***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-With Warren Smith’s Rock and Roll Ruby In Mind -Take Three  

 

…he knew, knew deep in his bones, knew on the face of it too that he could not keep her, keep her to himself, keep her settled down and so he accepted that she would blow away like the wind on him sometime and it was just a matter of how long he could keep her. It was not that he was perceptive about women, girls really, or about anything like that or that as a wet-behind-the ears high school kid trying to survive in the doldrums 1950s he had some inside knowledge about what was going to happen when his generation broke out of the straitjacket but he just knew that she was like the wind and would get caught up in everything that was breezing across the land. Him, well, he was what she called when she was angry at him when he would not dance or got mad when she did with other guys or he was smothering her with his forever plans (her take, not his) a “square”, Jesus, a square and with his strict Jehovah upbringing and his dreams maybe he was. He knew that he would not be able to go with her when she broke out, knew that for sure.

It hadn’t started out that way, at least he did not see it like that at the beginning, see that she was a wayward wind, see that she had the desire to  deeply imbibe the new wave coming across the continent. That wind born of the wild boy, motorcycle, surf city, hot rod Lincoln,   reaction against the staid Great Depression and World War II parents’ generation search for the security blanket in a hostile red scare Cold War world where they just wanted their Johnny coming home music, big Cadillac, two car garage with two cars and stardust memories.

You know what I mean, don’t you, the mood change that started when Elvis and a bunch of other hungry guys [and a few women like Wanda Jackson and Laverne Baker] ripped it up with a new sound, a new not your parents’ tinny sound, but blessed, no, twice blessed rock and roll. And then other guys, other be-bop guys who had been around but were just then getting noticed called the beat, called the beat down to rise up and play themselves true, no hassles man, no hassles. All under the umbrella of dropping that dragged out, square, red scare cold war night thing the ancients had everybody stirred up about. Yeah and his has-been crowd. A little later, in Billy and Jenny time, the he and she here to introduce them but they could have been any of ten thousand kids on the bible of the new religion American Bandstand, standing on corners looking be-bop beat, or throwing nickels and dimes at some Doc’s Drugstore complete with soda fountain and jukebox to hear the latest about twenty times the music changed up again, and square was nowhere to be. Billy sensed it, sensed before Jenny even but he with ten thousand worries in his head blew it off, called it at first a passing fad then got real scared when his Jenny got testy with him more often.       

They had met conventionally enough in senior year at old North Adamsville High, although they had seen each other around for ages as most of the kids in town had and had not pay particular attention to kids they knew for ages, or kids that were not in their clique, had grown up together on the wrong side of the tracks and wore a few scars to prove it, had been at endless school assemblies, rallies, dances. Something clicked though in that senior year as they both had responded to each other’s furtive glances in Miss Williams’ study hall, had furtively danced around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where all the kids hung out after school to listen the latest music, their music juke box, and had finally gone out on a double-date (he without a car at the time and so they had doubled up with her girlfriend Terry in her beau’s car, a “boss” Chevy since that beau was out of school and working as a welder down at the shipyard) at the local drive-in theater where she, sitting in the back seat with him, surprised him with her sexual advances.

Stuff that he wasn’t all that familiar with but which he liked and which she knew that he liked. He, at least, was embarrassed when Terry and Eddie kept telling them to quiet down a little while she was doing her thing on him. She on the other hand took that as a signal to make him crazier. Yeah, he liked it, liked it like any guy would, especially since she was one of the prettiest girls in class and had a reputation for being kind of “unapproachable.”  Yeah, he liked it but also thought to himself that night and the several other nights they found themselves in some secluded spot on the beach (the Squaw Rock end not the Seal Rock end where parents and young kids hung out) when she did her thing to him, those times when she got all loud and screamy when he touched her where had she picked up that knowledge of what made a guy moan (and a girl all screamy). When he asked her about it later, not any of the nights when they were alone down the beach but a couple of weeks later, she just said girls knew stuff like that and she had learned it from her first boyfriend who was older. Said that older guys, older guys who had been out in the world, guys who knew how to turn a woman on, and who expected to be turned on showed girls like her what was what. He let it pass.  So they were an “item” that last year of school and many a Monday morning before school when the other guys were speaking of weekend conquests he just smiled a knowing silent smile.   

