From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Uncle Lionel’s Loss- With Bob Dylan’s “Boots Of Spanish Leather” In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his classic early lament, Boots of Spanish Leather.

Boots Of Spanish Leather by Bob Dylan

Lyrics

Oh, I’m sailin’ away my own true love
I’m sailin’ away in the morning
Is there something I can send you from across the sea
From the place that I’ll be landing?

No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love
There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled
From across that lonesome ocean

Oh, but I just thought you might want something fine
Made of silver or of golden
Either from the mountains of Madrid
Or from the coast of Barcelona

Oh, but if I had the stars from the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss
For that’s all I’m wishin’ to be ownin’

That I might be gone a long time
And it’s only that I’m askin’
Is there something I can send you to remember me by
To make your time more easy passin’

Oh, how can, how can you ask me again
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I want from you today
I would want again tomorrow

I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from her ship a-sailin’
Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again
It depends on how I’m a-feelin’

Well, if you, my love, must think that-a-way
I’m sure your mind is roamin’
I’m sure your heart is not with me
But with the country to where you’re goin’

So take heed, take heed of the western wind
Take heed of the stormy weather
And yes, there’s something you can send back to me
Spanish boots of Spanish leather

Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music


Love is a tough racket any way you cut it. Not just the sometimes flame-outs that get extinguished in a youthful minute and are soon forgotten, and not just the ones that turn out to be uneven in the emotional turmoil of the affair before it goes south on one side. Sometimes it gets so lop-sided that nothing can fix the thing. That “nothing can fix the thing” is what I want to speak of just now. And give it a name. The late Lionel LeBlanc, my mother’s brother and my favorite uncle while growing up in Olde Saco up in Maine during the 1950s. Uncle Lionel always seemed like a good guy, always gave us gifts on all important occasions, always supported the various athletic endeavors we pursued, always volunteered to help out in the Fourth Of July and Fourteenth of July (French Revolution celebrations, for the heathens) festivities in the summer, always was respected for the forty years that he put in as a skilled mechanic at the old MacAdams Textile Mills, long, long gone, that kept the town and its mainly working class population afloat. And he was always unmarried. Not that he didn’t have lady friends (as my mother Delores, nee hard French-Canadian LeBlanc would say). He just never married.

And that fact, or the facts behind that fact, as I grew to manhood, left for the West Coast to do this and that, including marrying three times, receded into foggy memory until several years ago when my mother passed away. As part of my legacy I was to sell the family house over on Atlantic Avenue in Olde Saco and divide up the proceeds according to her wishes. As part of preparing for the sale I needed to clean out the overburdened attic. I have mentioned before in an earlier sketch that my mother was a “central committee of one” for keeping alive the greater family memories by keeping almost every known memento, letters, prom tickets, whatever for the past couple of generations. She did her work well, although if I wasn’t as curious as I am, I would certainly have cursed her for eternity for keeping some of the stuff.

Naturally she saved all of Lionel’s letters that he left behind in his apartment when he passed away in 1997. Most of the letters were ho-hum notes to family members about this and that, nothing out of the ordinary. Then I came upon one batch of letters, or rather they came upon me, for I could “smell,” I swear, a faint odor of perfume even after all this time coming from the neatly wrapped and ribboned expensive writing paper and envelopes. So I started reading from the bottom (he, or my mother, had put them in order). The first one was dated April 22, 1927, and was filled with all kinds of impressions about the first few days on the S.S. France that was taking Mlle. LaCroix (a family name known even now in the old town) to Paris and a job as a nanny to one of the MacAdams family’s many children (the textile people whose mills ran the town and provided luxury for many branches of that family). Mlle LaCroix also expressed her fervent desire in that first letter that her time would go quickly so that she could get back to Olde Saco and marry Uncle Lionel. The next couple of letters, including her first from gay Paree, were along the same lines.

Then things got a little terser. Uncle Lionel kept asking when she (Laura) expected to return to America, and she kept saying that she planned to take up painting in Paris as someone (gender unknown) had noticed some of her sketches when she was minding one of the MacAdams children. For the next several months the letters from her got more distant, and Lionel’s more forlorn, although each letter from both always contained some reference to their impending marriage.

After about a year, Lionel decided to put his foot down and ask for a definitive answer on her return date. He never received an answer to that plea. But a tip-off, when I thought about it later, should have been when she stopped asking him, as he had in the beginning, if he wanted her to send him some nice silk shirts for their wedding day. He should have grabbed those luxury items with both hands when he had the chance. Right? And that broken, faithless love affair is why good old Uncle Lionel never married. Ya, love is a tough racket anyway you cut it.

***Out In The Be-Bop Crime Noir 1940s Night- “Dark Passage”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Dark Passage.

