***Out In The Two-Timing Femme Fatale 1950s Crime Noir Night- “Armored Car Robbery”- A Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film Armored Car Robbery.

DVD Review

Armored Car Robbery, starring Charles McGraw, William Talman, Adele Jurgens, RKO Radio Pictures, 1950

Forget what I ever said about the classic two-timing femme fatales. And who knows maybe three-timing, or more. Once you go down that road what is to stop a dame, any dame , and why, at any small number when you are looking, forever looking, to step up in class, to latch onto the big dough guys who will take you out of the dime-a-dance scene you are mired in. So forget frails like Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon who was ready to make any guy, any two guys for that matter, take the fall as long as she got her damn bird, and the stuff of dreams. With dough enough to keep her in style, and the small-time grifters off her back. Forget Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shang-hai who had half the male world, the smart guys too, lining up to take the fall, and just ask where to take it until in the end even the smart guys cried “uncle.” Forget Jane Greer in Out Of The Past twisting up every guy in California, some smart guys too, and guys who supposedly knew what was what wound up hiding out until the coast was clear, maybe for about a century hiding out nursing their wounds , once she got done with them. And forget one more, just one more, that no femme list is complete without, Ava Garner trying to get some guy, her everlovin’ husband no less, some supposedly badass guy, to take the fall for her on his deathbed in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers. Ya, forget them all as just slightly nervous misunderstood frills that had a couple of bad breaks along the way. Sweet little Yvonne (played by Adele Jurgens. Ya, I know, the name doesn’t exactly ring bells in the fatale world, good or bad)in this sleeper of a crime noir under review, Armored Car Robbery (Ya, I know as well, they seemed to have run out of interesting titles on this one) puts them all to shame. I might be over- touting the thing but hear me out.

Naturally no femme fatale worth her salt is driven by anything but the desire, the very strong desire, to get out from under whatever menial labor she is stuck doing, from serving them off the arm in some hash house to beating drunks for drinks and donuts in some two bit-bar fly scene. Yvonne here is strictly an independent operator working her fanny off (no pun intended) as a stripper ( maybe today the more politically correct term would be a sex worker, or some other more exotic description, although I am willing to stand corrected on that) in a low-rent Chicago burlesque house. Naturally such places, as Damon Runyon, Studs Terkel, and a few other guys have informed us, do not draw serious high-rollers or serious smart guys. So, through this and that, Yvonne winds up married, unhappily married as it turns out, to Benny who is nothing but a small-time grafter down on his uppers as the film opens. Strictly from Jump Street and strictly a guy who takes orders, not gives them.

And that is where this film gets interesting because while Bennie is nothing a but small-time hood he knows a certain smart guy, Dave Purvis (played by William Talman, probably better known as the ever-losing District Attorney in the 1950s Perry Mason television series and not a classic ladies’ man by any means which means he too has to keep grabbing dough), who has a plan, a big heist plan, which the reader can figure out from the title of the film, involves robbing, well, an armored car. Why? As the late old time yegg Willie Sutton has often been quoted as saying in all kinds of contexts –“that’s where the money is.” Big half a million dollar dough (big 1950s dough, now just tip money for the big guys). Bennie (and a couple of his confederates) are in, in to get under from under in the Yvonne department, to keep her in style, some style anyway. But here is the beauty of the thing, and what puts Yvonne right up there with the more well-known fatales, she is running around, married to Benny or not, running around no questions asked, with one Dave Purvis. See Yvonne knows what every true-blue two-timing femme fatale knows-go with the brains of the operation. And so her fate is set.

Of course even a kid wet behind the ears knows that the magic mantra behind every crime noir is that crime, well, crime doesn’t pay. The only difference usually is in what manner it doesn’t pay (and how bad the femme fatale makes some guy, or guys, fall). Here the heist gets blown by a simple call to the police by a witness. The stick-up (at a ball park during baseball season which is probably a separate chargeable crime itself ) is blown but not before a fatal shoot-out of a police officer in pursuit. Benny also gets shot-up in the melee. And that is where Lieutenant Cordell (played by ruggedly handsome, jut-jawed, and straight-as-an-arrow Charles McGraw with the perfect police officer’s face) comes in to see some rough-hewn justice is served. See the officer killed was his longtime partner and as we already know from detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon a guy has to do something about the murder of his partner, private or public cop. From there it is only time before Dave and Yvonne, once Benny expires from his wounds, are cornered in a dramatic airfield shoot-out. But here is the clincher- when Dave earlier , dough in hand, told Yvonne that Benny had gone to his just rewards she showed all the emotion of one who heard that a fly had been swatted dead. Didn’t I tell you she was poison? Ya, I did.

***Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee And The Battle Of The Sexes-Round 235

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Brenda Lee performing "I Want To Be Wanted."

Brenda Lee: Anthology 1956-1980, Brenda Lee, MCA Records, 1991

Sometimes one cannot win. A few years ago, after some serious prodding bordering on violations of the Genera Conventions against torture, I was asked by the chairperson of my North Adamsville High School Class 1964 (ouch!) Reunion Committee to answer certain questions about my likes and dislikes back in the day. The purpose of this exercise (other than to see if we were still youthfully sharp) was to compile a survey /sketch of class life in the long ago misty 1960s. There was a certain method to her madness as she probed by stages starting off with easy stuff like favorite sports, teachers, school lunch (none of the above) and worked her way into more intimate stuff like personal tastes in music. Obviously as she reeled us in, such a profound question required answers, especially those of us wedded to rock and roll like some precious child.

But there was even more devilishness behind her CIA-like probes. She posed the questions very specifically and asked what she probably thought was an innocuous question: in your youth did you prefer The Rolling Stones or the Beatles? Innocent, right? Pick one or the other. I did and went on and on about how the Stones lit my flamed-out youth on fire, how I came to the blues via their cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s (really Willie Dixon’s) Little Red Rooster (banned in Boston, moreover, that made it just that much more appealing) etc. ,etc.

Are you with me so far? Then she asked about this combination- the Brenda Lee versus Patsy Cline shoot-out. What, are you kidding? I cavalierly dismissed the notion of either singer have the slightest influence on my budding manly rock persona and refused, purposefully refused to answer (okay, okay I put N/A). No big deal this is America after all and N/A is part of the democratic tradition if frowned upon by partisans. End of story.

Not though when my "significant other" (known in the old days, in polite society, as my paramour and in impolite society as...oh, well you can fill in the blank) finished reading my response (I had off-handedly shown it to her for some laughs). The gist of her indignant argument centered on my alleged testosterone-driven choices of male Rock 'n' Roll bands like the Stones to the exclusion of kinder, gentler music-in short, choices that women might prefer. Okay, I took the point and then made my selection. Naturally, I need to make a little comment to motivate my choice.

Frankly, like I said, I really do not remember being a fan of either Brenda Lee or Patsy Cline in my youth. Both names are associated in those high school memories with dreamy school dances or other types of romantic endeavor. It was not until several years ago that I came to appreciate Patsy Cline's work. I have always been a sucker for female torch- singers like Billie Holiday and the young Peggy Lee in her Benny Goodman period but Patsy only recently became part of my musical interests as a country "torch" singer. So there you have my choice. Then. Since that time though, and the review of this Brenda Lee CD will bear this out, Ms. Lee (Brenda that is) has been making some strides. Of course this two CD set has most of the great stuff but why, why for a while now does the tune “I Want To Be Wanted “ reverberate in my head. And truth. It did back in some mystic Saturday night high school dance time when I was looking toward having the last dance with a certain she. A case for Freud, no question.

One last word. My last word. Let me get back to that controversy with my "significant other" (I prefer "soul-mate" but I will let that pass here). I mentioned in that hard-nosed class reunion questionnaire that in the summer of 2005 I attended a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park. Now who do you think was standing beside me shaking, as the kids say, her "booty" for all she was worth? So much that testosterone theory. Moreover, who imprisoned me in Fenway Park practically at gunpoint, until I bought her a sassy little Stones T-shirt as a memento of the occasion? Enough said.

***********

Here Are Some Lyrics For Brenda and Patsy So You Can Make An Informed Decision On These Burning Questions Of The Day.