Then the music at Doc’s jukebox changed, got more charged, frankly, got more sassy and sexual far different from their parents’ sappy sentimental stuff that didn’t get anybody’s heart rate up. And she changed, well maybe not so much changed as got caught up in the new dispensation, the new moves. When they went on dates then it wasn’t to the movies or to some restaurant but to Smiley’s Bar & Grille on the outskirts of town where old Smiley had a hot new cover band, the Rocking Rockets, playing all the latest big beat stuff from guys like Warren Smith with his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby that she flipped out on. Not that she, like Warren said, would dance on the tables and stuff like that but that she would dance with lots of guys, would be flirty, tease flirty right before his eyes. When he questioned her on it she just said “don’t be a square, daddy” and refused to discuss it further. And then it began. Some nights when he called her mother answered to say she was not home, had gone out with the girls, or something like that. Yeah, he knew deep in his bones …       

********

…he had changed, Billy had changed too much for her tastes, changed into a “square” just like all the parents in town and all the kids who didn’t want to have fun and just be like them, be like their parents and worry like Billy’s parents’ did Jehovah worry about the new devil’s music coming on the scene to replace, square, square Pat Boone and those clowns. Billy, Jesus, Billy worrying and just barely out of high school about some house, kids, dogs and two cars. Funny though he never complained, not one word, when she did her thing with him down at the beach. Oh, he asked, Jehovah hypocrite asked where she learned how to satisfy a man but he never asked her to stop but just moaned like every other man. So she knew, knew sooner or later she was not sure which, she would have to drop him, drop him for somebody who was fun, who liked what she did and didn’t act the hypocrite about it. Hell, in one of her fantasy moments maybe drop him for the first guy who wanted to dance with her close and fast, maybe had some reefer or Scotch and didn’t ask forever how she knew what she knew about sex and just enjoy it (and enjoy her).

The problem was that in square old North Adamsville that someone who was fun and the rest had not passed her door, but she had hopes. In the meantime she thought she would have to stick with old gloomy Gus as he fretted his life away.  As long as he kept his mouth shut  when she started swaying when the juke-box played some hot, latest rock and roll tune or the cover band at Smiley’s started her dancing to the beat on something like Warren Smith’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby. Started guys looking through Billy her way too, and licking their chops.

Funny, as she thought back to that time a little over a year before when they had eyed each other in Miss Williams’ study hall that she was then attracted to his easy manner, his sly boyish-ness which she thought she could talk him out of with a little coaxing (he had made her laugh when after they became an “item” he said that the eyeing had really been furtive glances-he said funny things like that then). They had not spoken a word until they had spent what seemed like a lifetime dancing around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where he put in endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box and then just sat there dreamy-eyed looking at her until she said enough and went over to him and stood right in front of him and dared him to ignore her with her look. He had surrendered easily enough and they became an “item” after a subsequent drive-in movie date where she had shown him a few things in the back seat of her friend Terry’s boyfriend’s car. He liked her doing that stuff and she knew he liked her doing that stuff although he was a very shy boy for the first few times. So this was how they had spent their last year of school together in some kind of bliss.

Things changed though, changed when a new breeze came through the town, when Doc’s juke-box started to almost jump off the walls what with the latest rock tunes coming one right after another. But he did not catch on, wanted to stay mired in his parents’ music and so the frets began-his about marriage and settling down, hers about having fun rocking the night away. The worse times had been when  they went to Smiley’s, the hot-spot bar on the outside of town and who had plenty of booze and bop and guys who eyed her, maybe not  furtively shy like Billy had  but eyed her like they wanted to have a good time, wanted to have fun rather mope around and be square. He would just sit there and be mopey while she danced with a few guys, a couple of whom she had given her telephone number to although they in the end had not worked out. She began telling her mother sometimes that when Billy called to tell him she was out and that she didn’t know when she would be back.  Even when, like this night, she was just sitting up in her room waiting for a new guy who had danced her off her feet the night before was supposed to call and maybe, just maybe, want to have fun …     

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight -Take Two

 

 

…he wondered, truly wondered whether she missed him, missed her walking daddy that night, that seemingly endless night when he wondered once again whether  she missed him after all the slow meaningless time that had passed those past few months since their over-heated short love affair had gone down in flames almost as quickly as it had started. That walking daddy moniker was a little term of endearment that she had tagged him with after they had, well, done the “do the do” and she though that she had him reined in, reined him in with kisses and a few little special things that he liked, and that she knew he liked even before he told her that he did. That “do the do” sex stuff was the least of their problems, he knew she liked his  kisses and a few little special things that she liked, and that  he knew she liked even before she told him that she did, although at the end maybe it was the sex stuff  too, it could have been everything jumbled together. But if anybody asked him he missed that part, no question.    

 

He did not really believe that she did, did miss him, she was not built that way, had kind of steel-trap mind on the subject (and others too, subjects she was steel-trapped about), he knew from the first, and she made the fact abundantly clear in all their conversations, that once she was done with a man that was that and she moved on, maybe to the next man, maybe just off to lick her wounds. She would illustrate the point  with examples citing, chapter and verse, whenever the subject came up ex-husbands and lovers, one of whom she said had asked if she needed a blackboard once she got on her high horse about the subject. Still he took a ticket, took a chance that he would be, what she called him at the beginning, oh yeah, her “forever” man (and a few short months later her “never” man although she did not say that word exactly he just plucked it out of the air one night, one early on night when he first thought about whether she missed him).  Yeah, so no question he was as sure as a man could be, a man who no longer was on speaking terms with her to find out, that she did not miss him.

