught a whisper of it here and there along the way. Now it looks like I’m stuck with it to the end, the quest that is. Here I sit, in any case, quarantined, in desolate, high, hard wind-swept, sunless-sea-ed, busted sand-duned, green sea-grass-blown, icy white-capped waved, Atlantic–oceaned, ragged, rugged, jagged Maine-coasted shack of a room getting ready to search, and search hard this time, for that white puff of a thing that keeps disturbing my rest.

I will, for the duration, put up with an ill-lit stove, half broken from generations of use by others, passing strangers, maybe seeking their own high white notes, or high white something. Or, maybe, just passing sweaty, drunken nights in some fore-doomed attempt to avoid oblivion. I will, moreover, put up with that high-pitched, annoying, buzzing refrigerator in back of me that means, at least, a touch of civilization. And the bubbly, perking, hard-hearted coffee-making machine, chipped plates, moldy-cushioned sofa, and this stuffy-aired place in order to make sense of what drove me here once again to place my shoulder against the wind, the whistling wind that signals that it is time to take note, and to seriously take note, of the demands of the quest.< br />

And I came here for a purpose, always a purpose, to leave home and sweet-loved, sweet love. And to get away, to clean a man’s mind from the humdrum, fairwayed, fresh-ponded, sun-walked, run-runned, walk-runned, city-maddened depths. Also while we are on the subject from the technological-driven, cell-phoned, personal computer-strapped like some third hand or second-brained, four-walled nightmare. Nightmare-evading Maine fits the bill just fine, although truth to tell Maine figures, Maine always figures in the white note fight, although it is hardly the only place. <br />

I can almost read your thoughts about my thoughts right now. It goes something like this- here he goes again, you say, on some incensed holy grail trip of the mind, or maybe he is for real, real time, real places but still a trip that would embarrass and shame any self-respecting errant knight of yore, searching for that perfect fair damsel in distress to bring home, or more likely, to carry off, kicking and screaming, to some cozy, stone-faced, thatched-roofed, smoke-filled, forested cottage for two. Or of old mad, maddened, maddening Captain Ahab and his foolish fish, or whatever woe begotten thing that he was really looking for in the Melville deep. Or, maybe, some fiendish, freakish, madman pioneer monkishly doing his own shouldering against the storms, against the snowstorms, against the storms of life of the white-peaked Western trek nights. Ah, the vision of the blue-pink Western sky. I wish you well pioneer brother, wherever you landed. <br />

No, it is not like that at all. This is not some half-baked, half-bright, half-thought out, interior dialogue that I usually get myself tangled up into. Tangled so bad I have to break it up for a while. No, none of that this time. No intellectual gymnastics, no mental tepidity, no squarey circles or circley squares. No this is purely, or almost purely, a memory trip and that seems about right, you know, if you really want to know it has been painful at times, but no way, no way at all, that it is one of those ill-digested whims that you are thinking of. No way. <br />

And, besides that, from the great American West night hitchhike road I have already gone through many pairs of worn-out, worn-soled, worn-heeled, down at the heel shoe leather (now thick-soled, thick-heeled, logo-addled running sneakers); worn-thumbed, back-pack-ladened, some forgotten town destination sign-waving, hitch-hiked mile (that means bumming free rides on the road, the wide American highway, for those too young, or too proper to the know the long gone, way long gone, exotic word that sustained many a hobo, tramp or bum in his (or her) search for the Great American night) through every nowhere, no-name, no wanna know the name, bus-depot-ed, stranger-unfriendly town from here to Mendocino. Moreover, here I have marks, and here you can call it intellectual or spiritual or whatever, from every diesel-trailed, oil-slicked, mud-flatted, white-lined, white-broken-lined, two-laned, no passing , hard-bitten, steam-fooded truck stop from here to Frisco as well. So don’t tell me I haven’t paid my dues.

Or it could have been some smoke-filled, nicotine-plastered walls in some long defunct coffee house (when smoking was <i>de rigueur</i>), or some gin-sweated, smoke-fogged Cambridge bar (in the days when smoking was allowed), listening to some local group trying to make it out of town, one way or another. Or it could have been being chained-smoked cigarette (ditto above) writing like crazy, every soul thing, every non-soul thing, every anti-soul thing after passing on the last call train out to the sticks at that old reliable, just don’t have the eggs scrambled Hayes-Bickford, where we all believed that if you just spent enough nights, enough hot, heavy-aired July nights, or enough snow-bound, frost-bitten January nights (this before Super Bowl suspense filled in January) maybe something major would come out, and maybe fame, big fame too, fame etched by the gods. <br />