Brenda Lee - I'm Sorry lyrics


Lyrics to I'm Sorry :

I'm sorry, so sorry
That I was such a fool
I didn't know
Love could be so cruel
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes

You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done

Spoken:
(I'm sorry) I'm sorry
(So sorry) So sorry
Please accept my apology
But love is blind
And I was to blind to see
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes

You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes

I'm sorry, so sorry
Please accept my apology
But love was blind
And I was too blind to see
(Sorry)

She's Got You Lyrics

Artist: Patsy Cline

I've got your picture that you gave to me
And it's signed with love just like it used to be
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got your picture, she's got you

I've got the records that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got the records, she's got you

I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be

I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's got you

I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be

I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's-got-you

***Out In The Menacing 1950s Be-Bop Night- John Cassavetes’s “Crime In The Street”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir Crime In The Street

DVD Review

Crime In The Streets, starring John Cassavetes, James Whitmore, Sal Mineo, 1956


There was a menace, a serious menace, in American society in the 1950s that threatened the whole way of life and concerned young and old rich and poor, no question. People seized up at the very mention of the idea and went screaming into some dreaded night at the thought. The “red scare” you say with all those secret agents in high places and low, working 24/7/365 for “Uncle Joe” and his commie empire? Well, maybe but this is not the right answer here. The gut-wrenching fear of every kid (and adult who worried about their kids) who had to hide under his or her desk in some weak-kneed and empty-headed attempt to fend off some coming atomic bomb blast? Close, but no cigar. No, the thing that drove terror into the hearts of every self-respecting and well-meaning citizen, and even those who were not, was the invasion of … the juvenile delinquent (JD). Yes, JDs, usually shiftless young men, teenagers really, from the lower depths. And their hanger-on girlfriends (although the girlfriends were not as feared, not nearly as feared for obviously 1950s male-dominated society reasons).

If you came from “the projects” as I did, or from the urban slums as portrayed in the film under review, Crime In The Streets, a classic of this mid-1950s genre then the social snubs (I am being kind here) from the upper crust as the immoral, illegal, and threatening male teenager with time on his hands, a chip on his shoulder and no dough and no way to make dough was a lot more pressing that some hyped-up red scare or silly atomic bomb explosion. And as the plot line unfolds here in the small back streets world those great world-shaking problems don’t even enter the horizon. Life close to the bone, angst-filled and alienation-flooded just swamped all other worldly considerations. Especially for wayward kids.

This film opens with a classic “rumble,” over turf naturally, between two rival street gangs. After that audience fright as a way to get the juices flowing the rest of the film is a study in whatever sociological notions were floating at the time to identify, descript, and put a Band-Aid on the JD problem.

Frank, sensitive but totally alienated Frank (played by a very young John Cassavetes), is trying to find his place in his small world of the slums but people won’t let him alone. Especially one old goat of a man (a bowler no less so you know his is nothing but a bad hombre to mess with) , who snitches to the coppers on one of Frank’s boys, and is set up to take the fall- the deep fall so Frankie can feel better about himself. Aided by two fellow gang members he decides to alleviate his bad feeling but a small off-hand murder of this guy right in the neighborhood. One of Frank’s confederates turns out to be Baby (played by Sal Mineo made famous as a JD movie character in Rebel Without A Cause) and another played by Mark Rydell who seems to be a pyscho (or at least seriously anti-social).

Enter one settlement house social worker (this was the uptown swells’, 1950s version, notion of how to get these JDs back into society and away from dangerous weapons) played by James Whitmore who keeps prodding on Frankie’s conscious and his “inner” suburban youth. Naturally since a central motif of all crime noirs, JDs or hardened criminals, is that crime doesn’t pay old Frankie is made in his own way and in his own time to see the light. And to take responsibility for his actions. I think based on this plot I would have preferred to be just another punk JD than go that route. So there.

***An Uncounted Causality Of War- The Never-Ending Vietnam War Story On The Anniversary Of The Fall Of Ho Chi Minh City 1975 (Then Saigon)

Markin comment:

THERE IS NO WALL IN WASHINGTON-BUT, MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE

This space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. Let me tell the tale.

Recently I returned, while on some unrelated business, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood 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, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. While there I happened upon an old neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until, as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar?

The long and the short of it is that he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny for a number of valid medical reasons was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on that Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately, Kenny’s just begins.

Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.

Certainly not a happy story. Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. And those who for other reasons could no adjust and found themselves on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by the loss of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest in Peace.

***Ancient dreams, dreamed-Those Old Homesick Blues- Magical Realism 101

“Good luck, and don’t forget us, Peter Paul,” yelled John “Swifty” Sweeney as the last of the Markin household goods were placed in the moving van for the trip across town to their new digs in North Adamsville. “Don’t worry Swifty I’ll be back in a couple of days. No way as I going to leave my friends here in the projects. I didn’t want to move so I’ll be back just like nothing happened,” yelled Peter Paul right back. And that simple statement, kind of, for the moment at least, put Peter Paul’s, and his best friend Swifty’s world back in order.

