From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- From The “Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night” Sketches California Dreamin’, Maybe, January, 1970

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- From The “Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night” Sketches California Dreamin’, Maybe, January, 1970 I waved good-bye to Angelica, once again, as she drove off from the ocean front campsite that we had been camping out on, the Leo Carrillo State Park near Point Magoo about fifty miles or so north of Los Angeles. She would now drive the road back in her green Ford Hertz unlimited mileage, mid-size rental (paid for, as she explained one night, by her parents whose golden age of the automobile-frenzied minds counted it as a strike against me, a very big strike, that when I had “kidnapped” their daughter on the 1969 blue-pink summer road west down in Steubenville, Ohio I didn’t even have a car). She planned (on my advice) to drive back mostly on the ocean-abutted, white-capped waves smashing against jagged ancient shore rocks, Pacific Coast Highway down through Malibu and Santa Monica to take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as the final point on her first look ocean trip, on the way to LAX to take a flight back to school days Muncie, Indiana.

She will also be driving back to the airport and getting on that miserable plane east knowing as I do since we talked about it incessantly during her stay, that some right things, or at least some maybe right things, like our being together last summer heading free west and for these two January weeks in front of the sea, our homeland the sea, before her classes started again, got caught up in the curious web of the human drama. For no understandable reason. Hey, you already knew this if you have ever had even that one teeny-weeny, tiny, minuscule love affair that just had no place to go, or no time to take root, or just got caught out there in the blue-pink night. Yah, you know that story. But let me take some minutes to tell you this one. If it seems very familiar and you “know” the plot line well then just move on.

To get you up to speed after Angelica and I had been on the heartland America hitchhike road (and places like Moline, Neola, and Omaha are nothing but the heartland, good or bad), she, well, she just got tired of it, tired of the lacks, tired of the uncertainties of the road. Hell, hell-on-wheels, I was getting tired of it myself except I was a man on a mission. The nature of that mission is contained in the words “search for the blue-pink great American West night” so the particulars of that mission need not detain us here. So in Neola, Iowa, Neola, Iowa of all places aided by “fairy grandmother” Aunt Betty, who ran the local diner where Angelica worked to help make us some dough to move on, and her own sense of dreams she called it quits back in September. Aunt Betty drove us to Omaha where Angelica took the bus back east, Indiana east from Nebraska, to hometown Muncie and I hit Interstate 80 West headed first to Denver before the snows, or so I hoped.

Honestly, although we exchanged addresses and telephone numbers where messages could be left, or where we could speak to each other (her parents’ house not being one of them), and made big plans to reunite in California in January during her school break, I didn’t really think that once we were off the road together that those plans would pan out.
Now I may not remember all my reasoning at the time this far removed, the now of my telling this story many years later, but I had had enough relationships with women to sense this one was good, very good, while it lasted but it could not survive the parting. Not one of those overused “absence makes the heart grow fonder” things you hear about. And, truth to tell, because I thought that was the way things would play out, I started getting focused back on Boston Joyel more than a little as I walked a lot, stood at the shoulder of the hitchhike road a lot, and fitfully got my rides on the road west.

But see this is where you think you have something figured out just so and then it goes awry. Angelica called, left messages, sent letters, even a telegram, to Denver (to the commune where, Jack and Mattie, my traveling companions on the final leg west whom I had met earlier in the spring on a different trip down to D.C., were staying). She sent more communications in early December as well saying that she was still coming to Los Angeles where we three stayed with a few artistic friends of Jack and Mattie’s. Cinema-crazed artistic friends, including one budding film director who, moreover, had great dope connections right into the heart of Mexico. This is where they would stay while I planned to push the hitchhike road north heading to San Francisco.

I once, in running through one of the scenes in this hitchhike road show, oh yah, it was the Neola scene, mentioned that in Angelica “what you saw was what you got, what she said was what she meant, and that both those were good things indeed.” And so if I had thought about it a minute of course she was coming to California in January and staying with me for her two week break, and maybe longer. So when January came she contacted me though John and Mattie, who like I said were now staying with this very interesting experimental film-maker, David, in the Hollywood hills and canyons. I started back south to L.A. in order to meet her at the airport. From there I had it planned that we would go to Point Magoo and camp out like in the “old days” at an ocean front state park.

Needless to say when I greeted her at LAX we both were all smiles, I was in more than all smiles mode, because I had been “stag” for a while and she was, well, fetching as always, or almost always. Here though is where I noticed that the road really is not for everyone. In Neola, and later getting on the bus back home in Omaha, poor Angelica looked pretty haggard but at the airport, well like I said, she was fetching.