Hey, did I tell you how I got here, got here to ocean-winded Maine, this time that is? Did I forget that in my frenzy to tell you what is? Yah, I guess I did forget reading back. Let me tell you of my dreams, or at least the story of my dreams to make it right, okay? One recent, sweat-drenched night I woke up, or was I woken up by one of the cats, in a start. I had a weird old dream, or maybe just a flash of a dream, where I saw, in living, livid color a big old beautiful high white note floating, free and easy, as you might guess on a very stormy high white wave. After than flash, if that is what it was, I could not get back to sleep and lay there, soaking a little and trying to soak off that soaking with an old bedraggled railroad man’s roaring red handkerchief. Or that is at least what I call them ever since I first saw a railroad guy walking down the line when I was a kid, carrying one in the left back pocket of his dirt-stained denims as he uncoupled one train from another, maybe sending it into the great western night. <br />

But we have already been into that great Western night, or what I think is my idea of the great Western night so I don't know how it figures in the meaning of this dream. It is really bothering me, and it should because, lately, I have been thinking and thinking hard about that very subject. The relationship between the two. No, it did not just come out of the blue, come on now, you guys know better than that. Ain’t you read Freud, or his acolytes or renegades, these things all have secret meanings of their own. But no surprise if you think about it. I have been thinking about the high white note for a while, ever since I read poor old, black, gay, exiled against his will, writer James Baldwin and his infernal short story, <i>Sonny’s Blues</i>. <br />

You know I really should make you read the whole thing and then you could come back and get an idea about my dream, or the thought of what my dream was all about. And then the great Western trek into the night, hell in the day time even, would make a great deal more sense. But I am going to let you off the hook this time and just tell you that old “Sonny” is a story about brothers, and I have been thinking about that too lately, although not in the friendly, gee I should get back in touch with my own brother sense, but about brothers who drifted back and forth in each other’s lives until one day the reality set in hard and hard was that Sonny, a high white note-seeking jazz pianist really got high on the white note. Busted, busted hard, busted back to clean but busted and his brother, would you know that it was his big brother, had to help him put back the pieces, even though the pieces were what made Sonny interesting and alive. That's me, living on old sweet, sweet dream of that white note, and, as well, Angelica-ish-driven memories of that old time blue-pink night before I go.

 

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin Out In The Be-Bop 2000s Night- Desperately Seeking...

Markin comment :

Yah, I know I switched up on you. Usually when I write about the be-bop night, at least the times of my schoolboy “high-tide” feverish, mad monk-driven be-bop nights it is either the mid to late 1950s when I first got the itch, the wandering idea itch, or the early 1960s when I shared those be-bop nights with Frankie, Frankie, king of the be-bop schoolboy night in our old beat-down, beat-up, beat seven ways to Sunday, beatified, North Adamsville working class neighborhood. Certainly be-bop times don’t extend later than the late 1960s and the hitchhike highway road, a separate highway story road, but on this one I have to extend forward to the new millennium to make my pitch. So hear me out, will you.
******

Desperately seeking…

an idea. I will keep this short and sweet. I have to admit to failure, abject failure, utter failure, despairing failure, and twelve other forms of it, in my efforts to keep up a steady drumbeat of commentaries about the old days at North Adamsville High (many of which, mercifully, have been relegated to the recycle bin, trash barrel, deep freeze space or other designated welcoming cyberspace disposal sites). Failure, do you hear me? Why? I foolishly, again, again meaning here when one of my projects does not turn out right that is the characterization they deserve, believed that my commentaries would act as a catalyst and draw 1964 classmates, other former students at North Adamsville and an odd denizen from the deep, out. Hell, even an off-hand straggler from fiendish cross-town arch rival blue and white Adamsville would be given a hero’s welcome.

What I was really thinking though was, maybe, some long lost comrades of the schoolboy night like hang-around guys in front of Harry’s Variety (where the white-tee-shirt, blue-jeaned, engineer-booted, cigarette-smoking, unfiltered of course, sneering, soda-swilling, Coke, natch, pinball wizards held forth daily and nightly, and let me cadge a few odd games when they had more important business, more important girl business, to attend to)would find their voices. Maybe they could tell, finally tell, the secret swaying of the hips, just so not too much left or right, that got them all those extra games, and the girls, fast girls too. Or the gang around Doc’s Drugstore ( a place where all the neighborhood boys, all the sixteen year old boys, and maybe some girls too, all the plaid-shirted, black-chino-ed, “cool”, max daddies came of drinking age, from Doc's shelves, for medicinal purposes of course). They could tell of magic elixirs from rums and raw whiskey, and confess, yes, confess that that whisky taste was nasty. Or, even holy of holies, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor up the Downs when Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, was king of night (and a few days too) and I was his lord chamberlain. Maybe tell of some pizza dough secrets, or how to snag a girl with just the right jukebox combination when dough was short and you were lonely. But no, no one came forth to spew their whitewashed stories almost a half a century later. Probably, on some of the stuff, some of the kiddish schoolboy night stuff, they didn’t realize the statute of limitations ran out, and ran out long ago. But that’s not my problem.