 

He wondered too whether she was lonesome tonight for her walking daddy, a very different proposition than whether she missed him. He was not sure on that score, although he thought in the far recesses of his brain she might. See as she also explained in detail with those same ex-husbands and major lovers example complete with blackboard remark even if she was through with a man, had moved on to another man, or just went off to lick her wounds the way she put the fact in those same conversations mentioned above about her way with men, she was as likely to be licking her wounds as looking for another man. As likely to be filled with solitary sadness as out on the town, out with another man.

 

That is where those two marriages and many love affairs came in, came in and softened rather than hardened her to life’s romantic ups and downs. She mentioned that she had since childhood and a very savagely cruel upbringing had a hard time letting go, letting the past fade, and that it took her a long time to get over a man once they were through. How did he say she put it one night, oh yeah, she was fast to love a man when he got under her skin and slow to forget him. That fast love start had been her way with him in their whirlwind love affair smothering him with all kinds of undeserved accolades based on fairly limited knowledge of who he was, what he had been through, and his own spoken appreciations of his worth which added up to the usual man of clay, nothing more. All of the above not giving him time to breathe before trying to plan their future unto infinity after about a month. Yeah, the far recesses of brain might be right she might be lonesome that night he spoke of but let me tell you what he told me one night about that night he was wondering and many others before and after while we were sipping white wines at a Boston bar, listening to some old time piped-in jazz music as background (could have been Cry Me A River starting out, in fact I think it was), which started him out on what exactly had happened the previous few months. Let me give you some of the story and you try to figure the damn thing out:     

 

He had met her sitting at the bar in Cambridge, a rock and roll bar, an oldies but goodies bar that he frequented when he needed to hear Elvis, Chuck, Bo, or some rockabilly beat after some hard case was done or he just needed to blow off steam when some appeals case was slipping away for lack of presentable issues that could win. Some nights, like that night, he wound up just slugging quarters in the juke-box, others, mainly weekend nights he would wind up listening to a live band, The Rockin’ Ramrods, covering the classics. He noticed that from his vantage point a few stools down she looked very familiar in a long ago way. After he slid down the few empty barstools between them to get beside her he had mentioned that fact to her as a come-on and offered and bought her a drink on that basis (a glass of red wine which she loved, loved to perdition as he would find out later) they spent the next several minutes trying to figure where that might have been. Work, no, some godforsaken political conference, no, another along ago bar, no, the Cape, no, College, no, and so on. 

 

Strangely they found out once they discussed where they had grown up (she had told him at first she was from New Hampshire and he said that he lived in Cambridge so the subject of home towns did not come up at first run) that the link had been  that they had gone to the same high school together, she a couple of years after him, North Adamsville High, located on the South Shore of Boston although they had not known each other, had not had any of the same classes, back then (but since they had also gone to the same junior high school they agreed later after they were “smitten” with each other, her term, and wanted to make some symbolic “written in the wind” closeness count they must have been in the same space at some point if only the gym, auditorium or cafeteria). That got them cutting up old torches that night for a while, well, a long while since they closed the bar that night. They agreed that they had some common interests and that they should continue the conversation further via e-mail and cellphone. See, since she lived up in New Hampshire in a town outside of Manchester, was a professor at the state university and had been in Cambridge to attend an education conference at Harvard so getting together soon in person with her busy start of semester schedule was problematic.

 

So for a while, a few weeks, they carried on an e-mail/cellphone correspondence. Both were however struck by the number of things they had in common, things from childhood like growing up poor, growing up in hostile and dangerous family environments, growing up insecure and with nothing and nobody to guide them left to their own resources. Moreover they found that they had many similar teenage angst and alienation episodes in high school in common as well as current political and academic interests. Both agreed that they should meet again in person since they had already “met” in high school (somehow in the rush of things they discounted that they had really met in Cambridge in a bar, but such are the ways of love in bloom go figure).

 

And so they met again, met many times in neutral territory since they lived so far apart (they called their romance, the Merrimack romance for all the old mill towns the met in, Lowell, Nashua, Manchester, Haverhill, Amesbury and a couple of others I forgot), had many chatty dinners and did other things together like museums and took long walks along the river. He explained to me the powerful first dinner where they talked for hours and went he escorted her to her car in the parking lot for them to go their separate ways home when she got teary-eyed and he caressed her hair to console her. Yeah, it was like that when it was good.   Before long they agreed to meet at a hotel in New Hampshire to see if they had a spark that way. Well you know they did since otherwise there would be no story to tell. You also know, at least you know what he thought about the matter, that they did very well in bed together.  Yes, they, he and she, were both smitten, both felt very comfortable with each other and were heading forward with eyes open. Along the way they had discussed their two each marriages, their serious love affairs and their attitudes toward relationships. Those were the times she would emphasize her take on men, her expectations and her limitations. She also early on started her campaign to get him to go stay with her in New Hampshire and leave Cambridge. He although not as well formed in his take on their relationship as she did likewise explain his two marriages, especially the hard fall of the second marriage which left him very stunned, and major love affairs, although he early on balked when she spoke of leaving the city for the Podunk country up north as he called her place. So yes both sets of eyes were open, open wide.