Peter spoke the truth when he said that he didn’t want to move, move even from the projects that he had been moaning and groaning to get out of for years, once he realized that there was no cache, no respect and no percentage in being from that far down on the totem pole once he escaped to North Adamsville. The taste, taint, touch of the projects followed like some low-tide mud flat fetid clam swamp.

His parents had, in that hard-scramble both working crumby jobs 1950s “golden age” gathered enough dough together to get a midget house in North Adamsville where his mother, Delores, had grown up and where his grandparents had always lived. But when push came to shove and moving day arrived he went “on strike.” Tears streaming down his face he refused, utterly refused, to help load things up in boxes and crates and it was all that he could do to compose in his bravado “farewell” to his friend.

And so a few days later, boxes and crates settled in the house, unpacked mainly, although as always with moves it takes time to get everything new set up, Peter Paul got out his old Schwinn one-speed bicycle with the patented foot brake petal and started out across town to the projects like some stray lemming back to the sea, and back to the only life that he had known in his long twelve, almost thirteen years of life. He rode like the wind through the town hardly containing himself, his thoughts, and his energies to be back with the old tribe, the guys (mainly) who made project life at least bearable. And number one, numero uno, in that universe was Swifty (and had been for a while now that Billie Bradley, king hell king of the Adamsville projects night, junior division, had “stepped-up” to robbing gas stations with older guys and Peter Paul had backed off, backed way off from that scene)

Sure enough as Peter Paul headed up Captain’s Walk the central hang-out place there was Swifty hanging out with Bennie Bopper, a guy from school, a goof in a lot of ways but a guy to keep company with until something better turned up, AND Theresa Green, Peter Paul’s old crush flame goddess save-the-last-dance-for-me sitting very close, very, very close to Swifty. Peter Paul flushed and then yelled out, “She’s your girl now, I guess, Swifty.” And already feminine female Theresa soft-whispered back, “No sir, Peter Paul I am just keeping Swifty company, Benny’s my honey now, now that you’re gone.” Peter Paul flushed again, flushed that Theresa, who did not say word one when he told her his family was moving across town and flushed that Benny Bopper took his place. Although now that he had “new” eyes he could see where a girl like Theresa might go for Benny on the rebound. Good old Swifty, no way.

So that day, a week later, and a couple of weeks and a couple more times after that Peter Paul would show up and he and Swifty and Benny’s Theresa (with or without Benny) would cut up old torches. And on those days Peter Paul was happy, happy for the smells, sounds and sights of the old neighborhood, the old blessed projects.

Then one day a couple of months later Peter Paul mounted his trusty bike for another trip “home.” Damn that it would have to be a windy day, a windy day when he decided, not exactly knowing the best route, that if he travelled along the shoreline he would probably make good enough time and maybe cut across some of that wind. Now for those who must know the exact route this effort required going over the high-span Squaw River Bridge, the bridge that separated North Adamsville from Adamsville proper. Not a big bridge not a Brooklyn Bridge, Golden Gate concoction, far from it. But almost as if there was some mystery pull (or push, for that matter) to it that bridge seemed a bridge too far, an un-arched, un-steeled, un-spanned, un-nerved bridge too far.

See Peter knew that the die was cast that day, or at least he did when he had time to reflect on it later. Knew one- speed bicycle boy, dungarees rolled up against dog bites and geared meshes, 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 that the old home was past. That once twelve-years old, now thirteen, bicycle boy had 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 had to move on. End of story.

***Out In Woody Allen’s Be-Bop New York City- “Manhattan”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Woody Allen’s Manhattan.

DVD Review

Manhattan, Woody Allen, Mariel Hemingway, 1979


In his own off-hand, low-key way Woody Allen, the quintessential New Yorker, has created a nice spoof/send up/valentine to his beloved city. If one were to name the person who represented the essence of middle/high brow New York in the 1970’s and 80’s the name Woody Allen would top most lists. The theme, as usual in an Allen film, is about the endlessly tangled interpersonal relationships among and between the upwardly mobile, or at least wannabe upward mobile, intellectual set in 1970’s New York. An added twist, given later developments in Allen’s personal life, is his tangled romance with a teenaged Waspish type (played by Hemingway), a type that he is seemingly fatally attracted to. Some of the wit may seem dated as it relates to 1970’s New York; some of Allen’s physical mannerisms seem very familiar and for those who have seen his later work the theme has been done better but here is Allen in his city. This is one of the reasons why New York, and no other, is the cultural capital of America. Beat him if you can.