At some point I figured out that this was not to be the case, that those phantoms had lost their voices or preferred snickered quietude, and I resolved to push on anyway at the whim of whatever demons were driving me on. Fierce demon, raider red bleeding demons, to speak out of gone-by days. I was going along fine until I realized and the readers, or at least a few readers, tipped me to this hard fact of literary life. I was recycling the same basic story just in little different guises. You know teen alienation, teen angst, teen love, teen hate, and teen lost themes. And girl less-ness, or too many girl-ness, or wanna be such. Same, ditto, Xerox. Praise be king trash barrel of the dark, dark just before the dawn night. And quick click fingers.

Now, frankly, and this is the core of my plea, I have run out of ideas. A recent re-reading of some of my commentaries has rubbed my face in that hard fact. Two themes, one mentioned above, in various guises have emerged; no, have jumped from the page at me, from the work- the 'tragic' effects of my growing up poor in the land of plenty in the 1950s be-bop working class night and that usual teenage longing for companionship and romance. Gee, those ideas have never been the subject of literary efforts before, right?

Okay, okay nobody asked me to volunteer to be the unpaid, self-appointed voice of the Class of 1964 and so I have only myself to blame. I swear I will get into a twelve-step program for the nostalgically-challenged just the minute I get out of the rehab program for political junkies. But in the meantime-help, or else. And what might that or else threat mean? I am desperate enough to steal someone else's thunder from the general North Adamsville High Message Board that I have been peppering with my ravings. Do you really want to hear me on the subject of Squaw Rock or other seamy, steamy tales of the seashore "submarine" night? And name names. Or, how nasty some of our teachers were? Ditto on the names. Yawn. Or the kinky, perverted, long-suppressed dark side of the North Adamsville High School Band and what they did with those seemingly innocent instruments? Or ........have me go into back into that dreaded Recycle Bin and dust off some of those rejects? Think about it. Send an idea-quick.
******
P.S. Someone has suggested a comparison or contrast between Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis along the lines of Rolling Stones/Beatles (Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles) or Brenda Lee/Patsy Cline (Battle of The Sexes-Round 235) commentaries that I had done earlier this year. This does not count as a new idea though as that goes to the old lonely nights and girl-less days theme that we are trying to move away from just before that twelve step night.

Of course, Jerry Lee was better than Elvis-that's a no-brainer. But it is an idea that will find its way into these pages on its own. Meanwhile how about some North Adamsville idea? I am ready to start writing about President John Adams, his wife Abigail, his son John Quincy, his grandson, Charles Francis, his great grandson, Henry and unto the nth generation if nothing better comes along. And believe me, Adamsville born and bred, I have all the dirt on those guys and their dolls. You have been forewarned.

***Out In The Be-Bop 2000s Night- A Class Website Of One's Own, For The Class Of 1964 Wherever You Are

Markin, North Adamsville (MA) Class Of 1964, comment:

Although these blog sites that I have established tend to reflect old time, be-bop night, hard times, beat times, beat down times, beat down, beatified schoolboy concerns and memories I am not adverse to coming into the new millennium to try, try hard by the way, to deal with the implication of the new technologies like the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and whatever comes up next as the “new” mode of so-called social networking in order to get that “message” out. That said, I was surfing the one such social networking site looking at the class message boards of the classes at North Adamsville just before and after my class, the Class of 1964, and found that Rodger Goldman had made an announcement that the Class of 1965 has its own website hosted by its own webmaster. Correct me if I am wrong but didn't the Class of 1964 have several members who went to MIT or other scientific or technically- oriented schools who could take on such a task?

Actually, these days doesn't someone have an eight-year-old grandchild who could serve in that Webmaster capacity? In either case, isn't there someone who can take on this chore so that we get to see all the photos of children and grandchildren, the family dogs and cats, the aging children of the Class of 1964, and whatever else cyberspace will accept. I am on a crusade, fellow classmates.

Now I have not always been a techie fan. In fact in the past I have been something of a technological Luddite (if you do not know who a Luddite is go to Wikipedia). During most of my life I have consciously kept a few too many steps behind the latest technology, at times from a political prospective and at others from a desire not to get too much clutter in my space. Now, however, although cyberspace does not necessarily bring us the golden age of the global community that I have long hankered for, it does permit those of us from the Class of 1964 to take a stroll down memory lane.

I know there is someone out there who, with evil intent in his or her heart, someone like Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, king hell king of the be-bop early 1960s schoolboy night, says " Well, why doesn't old Markin take on this task?" Fair enough. However, as this is a confessional age, I must come clean here. While I appreciate and can certainly use the Internet when the deal goes down and I get into technological trouble or have to upgrade, etc. I must call in my "significant other" to rescues me. When I say,” Cindy, the #*& computer just went kaput” she comes to the rescue. Moreover, if the truth were known I also still use a CD player when I go for my walks. In the age of the iPod how yesterday, right? I, however, would be more than happy to write a little something for our website. But we need a Webmaster extraordinaire to get us up and running. And I know it will not be old Frankie and his progeny because, king of the night he might have been but he was (and is) a techno-no. His thing was pitter-patter, and girls. Where is there room for techno-competence in that world? So, as this is also an age that is addicted to sports metaphors- who will step up to the plate?