And, guess what, she brought her sleeping bag that we got for her in a Lexington, Kentucky Army-Navy Store when we first seriously started on the road west. And the first thing she said about it was, referring to a little in-joke between us, “it fits two, in a pinch.” Be still my heart. So we gathered up her stuff, did the airport exit scene (easier at LAX in those days than now) and picked up the outside shuttle to the Hertz car rental terminal. We were jabbering away like crazy, but best of all, we were like, a little, those first days last summer back in that old-time Steubenville truck stop diner and cabin when I first met her.

Of course, part of the trip for her, part of what she went as far as she could with me on the hitchhike road for, was to get to California and see what it was all about, and what the ocean was all about since she was a heartland girl who had never seen the ocean before. When we got to Point Magoo she flipped out, she flipped out mostly at the idea that we would stay, could stay right on the beach in front of the ocean. And just like a kid, just like I did when I was kid and saw the ocean, when she saw the Pacific, she jumped right in. Hell, she was so excited she almost got caught in a small riptide. I had to go drag her out. I won’t say we had fun every minute of those weeks acting out our ocean nomad existence, but most minutes, and I could see that she felt the same way.

Naturally, as time drifted away toward her return flight date we talked more and more about what the future, if any, held in store for us. She was adamant about not going back on the road, she was adamant as well that she wanted to finish school and make something of herself. I had no serious defense against that practical wisdom. And, truthfully, I wasn’t, toward the end of her stay, pushing the issue, partially because even I could see that it made sense but also, we had had a “flare-up” over the Boston Joyel question (I am being polite here).

But it was more than that; the flat out, hungry truth was that I really didn’t know how to deal with a Midwestern “what you see is what you get” woman like Angelica. I was more used to virtuous Irish Catholic girls who drove me crazy as a kid getting me all twisted up about religion, about nice girls, and about duplicity when I found out what the real score was with this type of young girl/ woman later. I was also, and Joyel was the epitome of this type, totally in sync (well, as much as a man can be) with the Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of human relationships 24/7 kind of woman. And fatally attracted to them (and still am). This Angelica look at things only a couple of ways, let’s work things out easy-like, heavens, let’s not analyze everything to the nth degree flipped me out. Angelica was a breath of fresh air and, maybe, maybe, about ten years later, and two divorces later to boot, I would have had that enough sense god gave geese to hold onto her with both hands, tightly, very tightly. But I was in my blue-pink search phase and not to be detoured.

Of course all this hard work of trying to understand where we stood put a little crack in our reason for being together in the first place. The search for, search for something. Maybe, for her, it was just that life minute at the ocean and then on to regular life minutes out in the thickets of the white picket fences. She never said it then in so many words but that seemed to be the aim. And to be truthful, although I was only just barely thinking about it at the time, as the social turmoil of the times got weird, diffuse, and began to evaporate things started to lose steam. As we were, seemingly, endlessly taking our one-sided beatings as those in charge started a counter-offensive ( a counter-offensive still going on) people, good people, but people made of human clay nevertheless got tired of the this and that existence, even Joyel. Joyel of Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of relationships 24/7 was also weary and wary of what was next and where she fit into “square” society. Christ, enough of that, we know, or knew, that song too well.

A couple of days before Angelica was to leave, and on a day when the sun seemed especially bright, especially bright for then smog-filled Los Angeles January, and warm, not resident warm but Boston and Muncie warm, we sat like two seals sunning ourselves in the glow of mother ocean she nudged me and asked me if I had a joint. Now Angelica liked a little vino now and then but I can’t recall her ever doing a joint (grass, marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever you call it in your neck of the woods). So this is new. The problem, although not a big one in ocean-side state park 1970 Southern California, was that I was not “holding.” No problem though, a few spots down the beach was an old well-traveled, kind of beat-up Volkswagen van that I knew, knew just as sure as I was standing on that white sand beach, was “holding.” I went over, asked around, and “bingo” two nice big joints came traveling with me back to our campsite. Oh, daddy, daddy out in the be-bop blue-pink night thank you brother van man. For just a minute, just that 1970 California minute, the righteous did inherit the earth.

Back at our camp site Angelica awaited the outcome of my quest, although she also wanted to wait until later, until the day’s sun started going down a bit more to go into that smoke-filled good night. When that later came Angelica was scared/ thrilled, as she tried to smoke the one I lit up for her and started coughing like crazy, but that was nothing then. Everybody, at least everybody I knew, went through that same baptism. But Jesus, did we get mellow, that stuff, as was most stuff then, was primo, not your ragweed bull stuff that ran the rounds later. And why should it have not been so as we were so close to the then sane Mexican border of those days to get the good stuff.