***Out In The North Adamsville Night- The Old "Beat" Town, Circa 2010

Crossing the Squaw River Bridge from the Boston side these days, walking-sore-footed, ankle-ached, worn-out, scuffed leather shoes, rounded-heel shoes, soles thinned-out shoes walking-just as was almost always my mode of transportation, and maybe yours, in the old days, and sometimes for me in the not so old days-ain’t like it used to be. That new (1970s new, anyway), higher-standing , pot-holed patched, unevenly asphalt-paved even on good days, uninviting, if not just plain dangerous, walk-way, ugly slab-concreted, built by the lowest bidder, bridge that routes traffic, hither and yon, is not like the old one, “ walking to think things over friendly."

Not today, anyway, as I brace myself for a serious look see at our beat-up, beat-down, beaten-back, back-seat-taking, smudged-up, blood and sweat-stained, bitter-teared (very bitter-teared), life-drained, seen better days (although I do not, personally, remember having seen those better days, but people keep saying, even now, there was a such a time so let’s leave it at that), almost genetically memory embedded , character-building (yes, that old chestnut, as well), beautiful (yes, beautiful too, oddly, eerily beautiful, or as mad, shamanic poet Yeats, he of that that fine Anglo-Irish word edge, would put it, "terrible beauty a-borning" beautiful ), old working class home town.

It’s silly, I know, to get misty-eyed over it but I miss the old archaic pre-1970s drawbridge bridge with its ghastly-green gates to stop car traffic (how else could you describe that institutional color that no artist would have on his or her palette, and no serious professional business painter would stoop to brush on anything much less a gate) and the lonely stony-eyed concrete medieval fortress of a tower (and its poor, bored, had to be bored, keeper, or tender or whatever you call that “look out for the big boats coming and going” guy, and it was always some old guy who looked like he could swap stories, buddy to buddy, with King Neptune, and probably did) to let the bigger boats, courtesy of the law of the seas, make their way to dock.

Or, better, I hope, I fervently hope, for the boats to get clearance from that old codger, old Neptune’s brother, to race, to crawl, to putt-putt, to hoist sail or whatever such boats do to get to the open sea, the wide open blue-grey, swirling, mad, rushing, whirling dervish of a sea, out to beyond the breakwaters, out to beyond the harbor islands, to the land becoming mere speck, and then mere vanish, and more adventure than I could even dream of, or think of dreaming of. At least I hope those oil-stained, diesel-fuelled (including those awful faint-producing fumes), powerfully-engined, deep-drafted, fully–stocked boats that drove river traffic and stopped car traffic came back or went out in search of those adventures away from the placid wooden-lumbered doldrums docks up along the Adamsville side of the river.

But, one thing is for sure, whatever happened to the boats, or on them, that old bridge, that old green-gate painted monster of a drawbridge, gave you a chance to pause mid-bridge, fright-free, not-having-to-watch-your-back-for-fast-cars-caroming-by free , to look up and down midstream; to dream, perhaps, of tidal drifts and fair winds to the far reaches of this good, green planet, as far as you could carry yourself and your backpacked, bed-rolled belongings, or as long as the money held out; to bestir yourself afresh to think of oneness with the seventy-eight trillion life forms (hey, I didn’t count them, alright, this is just an estimate, a very rough estimate) that flow in the murky, and on some days very murky, depths right before your eyes down to our homeland, the sea; to dream vista dreams of far-away picture postcard cooling ports-of-call in the sweaty, sultry summer day airs or churn madly with the flow of wild summer night airs that led from the old home town west, north, south, somewhere, anywhere; to dream the dream of dreams of misspent (no way, no way misspent), suggestive, very suggestive, radio-blared Lets Spend The Night Together or The Night Time Is The Right Time, whiskey-bottle in hand (or, maybe, beer-canned if dough was tight, or way back when and you were underage if your wino buyer didn't show that night), best-gal swinging Saturday nights(quaint, okay, but we are all adults and you know what I mean) ; and, to think that one thought, that one midstream on the bridge-driven thought that would spring you from the woes of woe begotten, troubled-filled (for me, and, maybe, you) dear, (now dear, anyway) beat, ancient-ached, old timey, presidential graveyard of a growing-up home town.