Ancient dreams, dreamed-No More Retreats?- Magical Realism 101

Who knows when the ebb starts, that start to the be-bop king hell king slide down, the question of when the struggle for the top, for being top dog, for being top dog among you and yours, turns from kid (well young man anyway) great blue-pink cloud puff nights to sober star-filled wonders about immorality, your place in the sun, whether it will happen and whether you have enough wherewithal to stand the gaff, the grift, or just the drift toward the infinite. More importantly when the “this and that” of life, the ordinary muck, always present, always damn present from the cradle takes over.

Let’s put it like this, okay. That minute when you call an armed truce (no, a thousand times no don’t say surrender, please, be like Bob Marley, stand up, stand up, stand up for your rights, don’t give up the fight), to that thing that in 1960 got you running the streets, got you running into Park Street and massive scorn, or some hard stir time courtesy of Uncle Sam, or crushed beneath the May Day red tide. (Ya, Bob had it right, don’t give up the fight.) When you didn’t retire exactly but just kind of ran out of opponents who were ready to beat you down on their way up and of sparring partners, rubber tube around the middle just like you, who decided to take up gardening or whatever third-rate guys do when they move on, move uptown as you always said. But one last call calls. And this…

White truce flags neatly placed in right pocket. Well placed in that right hand pocket in order, right-handed man, pocket ready to call a, uh, strategic retreat from this day’s errands at the drop of that handkerchief, an orderly retreat but a retreat, one of many, nevertheless. Then folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against the feckless oil-driven times.

This time a mismatch, a mismatch based a little on that rubber tire around the middle, a little greyness in the hair , a little white in the beard, a little ache here and a pain there, once brushed off , and forward in day but now, weeks ache, and months pains. The bigger opponent, mighty muscled, sleek, stealthy, lots of money backing him, the “smart” money, no question. But he had contracted for this one fight, take whatever comes and then, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy.

The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly, a little rubber tire around the middle wobbly, but moving in and out to avoid the bigger man’s fearsome blows. Hell the guy is not even winded. Damn it’s like a phalanx of something driving him to the ground, or about six corner boys from his youth, his sullen youth when six guys decided that he was, what? Mush? A fag? Stupid? Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. He stagger on his knees and then up on the eight count. Another barrage. Back up again on nine. Close. Then another. He wobbles, knees akimbo, if that is possible and after this mauling it probably is. Face down, stay down. A distant muted echo hits his brain, his egg- scrambled brain, don’t give up the fight. Nah, tomorrow is another day. Hell, there are always other days. If not me then some young hungry guy, some barrio guy, some ghetto guy, hell, maybe both. His brain says… Out. He ran right out of time, Christ.

Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the proud white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. His handler, his woebegone handler, some ancient guy picked up on the cheap, a guy who looked pretty weather-beaten but what are you going to do when you make a match with no up-front dough, no real dough, and just a few fans who remember you from the old glory days, the days when, no kidding you could have been a contender. This old guy, met, or guys like him, met long ago said going into the damn fight and I quote, he said struggle, struggle. Ya, it’s easy for you to say, buddy. You didn’t have to go two rounds with the guy. Jesus he never worked up a sweat. Give me those damn white flags, jesus. And I want my option rematch just like the contract says. Jesus.

Ancient dreams, dreamed-Detour Redux- Magical Realism 101

Sweating, endless summer sweatings, overheated, brain-addled over heated against the next fix, and the next fix. And the next fix. Wondering around the red-tide beach, a beach filled, filled to the brim if you asked him, with fetid smells, nice word, fetid, fetid clamshell-seeking mud flat smell, and rightly named, and maybe mephitic gases too, gases of some same 1950s childhood seaside marshes some thirty years back, and other schemed wonderings. Always wonderings, eternal wonderings against the brain-heated reality. Wondering this day for the high tide that signified that he could prepare himself for a new fix, another sure thing to take the pain away, and to scrabble his fired-up brain further.

So he ambled, walked briskly really, these were not the times, and this was not the place to amble (he thought later when the brain had cooled down) away from ocean-flecked (or charred) beaches, ocean logs rolled in, ocean smells described, toward town, his new town. A slack city, a black and white city without color, or need, with a multitude of sinners, some brain-addled like him, some beyond brain-addled, but all waiting for that next fix, that next sure thing that would break them out for some important life work, or not. Like a sign. Signifying? Maybe just to whet the appetite for more fixes, more sure things to chase the hard-hearted day away.