DVD Review

Dark Passage, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Warner Brothers, 1947

No question that grizzled beaten-up Humphrey Bogart and a young coyly beautiful Lauren Bacall heated up the 1940s screen, heated it up as much as two people could and keep their clothes on, in their first film pairing, William Faulkner’s screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have Or Have Not (only loosely based on that short novel by the way). They also played together in the Raymond Chandler Phillip Marlowe detective noir classic, The Big Sleep and in Key Largo. In this Dark Passage pairing though, while still in thrall with each other off-screen, the steam is fading, fading fast. But not, perhaps, because of their familiarity to movie-goers as much as the plot line they had to perform under.

Let me explain a little. Vincent Parry (played by Bogart) is in stir up at Quentin for the foul murder of his wife. But, see, like they all say, he didn’t do it so he lams out of Q on his own to see if he can get out from under the life sentence he has received. So naturally when the cops are on his trail up shows come hither Irene Jansen (played by Bacall) to help him out. Seems that, for reasons of her own, she followed Vincent’s trial closely and is convinced that he might be innocent. So she hid him out at her place for a while until things got too hot. But getting out from under this life sentence is going to be harder than you would think. So while riding in a cab to another hide-out he is picked up by a friendly, very friendly cabbie who just happens to know a back alley plastic surgeon who will change Vincent’s face enough so that he can work without notoriety. Simple right.

Well the long and short of it is that while the facelift might have seemed like the answer to his problems everybody and their brother is on to him in the end. And as to finding the real murderer. Well she inconveniently falls out the window of her high rise apartment. While Vincent is there trying to talk sense into her. So, knowing he can’t win, new face and all, he lams it for parts south, way south.

You can see what I mean by the awkwardness of the main plot line. And what makes said plot lines even worst is that Irene has a big crush on Vincent, under either old or new face. Except, and here is the real crime, we do not see either face until fairly late in the film and by then any sense of the magic of To Have Or Have Not or The Big Sleep has dissolved into the be-bop 1940s crime noir night. Too bad.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night-Fatal Attraction- “The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers"- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir, The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers

DVD Review

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Paramount Pictures, 1946

Ya, a woman can get under your skin, no question, no question at all, in 1940 or 2010 makes no difference. Now two guys tugging away is an even tougher story, especially when the dame is a heartless femme fatale like Barbara Stanwyck who plays the woman under their skins in the title of this crime noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Now Barbara Stanwyck was never my beaux ideal of a femme fatale, I run more to the Rita Hayworth hot-blooded Gilda-types (with that strand of hair over the eyes) but I could see where guys, normally sensible guys, would be running through hoops in order to win her favors. And she would give them the "kiss of death," that hard-hearted kiss of death mentioned above. Take no prisoners, none.

A little plot line of the story goes a long way to figuring out those charms, those decidedly not girlish, not 1940s girlish anyway, charms. Rebellious Martha, an orphan being brought up to be a lady by an old-school rich aunt wants none of it and keeps running away, aided and abetted by ragamuffin, wrong side of the tracks Sam, played by Van Heflin. As the film opens she is being brought back after one such caper, scolded by her aunt assisted by Kirk Douglas’s father, Martha’s tutor (Douglas plays Walter, the other love interest in this dance of death combination). When dear cruel auntie (played by Judith Andersen, who knew how to play that kind of role to a tee) tries to confront Martha just as she is getting ready to fly the coop again with Sam, with Walter swore to secrecy, she just happens to fall down the long flight of stairs. After less than one shed tear the trio (Martha, Walter, and his dear old money-grubbing dad) work up a story and stick to it, stick to it to well because to make it stick ultimately they have some unnamed vagabond lug eventually go the chair for their misdeed. Meanwhile Sam, figuring that Martha has gotten cold feet, blows town on the next train out, a circus train.

Fast forward eighteen years. Sam, passing through town, decides to see what has happened since he blew town. Well Martha and Walter have gotten loveless married (loveless on her part, naturally) to seal their part of the pact with death, Walter for crazed-out love, Martha to keep him on a leash. Martha who turns out to be a pretty good businesswoman basically runs the town now. But here is the kicker, guilt-ridden about how they obtained their ill-gotten gains our blessed married couple think Sam is here for a shake-down thinking he saw what happened that long ago night when auntie went crashing down the stairs. Of course Sam had no idea of the sort until things start to unravel around his new-found girlfriend, sweet, husky voiced Lizabeth Scott who has her own troubles with the law. The long and short of it is that Martha is still carrying the torch for Sam, Walter is getting more drunken crazy for Martha and sweet hard-luck Liz looks to be holding an empty bag when Martha puts her whammy on Sam.

There can be no happy ending here, right? Well, right but only part right. This murder most foul has put a death grip on Martha and Walter, a death grip that is triggered by Sam's reappearance but also that nasty little deal of creating a fall guy for their misdeeds. So you know, know just as well as I do that the fates are against them. As for Sam and Liz, well they get out with the skin of their teeth but they get out. Once again, you know the routine; crime doesn’t pay, one way of the other it eats away at you. Got it.