This new one, this new bridge, as I stand mid-bridge and peek back to my left routes, if you can even call it that, traffic via a Daytona race track-worthy, curvy-swurvy ramp to the beach, Adamsville Beach, down the now, in places anyway, three lane-wide, freshly-paved and white-lined Adamsville Shore Drive. That’s our old Adamsville Boulevard, down by the shore everything’s alright, of sacred ashy memory. And as I watch the traffic flow, the car traffic I think not of vanilla, too bright, too light, too slight day time beach, for now, because I am flooded with visions of the “real” beach of my manic dreams- “the night time is the right time" beach. Enough of daytime, kiddish, bucket and shovel whines and childish butterfly daydreams, enough. Alright?

I just now, and you can follow along too, float dream of teenaged Saturday nights, or maybe even Friday nights, or both, cruising, nowhere, somewhere, anywhere, to the pink- blue, cloud-swollen, sun-devouring, Western night-dream skies, always just beyond our reach. Of you riding "shotgun" in your buddy’s car, a be-bop car, or, I hope, at least bop, late 1950s, and pray hard for a ’57 Chevy or something “cool” like that, borrowed from his old man, stopped at close by high school (remember), Essot gas station and filled, two-dollars-worth-of-gas-check the oil-please-filled. Or his own car, your buddy's, the old man's leavings, given gratis, when that self-same old man stepped up to a new, bigger-finned, power-steered, rumble-engined, airplane of a car, a new sign that he had “made it” in hard dollar America.

Of stolen sickly-sweet wines or breathe-soured whiskeys to ward off the night-forebodings, made sweeter or more sour by the stealing from that same old man’s, or maybe your old man's, liquor cabinet, if they had such an upscale thing, or else just from some dusty high cupboard shelf so the kids can’t get at it place. And, and, oh boy, visions of those moon-beamy, dreamy, seamy, steamy Saturday night beach parking, car-fogged, car-wrestled, “submarine races” watchings that were the subject of Monday morning boys’ rest room (okay, “lav”) roll call, recital and retailing (or, hell, probably in the girls’ room too, I bet, but the now women can tell their own tales). Whoa!

Beatified night-dreamed beach Adamsville Shore Drive also routes, now that my blood pressure has returned to normal, to daydream summer sunbathing, or maybe even before summer sunbathing for early tans to drive away the fierce, ghost-like New England winter pales, in the real sun daytime down by the weather-beaten yacht clubs (tumble-weedy, seedy, paint-needy Adamsville Yacht Club and Squaw Rock Boat Club, okay). Away, well a little away, from the early encountered mephitic sea grass marshes near the Causeway (you know where, right?-the old First National supermarket, now CVS drugs-for all occasions-store location), away from the deadened, fetid, scattered sea grasses and the muck, and in plain kid talk, away from the “stinks”, away from the tepid waves apologetically splashing on the ocean smooth-stoned dunes, away too from the jelly-fish (are they poisonous, or not?) spawning and spattered along the edges of the low tide line, and, most fervently, away, away from the oil-slicked mud flats of childish shovel and pail clam-digging adventures, clams squirting and screaming from their sand hovels that need not detain us here, that story has been told elsewhere by me, and often.

Once you have passed the fetid swamps, the mephitic marshes…, but wait a minute, who knows such un-childlike, or un-teenager-like, for that matter, words like fetid and mephitic and where, as a child, even if you knew the words, would you connect those words with pail and shovel digging to China, or some faraway place, beach; with tide-melting, furtive but fevered, sand castle-making, beach; with coolly and focused looking for treasure, somebody’s leavings, some body’s rich leavings so you think, beach; with learning about the fury of Mother Nature and the pull and push of tides first hand when old Mother (like womb mother) turns her fury on, beach; with later finger (or stick) sand-tracing of your name defying the tides to erase your brand as you fight, and fight hard, for your place in the sun (and maybe linking up your sweetie’s name, just for good measure, in that struggle with eternity), beach; with fellaheen digging for clams for fun or profit (or food for table, who knows) down at the Bay View end, beach; with family barbecue outings, hot dogs and hamburgers, extra ketchup, please, beach. With, well, beach, beach. No, fetid and mephitic will not do, I like my dreams, my child remembrance dreams, cloud puffy and silky.