He, uneasily, roamed among them, trying to hear through the mumble, through the deceptions, through the glassy-eyed stare, the never-ending glassy-eyed stare. And heard shouts about this and that, about the next sure thing maybe, against the coming of the new day, hell, about heaven and heaven’s blessed, and about heaven’s luck, and about the next journey. Ya, that next journey, like maybe there were ten or eleven, hell, twelve gates to the city. Jesus, the brain-addled confusion was starting to kick in, kick in with a thud, as he thought he heard some high white note trumpet blowing some sweet Gabriel blow. But that couldn’t be right because he could clearly see the trumpeter and trumpet although the high white note had turned to air ashes in the hubbub of whiskeys ordered, pizzas consumed, and coffees (no teas here, not among the brain-addled) sipped and slurped, constant milling chatter, chatter beyond that, all inchoate.

Then he started to work, his mumbo-jumbo work, eyes left, eyes, right, eyes up in heaven’s door, looking for that right combination that would fix him, fix him until the next fix, jesus, will it ever end. Of course he had his maw this day, a few shillings (nice touch he thought), and desire, word desire, number desire, word-number desire, number-word desire, and then silence. He had hit the fix line, the line of no return as he heard, heard in his head at least, the mandela turn once more. And then he heard bells, laugh bells at first, then diminished, and then silent. The waiting began, and the crowd hushed, or merely mingle talked in low places, before the great yawl, before nature’s spin turned.

About eight visions then came to him, one after the other like some childhood parade, all in colors, all in order, all with determined looks. He did not believe in colors, or numbers, or words, just then just mandela fixes, and release. And as the four winds blew across that city just that afternoon and those eight (or was it nine or ten he had never thought to get an accurate count, and didn’t think that he needed to) visions blew this way and that he knew, knew for certain that he was doomed, doomed to repeat that eight -visioned scene over and over. That thought, for just that minute made him think, made him realize that the abyss was not such a bad place. At least the fix-dreaming would be over, and the number worry, the word worry, the color worry would be over. And maybe he could cool off his tormented brain.

Later lashed against the high end double seawall, some unknown, unnamed shoreline below, bearded, slightly graying against the forlorn time, a vision in white linen not enough to keep the wolves of time away, the wolves of feckless childhood petty larceny times reappear, reappear with a vengeance against the super-rational night sky and big globs of ancient hurts fester against some unknown enemy, unnamed, always unnamed, or hiding out in a canyon under an assumed name. Then night, the promise of night, a night run up some seawall-laden streets, some Grenada night, maybe Spanish, maybe Moroccan or maybe a desolate sky boom night, and thoughts of finite, sweet flinty finite haunt his dreams, haunt his sleep. A ring cries out in that abyss night. Wrong number, brother. Ya, wrong number, as usual.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Life Is Cheap South Of The Border, Real Cheap

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.

“Get that stinking bracero out of my sight before I kill him with my own two hands,” barked El Paso County Sheriff Harry White. Although barked did not, did not by a long shot, convey the menace in the good sheriff’s voice but after this length of time, almost thirty years, I think that barked will suffice for today’s more tender ears. And with that barked venomous sentence I was introduced to Harry White, El Paso Anglo justice, south Texas Mex sensibilities and small town Anglo justice along the tenuous border between Estados Unidos and Mexico. Let me tell those who though that I only breathed the rarified airs of the big questions-war, more war, and more war, saving green mother earth, trying to shine a little light on the rotten deal most of the little guys (and gals) have been dealt in this wicked old world you don’t know nothing about my rocky road start in the public prints.

After doing a hard two year stretch on the city desk as a glorified gopher for every rotten police blotter detail that the drunken copy editor could foist on me (else he would have to go and “miss” his date with Mr. Johnny Walker Red) at the Portland Daily Gazette (that is in Maine, I don’t think they have crime in the Oregon one) I had had it. Especially after spending a tough few months covering the Lady In Shay’s Pond case from the first day when some hikers found the first body until the Greer sisters drew life, no parole, for their little escapades. So I gave my notice, asked for a little recommendation (granted since I was given some half-ass award for my Lady coverage), and decided to head back west.

Oh, did I mention that that reignited desire to head west again (I had spent a few years out their cadging this and that, under my New Age a-borning name of the Prince of Love, as part of being “on” Captain Crunch’s yellow bus magical mystery tour and drug coma) did not seep into my crime frazzled head but was put there is one Lucy Defarge whom I met as part of that wild wind Lady story. She covered it for the Kittery Times and so we spent a fair amount of time on that, and kind of half- circling each other in the process. Then one night we just kind of united, and decided to live together on the road west. It was that kind of times for those who did not live through it. The idea was to pull up stakes in the East and see what happened picking up free-lance newspaper jobs (or “think” pieces for exotic New Age journals who had the “trust fund baby” financed wherewithal to pay for articles on whether solar or wind was better as an energy source for mother earth and stuff along that line. Don’t laugh. In a forty year career such “manna from heaven” got me, and mine, through some cold Maine winters.)