 

She pulled the hammer down, pulled it down early. Within a couple of months she spoke of love, of living together, of sailing out into the sunset together. He, slower on the uptake, slower having been more severely burned in his last marriage than he let on to her or had thought had happened, was a bit bewildered by her speedy emotional attachments to him. They went on a couple of trips away to New York and Washington together, had some good times, had some rocky times interspersed too when she tried to rein him in. He wasn’t afraid to commit exactly (well maybe he confessed to me although not to her when it could have helped maybe had a little “cold feet” problem but he said not bad for him) as much as he wanted the thing to develop naturally, give him time to breathe although I already said that air to breathe thing before didn’t I, there always seemed to be an air of suffocation every time she got on her high horse, got her wanting habits on, got the best of him sometimes.

 

Then he made his fatal mistake, or rather series of mistakes, starting with strong words one night at dinner when they both had had a bit too much to drink, too much wine, and she was going on and on as she did after her second or third glass depending on how tired she had been. He admitted he got snappy, told her they needed to slow down and enjoy each other. She responded with a blast that shook him up but they were able to kiss and make up that night. The real mistake though was one time after they had not seen each other for a week or so he sent her an e-mail speaking in sorrow of the drift of their recent relationship and he wanted the spark back that had go them going. She exploded at that e-mail seeing that as a callous rebuke of her actions rather than as what he thought was a plaintive love letter. What did he say she had called it, oh yeah, a closing argument, a damn lawyer’s closing argument (the “damn” part a result of having been married to a lawyer the first time out and now him). They agreed to meet at a neutral restaurant to discuss the matter (on the Merrimack River of course but I will not give the location since there still may be blood on the water).

 

When he thought about it later he could see where she had prepared herself to be confrontational toward him or at least be prepared to force the issue because the first words out of her mouth were an ultimatum-“come live with me or the affair is over.” The exchange got heated as she drank more wine this night as well (he did not drink that night having learned a lesson from the last session). She said something that when we talked he could not for the life of him remember but they were fighting words. He exploded saying “I don’t need this,” threw money on the table and stormed out. That was the last he saw of her not even looking back to see how she took the matter.  Oh sure the next day he tried frantically to call several times knowing that a decisive turning point had been reached, no answer. Tried some e-mails-same response. Later that day he got a message on his voicemail from her giving her walking daddy his walking papers. She told him not to call, not to write as she would not respond. He never did. As he explained it to me he never did although he spent many a night thinking about whether he should call, about what he would say and thought too of an e-mail but he knew in his bones she would not answer like with his first attempts so he let it go. Knew her steel-trapped policies toward men, toward him in her walking papers summary. Let it go to spend his time, his free time, fretting about what had happened. Jesus.

  

What he did do seriously in the few weeks after their break-up, what he was doing this tonight he spoke of to me as well as months earlier  when he first fretted over what had gone wrong, was think through how it could have played out differently. Did that blame game in order to curb his own lonesomeness as he replayed their short affair, as he tried to try to figure out something that had bothered him since that fierce parting night. No, not about the specific details of what had caused his downfall, although he was still perplexed about why his concern about their present situation and his anger at that last meeting over her ultimatum should have been the irretrievable cause. He would accept that, had to accept that was the way she perceived the situation and that those were the causes of his downfall pure and simple. He didn’t like it but he has come to see where what she said in her voicemail message that she could never see him in the old way, the way she had in the beginning of their affair when their love flamed, precluded any future romantic relationship. 

 

What he thought about mostly though concerned one point-how could two intelligent, worldly people, who individually had many strong and powerful inner resources gathered through surviving stormy childhoods and life’s hard knocks, not be able to figure a way to avoid letting their fragile relationship blow away in the wind, blow away without a trace after many professions of desire, devotion and fidelity. He fretted over how little energy they had devoted to using some of those personal inner resources in order to build the foundations of a strong relationship. He had been willing to take his fair share of the blame for his “cold feet” which had him, more often than not, attempting to walk away from not toward her. That last marriage had damaged him more than he had thought and it had still colored his worldview on intimacy, on commitment, no question. That walking away as they got closer, as she started to get under his skin, always seemed strongest as he left her after some bad days when she was pushing him hard. Or when he thought the whole thing was hopeless since they lived too far away from each other to compromise on a living arrangement. Yeah, he would take his fair share of blame on that.

 

She infuriated him though with her interminable future plans while disregarding the present, although he could not speak for her and whether she believed his house of card blown in the wind idea about what had happened. She had plans for them to go to live in California when they retired, deemed it mandatory that he spent a certain number of days up in New Hampshire even while he had pressing business to take care of in Boston, but best, best as an example, was that she had their next Christmas and New Year already mapped out in March. All the time not paying attention to the drift of the tempo of their day to day relationship where he was, frankly, unhappy, very unhappy. In the end he was shocked by how little there had been to hold them together in a serious crisis which he conceded or would have conceded if she had ever decided to talk to him again was a serious crisis. Now that he thought about it for a while he told me, no, whether she had a new walking daddy or not (or whatever new moniker she would make up for him) she would not be lonesome that night.                        