This bridge, this too far bridge, this man-standing memory bridge, or however you named it, or whatever you thought of it, or wherever you were heading, destiny-heading, heading to your growing-up-like-a-weed town, heading just like a-lemming-to-the-sea town pushes the brain in a couple of directions. Heading south anyway, shore drive south, south to the rivieras, south to the old time kid’s Paragon Park. Rickety, always needed, desperately needed, fresh paint coat, landlocked, off-limits showboat bar-entranced (a gay place, before gay word existed as a social category, but what did we know then, or care, just quarters for skees, please, ah, please), ocean-aired, between-the toes-sanded, sun glass-visioned against the furious midday sun Paragon Park. Roller coaster Paragon Park (hey, maybe sick, before you got the hang of it, right), wild mouse (kid's stuff, ya I know) Paragon Park, cheap, colorful skee ball points trinket prize, sugar high, lips smacked cotton-candy, stuck to the roof of your mouth, roof of the world, salt water taffy-twisted, hot-dogged (hold the mustard, no onions), pin ball wizard’d, take your baby to the carnival feel the tunnel of love, Paragon Park.(Or later, coming of another age, the Surf, and a whole other memory bridge of dreams, not for now though.)

Or south of that south to some old time, unnamed, misty adventure, some ancient Pilgrim-etched mayflower rocky-shored adventure, some ancient forebear's praise Jehovah plainsong heard whistling through some weed-filled granite slate graveyards, not mine; mine is of shanty Irish "famine" ships and old kicked out of England convict labor, hell-hole, "hillbilly" Appalachia work the coal mines, boats. Down along that old slow as molasses, take your time, wait at every just barely red stoplight, watch out for side-glanced cop cars, two-laned, white stripped, no passing (hardly), ocean-touched (in places) road. Memory-washed, memory-etched, memory south youth road, ah.

Yes, that cotton-candy dream is enough to stir even a hardened soul, but as I shift, stiffly shift, weight on my tired old high-soled, age-qualified, age-necessary, bop-bop shoes(no more of "young" fashionista statement, skinny-soled, fire engine red Chuck Taylor’s, now of sturdy, new age, aero-flow, aero-glow, aero-know, aero-whatever, for this heavy work, this airy memory work, bop-bop shoes), I stand straight up in mid-bridge balance and veer my head to the right. That move makes me focus my mind’s eye to the heart, the soul, the guts of the old growing-up town via a narrow, straight and narrow, slit in the road, a road constructed in such a way as if to say no cuts-ups, fops (quaint, again), or oddballs wanted here, as it swerves to the edgings, the bare edgings, amidst the gathering flotsam and jetsam as it piles up on riverside old Main Street and as it meanders along like some far-removed river of its own, river of its own sorrows, river of its own pent-up angers, toward the Square.

But more than sorrows, ancient sorrows, more than angers, angers of whatever age, I am attacked, and not just in my mind’s eye either, by the myriad mirror-glassed buildings, mostly office buildings, maybe some apartments or condos but I hope not, that reflect off each other in some secret Bauhaus bright light, dead of night pact, post-post-modern architecture I am sure, functional I am sure, although when future, future generations dig up the artifacts I am also sure they will be as puzzled by the idea of such forms of shelter and commerce as I am. And beyond those future subjects of artifact a picture, a picture to feed the hungry buildings, of tactless, thoughtless pizza shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, donut shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, hamburger shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, Applebee’s family-friendly food named, now you-name-it-for-me, please, fast-food shop, mini-mart shop, fill-up gas-station of many names, Hess named, that dot, no, deluge strip mall-heavy Main Street up pass our sanctified raider red-bled high school. And beyond to dowdy, drowsy, dusty–windowed (really, I actually touched one once, not a white glove inspection but it, the window that is, didn’t pass muster even by my liberal standards), how do they stay in business against the pull of the major chains (or their chains), small-stored, small-dreamed business ownership, Norfolk Downs.

Norfolk Downs, the good old “Downs” (although we just called it plain, old, ordinary, vanilla-flavored, one-horse Norfolk Downs back in the day) anchored still by named pizza shop, Balducci’s. Balducci’s of after school pizza slices or after night time across the street hang-around underground bowling alley hungers. Plain, please, no one hundred and one choice toppings, thank you, and coke (bluish-green bottled Coca-Cola, okay, for the evil-minded): of nickels and dimes dropped in one-armed-bandit jukebox to hear the latest Stones (or Beatles) tune, or whatever struck a chord in those jumping-jack times, maybe some mopey thing if girl desire was high; yes, but also of weary, so weary, lonely, so lonely night time standings up against the front door wall, waiting, waiting for...(and, maybe, someone, some guy, some long side-burned, engineer-booted guy, cigarette pack, unfiltered, rolled in tee-shirt guy, some time machine guy, is still waiting, still holding up that wall today. Nobody told him the world, the world that counts, the teen world, had moved to the malls). And beyond Norfolk Downs, up that asphalt river, on to the fate of a million small city centers, ghost-towned, derelict, seen better days, for sure, no question, no question, Adamsville Center.