So Lucy and I headed out in a used Volkswagen bus (of course) in early 1976 and had an uneventful, and mainly interesting time, making some money here for a few weeks writing about the corn harvest for the Omaha Times, and there about some local celebrity in Winnemucca (that is in Nevada and there is definitely crime there, a money pit draws it like flies to honey) who donated his winnings at five card stud to help some orphanage. Strictly for cash stuff, and no apologies or dreams of high art reportage about it. Along the West Coast we mainly “lived off the land” as only the creative (and white) can do in those sunny climes. Then we started heading southwest rounding our way back East and south was best to avoid crazy rocky mountain white out squalls and other crazy western plains weather disasters.

So that was how I (we) came to be in El Paso, a little broke, a little road tired, and, frankly a little in need of some action right around the time Harry White blew his top. This is how I came to see this scene. My recommendation from the Gazette t(and my having been on a big town, I think the editor though it was that other Portland , although he never said as much), and my portfolio articles got me, well, got me right at the top of the pecking order on the city desk at the El Paso Chronicle. And, naturally, having been an “ace” crime reporter before I was a no on- the-job-training necessary top candidate when the Larkin story broke out over our heads.

Joe Bob (real names, not nicknames) Larkin was the biggest rancher/grower in southwest Texas, with tens of thousands of prime ranching and growing (cotton, mainly) acres right along the border. So, of course, he needed thousands of people willing to work that hot, dusty south Texas sun getting in the crops). And very conveniently he had some neighbors south of the border who would be more than happy to come and pick, hell, pick anything for fifty cents a bushel, a tin roof shack, and some gringo food. As now, braceros, wet-backs, mexs, tio tacos (y tias tambien) whatever mal nombre you wanted to call them this work required massive numbers of illegal workers to cross the lines, do the work, and then suffer whatever fate was in store for them after they were all used up. And Joe Bob Larkin was just the good old boy (from all accounts) to grease the hand of the devil himself to get his workers. And the king hell king of proving such services for his top constituent was one Sheriff Harry White.

So when one Joe Bob Larkin wound up (along with his bleach blonde, ah, personal secretary, although her employment status was a little fuzzy, especially to his wife back on the ranch) very dead in a flea-bag hotel room in Cuidad Juarez after some arsonist, some professional arsonist from the way the job was done, including jamming all the doors, torched the place big Harry White was across the border in a flash. No niceties of international diplomacy for Harry, big, no obese, gruff, cigar-chomping with a sweat-stained shirt and hat to match. Something out of an Orson Welles idea of what a borderland red neck sheriff, full of anglo hates, and anglo would look like.

But Harry had missed out on that community/international relations class that cops, gruff cops or meek, were supposed to take in order to smooth the tensions in some high risk situations. Old Harry just hated braceros, stinking braceros, from some tio taco on up. But this is where Harry really blundered. He didn’t realize that 1970 something was not 1940 something when he could have covered this whole thing up with no questions asked on either side of the border, and no reason to. The money exchanged was too good. And that too is where Harry underestimated Mexican National Police cop, Johnny Rivers, specially assigned to the case by the Mexican government because of his previous work with these illegal obreros.

Johnny Rivers (born Juan Rios down Sonora way) was a good cop, a cop not on the take, if you can believe that. Funny, he hated, hated maybe worse than Harry White the braceros, the stinking braceros, with their ten children and their manana ways always ready to eat crow when a gringo came around, or some batos locos looking for easy dough. See he was from them, his father and mother were from them, hell, probably back to the conquest he was from them. So his hate was driven differently from Harry’s, but still hate. And hate that some gabacho Anglo sheriff was coming into Mexico, taking his case, and beating down “his” braceros.

Harry just looked at good cop Johnny Rivers, noted the anglo-ized names, noted the gringa wife (probably some tramp from some Tijuana joy house from the look of her, but she was definitely gringa and knew how to stir a man, even an old sweat-stained leather cigar man), and noted those Pancho Villa charcoal eyes and that Zapata burning sense of national pride and knew he had to take this Juan Rios down a peg, maybe two.

But here is where it all got crazy, crazy for Harry, trying to cover up everything and no questions asked like always. Harry was the guy who set old Joe Bob up. He knew when Joe Bob would be in Juarez with his blond honey, knew that Joe Bob was trying to bring in his own bands of braceros, and paid, paid big money to that arsonist to “scare.” Joe Bob. The pro was just too good for his job (and was found face down later in some outback arroyo, food for the coyotes, after everything came out). Harry, instead of leaving well enough alone, decided that he would “solve” this one by bringing down everyone in the operation who could connect him with those thousands of border crossings. So he brought each and every one he could find in turn to the American side and “put the frame” on them. And that is where I came in, during one of his “hearings,” nightstick in hand.