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 

 

…she hadn’t thought about the upcoming date all that much, hadn’t thought about how Art was going to squire her to the first dance of the school year, the decisive Fall Frolic. She had been slow, late 1950s bewildered young woman who had gotten her “friend” late slow (her period but every girl called it anybody but that and she had come  to rely on that designation as being as appropriate as any although it was anything but a friend more like a curse) in the boy department. Although given her total logged time on the girlfriend telephone, many times the midnight telephone when she was lonely, lonely more so of late as she had been more distracted, with Jenny who was more up-to-date on matters of the opposite sex (and sex although don’t let that so-called advanced knowledge of Jenny’s part throw you off since most  of what she knew was wrong, wrong gotten from an older brother, Ted,  who like all young men, young Catholic men, got what he knew of sex from the streets just like everybody else and thus not surprisingly mostly wrong which almost caught her flat-footed in the pregnancy department one time when Sal “protection” might not have protected) she was certainly interested in boys (and at least theoretically sex, although that interest had a quality of being sealed with seven seals and tied up, tied up with a big bow with that prevalent mores of saving herself for marriage, or some such thing).

This Fall Frolic by the way had a probable track record in creating class “items” come senior year. While it was not a formal dance, not even semi-formal like the junior prom every young woman who planned to attend planned to have a “fox” dress fitting for the occasion and expected that her date would put some extra effort into looking good for the dance. All classes at old North Adamsville at least since 1951 when the underclassmen put up a stink about being shut out were entitled (and encouraged) to attend but no question the event reeked of a senior project. Most of the dance committee were well-known seniors and the band selection and theme of the year’s dance were a senior monopoly. It would take several more years and something like a civil war to break the senior monopoly but by then nobody was committed to an all-out defend of the old traditions. That was the 1960s when everybody was ready for a jailbreak and there was even talk by school official that the damn thing would be canceled if the drug use could not be controlled (it was as everybody got stoned in cars or back alleys before the dance and at intermission). So this was the environment which she was approaching her task ahead, a task involving getting the best date possible for the big dance of the fall.              

She knew, knew from Jenny, and knew from about six other sources that the lead-up here was decisive in that one’s date, one’s successful date, at that event usually foretold who one would be going to the senior prom with. Since the end of junior year that choice had come more and more to seen to be Art Graham. Art who began to talk to her in World History class after ignoring her and about every other girl in class as far as she could gather when she, not much for history, started to get peppered by Mr. Nolan, the World History teacher, who thought girls were dumb when it came to history and would publicly try to humiliate as many as possible. Toward the end of the year he had aimed his barbs her way. Art, a history nut and sort of Mr. Nolan’s pet, took pity on her and tried to coach her a little. The coaching paid off and old Nolan backed off a bit. Then she found herself talking to Art about other subjects and he didn’t seem to mind that they were not about history so she started to dream a little about Art, but just a little as summer break kind of ended what had started. They met at the beach a few times during the summer, spent a few hours together but not what any self-respecting girl in 1958 would call a date. So she laid her plans.        

It wasn’t that she was crazy for Art, not in the way best friend, Jenny, was crazy over Sal, Sal with the wavy black hair and athletic build, crazy to let him do what he wanted with her, but she did see him a one part of her “item” for the senior year if only he showed a little spark her way. Although she knew exactly what Jenny let sexy Sal do with her since Jenny burned many a midnight telephone call describing what went down in the town’s lovers’ lane section of the beach she had no intention of letting Art have his way with her, she wasn’t like that. She began to think less of Jenny the more she told her about her sexual experiences but she wanted that dance date and was frustrated when Art kept her at arm’s length. Damn, she almost had to force the issue and invite him to the dance herself after they had spent some time together in school talking once classes resumed in September and she relied on him to bail her out in Problems in Democracy class where she was more under water that in World History, if that was possible. Then he started walking her home after school, talking, talking about his big future plans, talking about maybe they could go to the movies or to the school football games together. Anything but that damn dance (her term so she, not given to swearing, was certainly frustrated). They spent their time together like that before the date of the dance was getting perilously until one afternoon she asked him if he liked to dance, he said he did although he cushioned the remark with “I’m not very good” and they kind of by osmosis made a date for the Fall Frolics.

And so we move forward to the big night and  she was now up in her room (and darting to the bathroom as well) preening herself, fluffing her hair, tightening that damn girdle to make her more slender than she already was, applying yet another touch-up on the make-up, as expected of any girl going to the Frolics with a guy that might form part of an “item” for senior year. She just hoped, hoped to high heaven that he, not known for being a sharp dresser like Sal, would look okay and also not forget to bring her a corsage so she would not be the only girl without one, especially since she practically had to order the thing herself.