But I find myself , just now, as a stream of cooling air, finally, finally crosses my bridge-stuck, bridge-dreamed path, not in thoughts of jumbled mist of time high school-hood Saturdays nights (nor Friday nights either) in Norfolk Downs pizza parlors or bowling alleys, but of whirling past anciently walked, shoe leather-beaten (always leather-beaten, crooked-heeled, thinning-soled shoes that could be the subject of their own separate bridge-like dream thoughts), oceaned-breezed (just like the breeze crossing over me now , ‘cause that is where it is coming from, it has to be), sharp-angled memories: some of hurt, some of high-hatted hurt, worse, a few, too few, of funny kiddish, ding-dong dumb done things (ever when too old to hide under that womb-like kiddish umbrella), the memories that is, of Atlantic tide streets, of breezing Adamsville bays, of oceans-abutted streets etched deep, almost DNA deep.

Name names. Okay. Well-trodden Appleton Street sidewalks, drawn like a moth to flame to some now-forgotten she, by flickering, heart-quickening, unrequited, just barely teenage, but self-consciously teenage anyhow, romantic trance longings, doggedly working up non-courage, yes non-courage a very common thing in those days, to speak, or better, to write that one word, that one word still now not easily come by, that would spark interest (her interest), as I turned from boy to the buddings of manhood; of the close-quartered, no space, no space for anything but small pinched, tightly pinched, dreams , no room to breathe, no room to breathe anything but small breathe, hacked up, asphalted-up, lawn-free yards to quench driveway car thirsting, two and three-decked Atlantic Street houses passed on quick high school cross country practice runs; of family relative-burdened, just getting-started in adult life, small, cramped five room and tiny bath apartment dotted Walker and Webster Streets; of the closely-cornered, well-kept small manicured-lawn’d, busily repair-worked, no beach parking on the street in summertime, working class cottage-mansions of Bayfield Road (I always forget which is North and which is South, but no matter the description fits both as they feed to the endless sea stopped by that infernal stop light that keeps you waiting, waiting beyond impatience, to cross to the much repaired and replaced seawall and view of seaward homeland.); of Adamsville North Junior High School’d (ya, I know, Middle School) teen angst (under either junior or middle school names), mad, hormonally mad, teen-brokered years, world wised-up with some twists, but also world sorry, straight-up, Hollis Avenue; and on and on, through to the beach-drained, tree-named streets. Sanctified beyond name streets all; beat, beatified streets all; mist-filled dream streets all; memory-soaked streets all; be-bop, then real gone daddy, now hip-hop, big old pie-in-the-sky looking for the universe somewhere, streets all.

But enough of old dog-eared memories let me get moving, after all with this bridge, this “new” bridge, one has to cross with purpose, serious purpose, and maybe a wing and a pray that one can get back to the old home town in one piece or, at least, be able to think that one precious thought that drove me, lemming-like, here in the first place. I walk down the broken hand-railed, dirt-piled , drift winds-sent littered steps to get off the bridge and immediately stretched before me ; one million water-logged, stubbed cigarette-butts; one thousand stray, crushed, empty, cellophaned cigarette-packages blown around seeking their rightful owners; one hundred infinite brand-named (ice cold something pictured Bud Lite seems like the winner), crushed (or at least dented) beer cans; assorted, unnumbered, brown whiskey(or were they gin) bottles, mainly cheap from the look of them, a drunkard’s feast at one time; high gloss advertisement mailings(endless CVS drugs to take your world’s pain away, Shaw’s food to curb that incurable hunger that gnaws away at your stomach, Wal-Mart back-to-school trinkets, gadgets and throw-aways when the kids find out, and find out fast, that this crap is not “cool”, K-Mart holiday bargains, three for a dollar); yellowing, dated, newspapers (local this-and-that news, distant war drum news, more war drum news from some other earth corner, bad news badder, and celebrity relief news, Lady GaGa, or some such doings, that’s the ticket for our times) strewn every which way, discarded fast food packages of all descriptions that I have no time to describe. On to the street I step, the hard-scrabble North Adamsville street. Home.