And that is where Harry went over the edge, where his old ways did him dirt. Harry figured that Johnny was closing in on him, or would figure things out pretty soon and not give up until some bracero justice was done. So Harry just did what he thought was called for, he had that pretty gringa wife of Johnny’s kidnapped, held in a tough spot, and laid the bait for Johnny to come looking for her on the Mexican side of the border. Then he would have them both killed and set face down in some Mexican side arroyo, everybody figuring that some “coyote” rogue elements got to them. What Harry didn’t figure was that Johnny wasn’t one of those old time bracero take it and like it guys. Through about sixteen different connections he had with some mex drug lords he found her, offed her captors and headed straight back over the border.

Needless to say Harry got his just deserts, a couple of slugs in the right place from the gun of one Juan Rios, and he lying face down in a pool of oil at the oil well field where he finally hunted Harry down. And I, well, I got to write it all up for that old El Paso Chronicle. See, in the old days, Captain Crunch and his merry pranksters used to “winter” in LaJolla just above San Diego and the place we wintered at was a big old mansion which belonged to some heavy-duty drug dealers who let us stay there as caretakers. We did that for a couple of years, maybe three. So how do you thing a guy like Juan Rios, a good cop, got the sixteen different connections with those Mexican drug lords. Ya, life is cheap, and not just south of the border.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Romance Down Sonora Way

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his early To Ramona

To Ramona by Bob Dylan

Lyrics

Ramona
Come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise
The flowers of the city
Though breathlike
Get deathlike at times
And there’s no use in tryin’
T’ deal with the dyin’
Though I cannot explain that in lines

Your cracked country lips
I still wish to kiss
As to be under the strength of your skin
Your magnetic movements
Still capture the minutes I’m in
But it grieves my heart, love
To see you tryin’ to be a part of
A world that just don’t exist
It’s all just a dream, babe
A vacuum, a scheme, babe
That sucks you into feelin’ like this

I can see that your head
Has been twisted and fed
By worthless foam from the mouth
I can tell you are torn
Between stayin’ and returnin’
On back to the South
You’ve been fooled into thinking
That the finishin’ end is at hand
Yet there’s no one to beat you
No one t’ defeat you
’Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad

I’ve heard you say many times
That you’re better ’n no one
And no one is better ’n you
If you really believe that
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose
From fixtures and forces and friends
Your sorrow does stem
That hype you and type you
Making you feel
That you must be exactly like them

I’d forever talk to you
But soon my words
They would turn into a meaningless ring
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring
Everything passes
Everything changes
Just do what you think you should do
And someday maybe
Who knows, baby
I’ll come and be cryin’ to you

Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

“If you see that bastard Be-Bop Benny tell him, and tell him straight, that he still owes me fifteen hundred dollars for that last shipment I delivered up norte. And tell him he better come across quick because my guys don’t wait for late payments. Don’t wait at all,” yelled Selena, with no guile in her voice and no concern that anyone or everyone within earshot might hear her, across the Hotel Sonora lobby as I checked in at the main desk for a conference that I was attending. And, as if to emphasis that last point, she said the whole thing over again in Spanish for the locals, and me.

I am sure more than one companero was taken aback by the dead death-rattle tone in her voice coming from a senorita whose looks epitomized any virtue that came out of the old time Spanish conquest. Dark black hair, dark skin but mixed just right by generations of mestizo blending, big ruby-red lips and a toothy smile to set them off, all topped by those dancing black Spanish eyes that tore the heart (and soul) of more than one man, companero or gringo. Hell they almost had me just then and I was nothing but a convenient whipping boy caught up in some ill-fated (or apparently ill-fated) international drug deal that had some loose ends sticking out. Yes, Be-Bop Benny was in serious trouble if he ever showed his face south of the border, and maybe any place until this issue was resolved.

It was not always that way though, not by a long shot. It all started out as innocence and wildflowers when Selena, fresh in town, stepped up to Be-Bop Benny a few years back in the middle of Cambridge Common and asked him point blank if he wanted to “share a joint” with her. Said not in that death voice that just strung me out across this lobby floor but in that sing-song voice of hers then that spoke of transport and swirls. As well as along with those eyes, that skin and those ruby-red lips. He did, and they did. That was the start of it, simple. A good start for the times, and the times were full of little innocent starts like this, some still burning in the trying 1970s night others, well, others, wound up like this bummer of a scene that I have found myself in the middle of. And no way to fix it, to fix Be-Bop Benny’s problem.

See I don’t have clue one where one Peter Paul Markin, moniker Be-Bop Benny, is in this year of our lord 1976. The last I had seen, or heard of him, was in late 1974 when he was just getting in a little over his head and was making mutterings to me about splitting for the coast (West Coast, of course) and getting clean, ocean clean. But mainly to get Selena off his Selena-obsessed mind, and get out from under his “product” problem. I also knew that he had “borrowed” fifteen hundred dollars that he was supposed to pay to Selena for her to give to her distributor, and so on up the chain.