She wasn’t sure when she heard the rumble of the engine coming up the street, maybe just before the car stopped in front of her house, but she definitely heard it before Art knocked on the door downstairs as her mother welcomed him in while she was finishing her last preparations. As she came down the stairs she noticed that he looked especially handsome in his suit and with his hair parted just so. Things already looked up for the evening. She did not know the half of it though until he opened the front door for her as they were leaving and she spied that big old Cadillac sitting in front of her sidewalk. Seems that old Art, once he got the message from the time they had danced around the dance invitation, started his own version of the courting ritual and convinced his friend, Spider Mack, to let him borrow his souped-up Caddy. Spider was well known around town, notorious to many parents, especially girl parents for getting the back seat of that vehicle messed up around midnight or maybe later after so two o’clock “chicken run” victory and he collected the spoils of war, some wet girl thrilled by the prospect of that backseat with the king of the North Adamsville muscle car night. So she knew that if Art had such an automobile and moreover that Spider trusted Art with his most precious possession that the night might be interesting, and she might make it interesting for Art once she thought about that possibility. And off they went, first to pick up Jenny and Sal, she proud to be seem in the company of a man who knew how to bring a girl to the dance in style, and she too thinking how envious Jenny was that she was sitting in the front seat of Spider’s car just like she belonged there.

 

But that was only the beginning of it once they got to the school gym when the Frolics were held annually. She could hardly believe the transformation of the old smelly medicine ball gym into something that looked like a downtown hotel setting (even if only a hokey North Adamsville setting) with flowers festooned all over, table covered with school colors white and blue tablecloths, the walls filled with various rock posters to hide the creepy cinderblocks, and the entrance with a trestle also garlanded with flowers. Yes, special. But more special Art seemed a man transformed as the cover band hired for the evening by the Fall Frolic senior committee (like I said before it was always a senior-sponsored affair back then, a kind of last gift to their fellow schoolmates leaving or to be left behind), the Ready Riders, kissed off the old classics, you know Patti Page, Frank, Dean, those guys, that had guided previous dances and kicked out the jams. Kicked out the ones guaranteed parent approved and hence boring, or something like that. She noticed that Art, a guy who said he had two left feet and maybe he did but he looked, well, sexy, had become almost a whirling dervish as he rocked by himself in her direction, that was no other way to put it since previously everybody did a waltz or a variation at school dances also parent approved, to some older rhythm and blues stuff and then laid out the full program when the band tore into a big riffing dose of Ike Turner’s Rocket 88.

That was the tune that everybody at Doc’s Drugstore over on Main was dropping endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box to hear over and over. Although it was actually an older song, maybe the early 1950s, Doc had refused to place it on his jukebox (or rather he was pressured to not put it on his jukebox by those meddlesome parents) since it was considered a “colored” record back then. Jesus. But the kids, late 1950s kids including apparently Art, flipped out over it. And so the night went as she got more in tune with Art’s new form of dancing and mimicked his moves to his delight. As the dance ended, ended with a slow one by the Dubs’ Could This Be Magic, she, they ran into Jenny and Sal, and she, she who had so often secretly scorned the stuff Jenny told her that she and Sal did down at Adamsville Beach, suggested that the foursome take Spider’s car and go down to that very beach to, well, she said “cool off” after the dance. But you know what she meant just in case her parents might be around, or some girlfriend who would have plenty to say come Monday morning before school girls’ lav talk about how she had come of age, had come into the time of her time. So, yes, if anybody was interested she and Art were an “item” that year …              

 

 

***Of This And That In The Old 1960s North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Those Who Served  

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.

Other stuff defies simple classification as is the case here in dealing with those who served in the military in whatever capacity and especially those who fell in our generation’s war, the Vietnam War, a war that sometimes put classmate against classmate in trying to make sense of the thing. What did not, or rather does not, divide us today is remembrance of those who served and those who fell. It was not the individual soldier that we had a dispute with but with the government and its policies. That difference was sometimes obscured back then.

In an attempt to pay tribute to those who served the class site webmaster, Donna, created a special section and as classmates joined the site, mainly male from that generation but a few females, they were asked about their military service and those who had were placed there with their branch of service. What amazed me, although it should not have, in our old working class town of Adamsville, which along with those who grew up in the inner city ghettos and barrios and the farmland of the Midwest, provided more than its fair share of “cannon fodder” was the high number of male joiners who also served in the military. Part of this number obviously represented young men then subject to the military draft which was then in effect who, fervently or sullenly, went when their number was called but part also represented for our class the notion that one did  not oppose the government whatever one thought of its policies, including its war policies.