Damn, it all started out so innocently. A couple of joint “joints,” some wild Spanish perfume and a couple of tumbles in some silken sheets and Be-Bop Benny was Selena’s slave. And then his money ran out, and hers too. That was when she brought up the matter of employment, lucrative employment to keep those sheets swishing and the wolves from the door. The idea at first was for her to head home, Sonora, down in sunny Mexico, pick up some dope (weed, mary jane, herb, whatever you call it in your neighborhood) bring it back and sell to a few friends. And then back to the swishing silky sheets. Then those friends brought their friends around, and those friends their friends until they were selling, selling hot and heavy (for the Mex dope was primo, Acapulco Gold), to strangers and their friends. So the business got out of hand after a while. And Be-Bop Benny got tired of his mule work, got tired of the trips to Sonora, and got tired of Selena sharing her joint come-on and have some fun with every guy who walked in the middle of Cambridge Common. Hell he was crazy for her, and she was just crazy. She tried her routine on me just to spite Be-Bop one time after some fight over dough just to do it.

So if you see Be-Bop Benny tell him for me to keep moving, moving fast, and keep the hell away from Sonora, down in sunny Mexico. Okay, amigo.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- In the Time Of His Time

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his classic call to, well, something, I am not sure whether he knew what the call was to, Blowin’ In The Wind.

Blowin' In The Wind by Bob Dylan

Lyrics

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

Copyright © 1962 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1990 by Special Rider Music

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

He was not sure, exactly, when he, as he called them, caught the "dissatisfied blues." He tried, tried like hell, to remember when he didn’t have them so he could kind of work his way back to give the damn things a date, or at least a time frame. But he couldn’t. The best that he could come up with was when he was in third grade, maybe fourth, because he had had female teachers both years (and pre-teen boy chaste crushes on both of them, and don’t try to make anything out of that, that is strictly a false lead if you do) at the old now long torn down and since rebuilt Olde Saco Elementary School up in Olde Saco, Maine in ancient post-World II times.

It could not have been later because in fifth and sixth grade he had had hard-ass male teachers who would have boxed his ears, or some such thing, if he had expressed out loud his dissatisfactions. Or, if not them doing the boxing of ears (or some such), then salt of the earth Papa who trucked no dissatisfactions, not compared to his hard-scrabble childhood down in some forsaken Appalachian mines (somewhere near Hazard, Kentucky, of some fame in song and story he learned later, much later). Or, in her mother mood days, Meme (she, nee LeBlanc), if she heard that he was dissatisfied with anything greater than the weather after our lord (and, no question in Olde Saco, post –World War II, French –Canadian hard scrabble textile mill Olde Saco, that “our lord” was a vengeful Gallic Roman Catholic our lord) had provided the family with, well, for openers, a roof over their heads, food, good solid food on the table, and… well, whatever “and” she had decided on mother mood days.

Still he was dissatisfied. If he did not express it publicly in the wilds of the complacent Olde Saco school system, or the comforts of the Papa and Meme household, or confess it as some sin, venial or mortal (he never did confess not being sure which type it was), at Sainte Anne Dupree’s Church (not need for the Gallic Roman Catholic part, that is etched in stone) he was still dissatisfied very early on.

Later he could give it a name, although his capacity to do anything about it, or that he could do anything about it did not rise measurably for a very long time. It was little things, kid’s inarticulate things, at first. Why did he have to wear older brother Andre’s hand-med-downs to school when everybody else was wearing new things from the new Penny’s just build up the road in Portland? Why did five people (two adults, already introduced, Andre ditto, and younger brother Prescott) have to live in a tiny house on the wrong side of the tracks (literally, the tracks divided the low-rent Atlantic Avenue section of town from the more upscale Ocean Edge section.)? Although it would be a long time, a very long time, until he got to the bottom of all of that.

Later, high school fresh kid later, first faux-beatnik in Olde Saco later (mostly, very mostly, to impress the girls, especially a certain Lola LaCroix whose perfume, or bath soap, he couldn’t always tell the difference, drifted carelessly all the way across the room to inflame his desire) his first public break-out (mainly at night, mainly if someone had a car, he didn’t, and
wanted to head to Harvard Square and sights of real, faux real, beatniks) and tag as “different.” To some “cool” different but mostly not.

Later still, blown winds across the land later, southern winds of change later. First stirrings, but just first stirrings of wind changes in North Carolina journey later. Winds of war, the smell of war, and stiff resistance later and he the sacrificial lamb to those wars later. He at war with, well, with his government, his parents, his brothers, his Lola, his textile mill town, his beatnik friends, his, mother the ocean in front of him, and his box-like way of life later. And he still sang those dissatisfied blues to high heaven, and beyond. And he never, as far as anybody knew, stopped doing so. Even, if like that third or fourth grade boy, he was never quite sure when it started. Or when it would end.