Although most classmates who joined gave their military service information naturally in a class of over five hundred graduates not all members are now recognized on the site since many classmates are “missing” (a category for those who have not joined). More troubling was figuring out the number from our class who fell in Vietnam (or perhaps other later wars for any career soldiers) and information about their fate. For what I could gather there were two from our class who fell, Dave Martin and Jim Slater, and who are listed for eternity both down on that tear-stained black marble in Washington and over at the Vietnam Memorial Park near the bay in Adamsville. What was missing was broader information about their service and when they were killed. As an old veteran I volunteered to find out more to add to the special section in the For Those Who Served section for the fallen. I was able to check with certain classmates who knew them and the following is the gist of what I was looking for in my e-mail dispersal.   

  

“Gary-Before Donna, our webmaster, changed the format you had a site listed on your personal profile page for our fallen brothers in Vietnam who are listed on the black marble down in DC and at the Adamsville memorial at Marina Bay. We are looking for more information on David Martin, Jim Slater and I think you listed somebody else who was not on the list at the Marina. Donna has asked me to find out from you-Do you know more/ can you find out more about years of their deaths or any other information. Also are others from NA64 missing from the lists? Also how about disabled or wounded? Donna intends to have a separate section of the site to honor all these veterans. Any help either by personal knowledge or giving sites to get information would be greatly appreciated-Thanks Frank Jackman”

Through Gary and an ex-girlfriend of Dave’s, Melinda Loring, I was able to get the years that they died and the circumstances of their deaths provided by their respective service branches (Marines and Air Force) and that information is now included in their section to go along with those black marble and bay remembrances. Thanks for your service, guys.       

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..That Teacher Who Made A Difference    

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, you will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer time class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want. As I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Other stuff defies simple classification, as is the case here in paying tribute to a long ago influence, my senior year English teacher, Miss (Ms.) Enos. The whole sketch got started after a couple of fellow classmates began touting their favorite English teachers endlessly and I felt compelled to enter the lists for Miss Enos. Now many time the question of teaching and the effect that certain teacher may, or may not, have on a particular student can be problematic. But hear me out here as I build my case for my favorite:    

 

***In Praise Of Miss (Ms.) Rose Enos, NAHS School English Department, Circa 1964

 

"The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath" lines from Portia's speech to the court in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

 

Yes, I know we did not read The Merchant of Venice in senior year but I am using a little literary license here since it suits my purposes for this sketch.  

 

 

As I  recently came across those above-quoted lines in the epilogue of a book that I was innocently, very innocently, reading about the sources of old time English playwright William Shakespeare’s various works I suddenly developed a 50th anniversary case of the nerves. I had learned to love Shakespeare, and his sense of language, so one could not blame the playwright (the messenger) for the sudden case of nerves. Nor could one blame my peers who have kidded me about my bookish ways, about my still reading such things way after I needed to read stuff, serious stuff, about old times like that, the time of King James I in England and of other places in 17^thcentury Europe. And it certainly was not due to other friends who have had a terrible case of the yawns when I have started to mention anything before about 1950. So the source of those nerves was really easily traceable, very easily traceable, once I settled my nerves down, to time spent in Miss Rose Enos’ classroom learning those very lines of the Bard back in 1964. (I will stick with the time-appropriate “Miss” honorific here.)

 

Miss Rose Enos (see the English Department photo on page 101 of the Manet), my senior year English teacher, made many people nervous. Who am I kidding, she made one Frank Jackman, Class of 1964, and king hell king of the loner universe at old North Adamsville High nervous. Others can, on their own hook, come forth with their own benighted and heart-rendering testimony but she made me nervous before her class, nervous while in her class, nervous after leaving her class, and nervous in that occasional dark hour just before the dawn when I woke up, woke up with the sweats, became that book report due Monday morning bright and early was not coming together the way I wanted. Come on, again, who am I kidding, waking up with the sweats kidding, the way that she wanted it. Wanted the no- rush- no- night –before- it- was-due- well-thought- out- and- drafted- concise- with- some- kind- of- original- twist- to- it paper, and written like some come down from the mountain patriarchal tablet screed, or really an endlessly re-written version of that self-same screed.

 

Worse, worse than not being concise, worse than not having an original twist idea, was that you had to publicly defend your ideas in front of the whole class. But, once again who am I kidding, the class was child’s play, putty in my hands once I  started throwing my obscure, arcane, in-your-face two thousand facts at them, and they retreated, or better, surrendered, white flags in hand. No, it was her, Miss Enos, that I had to impress with my obscure, arcane, in-your-face knowledge but here is the rub, she had no surrender, or white flag, in her because she was privy to those two thousand facts, had in fact taught me a bunch of them, and had a few thousand additional ones in her own storehouse just waiting for me to make that one wrong move, the one wrong move that was inevitably to come from a young, still unformed, mind.

 

And worse, much worse than public Enos humiliation, worse than being at a lost for that original idea was to not be with her, to not be with her one- hundred percent, when she spoke, almost in a hushed whisper, of some piece of literature the virtues of which she endlessly drilled into the class. When she did this almost trance-like exercise I thought that she had her eyes set on me. (I found out later that that feeling was shared by every at least half-awake student in the class, the others were just ducking behind some book hoping not to be noticed.) As I thought of those books I remembered the time, trying to be one- hundred percent with her, when I blurred out that Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye “spoke” to me, spoke to me about my own teen alienation, spoke about what can a kid do when the cards are stacked against him in this cruel old world, a world he didn’t put together. Spoke to me of teen angst in trying to find my place in the sun when everybody was pushing me in about six different ways and I was pushing myself in about seven.

 

And there I was, proud as a peacock, feeling like a junior-sized literary critic and then she, Miss Enos, in high dudgeon, lowered the hammer and dismissed the book, and the author, as so much hot air and New Yorker-style cheapjack kid’s story, barely pabulum. And that was the end of it for once Miss Enos pronounced someone a mere kid’s stuff story writer oblivion beckoned. She much preferred that her Franks tackle James T. Farrell, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Flannery O’Connor, and Edith Wharton who wrote serious novels, great novels, and therefore were not assigned to hellish depths. And you know in a funny way I have to admit that she was right, right in the sense that these other guys had a lot to say and that one should no put all their “literary light” eggs in one basket, although she was still wrong, wrong big time, about J.D. Salinger. Wrong that is if she is not now nearby and ready to pounce, nearby this side of the grave that is.

 

Thinking on it all I realized that I was not close to Ms. Enos, certainly not her "pet." Perhaps she did not even really know who I was, although her notations in our daily notebooks may have pointed the other way. I do not know about today but back then the classes were very large and there were many minds to feed. So it was possible that she did not. Perhaps she did not even “like” me if she did know me. That too was possible. I did not display my better side, the "better angel of my nature," in those days, on most days.

 

As I nervously finished up my musing over the exploits, the maybe in great scheme of things un-heroic exploits of Miss Rose Enos, I thought about  those lines from Portia’s speech to the court in Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice, lines that she made the class memorize, although that memorizing business was not her style in general. And I chuckled to myself that I did not, after all, have to look those sentences in that speech up, although if I was sitting in a courtroom under oath I would have to confess that I did look them up in order to see if there was one or two p's in “droppeth.” I knew those lines and more from the master by heart. And that fact, that fact of remembrance, served to bring up something, something that was heroic about Miss Enos. About what she said, said endlessly. Literature matters. Words matter. I have, on more occasions than I care to remember, honored those ideas more in the breech than the observance but I have tried to be guided by them. They, no question, were planted there by Miss Enos. So whether she knew me or not I do know those two things about her. That wisdom has more than balanced things out. And I say now in that same hushed whisper she used, Miss Rose Enos wherever you are-thanks.

***When The National Pastime Was the National Pastime-61*-The Roger Maris Story

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

61*, starring Thomas Jane, Barry Pepper, directed by Billy Crystal, 2001

 

If you can believe this there was a time before 24/7/365 ESPN all sports all the time when there were distinct seasons to sport and not so much overlapping. A time when, for example, the World Series in baseball was over before the chilly winds of November snow-delayed games in northern climes. A time when the national pastime was indeed the national pastime and life was, or seemed to be slower, slow enough to listen or watch a game for a couple of hours or occasionally go out to the ballpark and not put a big dent in your monthly discretionary budget. Hey, if you don’t believe me just as your fathers, or ouch, grandfather they will tell you true.

And if you can believe this as well there actually was a time, maybe not the best time for players who were more like low-paid indentured servants to the master ball club owners, when pennant races meant something other than about six million playoff games and when the pursuit of legendary records captured the nation’s attention, or at least baseball nation’s attention. And no record was more sacrosanct than that of New York Yankee Babe Ruth’s record of hitting sixty taters (okay, okay home runs) out of the ballpark in the 1920s. That is until the year 1961 when as is detailed in the film under review, 61*, both Yankee players Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle went toe to toe to break that record.

Here is the fun part for me anyway. In the year 1961 when the then lowly Boston Red Sox were out of contention for the pennant by May 1st or so I avidly followed that home run derby, followed it closely. So all who think the only history I know is confined to the study of revolutions, or the lessons of history about war and other social evils have just had their comeuppance. As a fourteen year old boy I was gripped with the mania. Personally I was rooting for the Mick to win the battle but I was not displeased with Maris’ victory even if for silly reasons it was not done in the Ruthian 154 games and for many years he suffered the knowledge that an asterisk would appear after that record. Jesus.   

Furthermore I would have been much more sympathetic to Maris’ struggle if I had known some of the details presented in this film about how the fans, hell, even Yankee fans, trashed Maris because they did not want to see Babe’s record fall or would rather have seen the Mick get it. The film shows Maris’ perseverance in the face of all those pressures from fans, from the parasitic sportswriters following the saga, and the effect it had on him personally and on his family. Moreover Mantle comes off here as a decent guy who was happy to let a teammate swing for the fences and for glory. Funny sports has changed a lot in the past fifty years since that feat (since broken several times in recent years although somewhat tarnished in the latter cases) but gnarly sport-writers and rabid fans (and here not  meaning devoted) are still with us.