But all of this build-up over this dope scene is so much filler, filler in those days when if you didn’t at least take a pipe full (inhale or not, like it or not) you were a square “squared.” What the stuff did for Angelica, and through Angelica to me, got her to open up a little. No, not about family, or old boyfriends, or her this and that problems. No, but kind of deep, kind of deep somewhere that she maybe didn’t know existed. Deep as I had ever heard her speak before. She talked about her fate, the fate of the fates, about what was going on in the world, no, not politics; she was organically incapable of that. Mystics stuff, getting in touch with the sea homeland stuff, earth mother stuff too in a way. Dope-edged stuff sure but when she compared the splashing foam-flecked waves to some cosmic force that I forget how she put it (remember I was dope-addled as well) then for just that moment, just that moment when the old red-balled sun started to dip to the horizon on one of those fairly rare days when one could see it meet the ocean I swear that Angelica knew, knew in her heart, knew in her soul even, what the blue-pink American West dream stuff I had bombarded her with was all about. That was our moment, and we both knew it.

So when leaving time came a couple of days later we both knew, I think, as we packed up her things, including that well-used sleeping bag, we had come to a parting of the roads. As I put her stuff in the rental car she sweetly blurted out something I was also thinking, “I’ll always remember that night we made the earth under the cabin in Steubenville shake.” And I thought then I bet she will, although she forgot the part about the making the roof of the cabin move too. And so there I was, waving as she drove off to her Angelica dreams. And I never saw her again.

Postscript: That last statement about never seeing her again is not exactly true. I have, at least up until a few years ago, and you have probably too, seen her in films and magazines. I don’t know all the later details, because I eventually lost contact with John and Mattie after they went to Mexico and got caught up, got badly caught up in, the small-time end of the international drug trade of the time, but Angelica eventually moved out to California with her boyfriend, and connected with David, the film-maker I mentioned before. And it seems I am a prophet for the still and moving cameras caught that look, that look I sensed when I first met Angelica, because she went on to have a successful small-part movie and commercial-making career. She was not the in-your-face-beautiful leading lady in the films but the who-was-that-other-good-looking-ah-fetching actress who you started thinking about later and who really set your soul ablaze. The one that would, if you knew her, set your silly, twisted philosophical head straight after about two minutes with her. Or, if in a commercial, her look told you that, yes, maybe you had better buy about a dozen of those widgets she is selling although what on earth you will do with them is beyond me. Yah that look, that Muncie fresh, guileless look. I hope, hope to high heaven, that she got her version of the blue-pink night as well.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -When Be-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night- “Street Corner Serenade”- Olde Saco Style

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film (From American Bandstand) of The Classics performing the old time classic (I think originally from The Mills Brothers) , Till Then.

Sure I have plenty to say about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. Heck, I lived it and so did a lot of other people who now have time on their hands and are just becoming “wise” enough to write a few things about those times since they are safely behind us. Well, maybe safely behind us as you never know about certain social and musical trends. Here is what is important though whether you have, in your dotage, just seen Elvis walking, well, walking like a walking daddy down your Main Street or like a million others just wishing that you could get together enough quarters to wear that old jukebox down at Jimmy Jakes Diner out (or wherever that beauty was located) like in those lazy hazy school day afternoons. With that said I have in the past spent a little time, not enough, considering its effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the rock genre and want to expand on that here.

Part of the reason for not highlighting doo wop separately, obviously, is that back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days with six millions flash songs running through my head and Elvis stealing all the girls, directly or indirectly, I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say eraly Elvis, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran rockabilly-back-beat drive rock, Bo Diddley-Chuck Berry black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove Frankie Lymon, The Drifters, The Platters doo-wop. All I knew was that it was not my parents’ music, praise be, not close, and that moreover they got nervous, very nervous, ditto on the praise be, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era, the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standards, but get this, you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud music without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.

What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working class housing projects neighborhood, the heavily French-Canadian quarters around Atlantic Avenue in Olde Saco up in oceanside Maine, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error, was allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or any such. Where the hell would we have gotten the dough for such things when papas were out of work, or were one step away as the textile mills that have produced steady work heading south in search of cheaper labor, and there was trouble just keeping the wolves from the door. Sure, some kids, some kids like my home boy elementary school, Olde Saco South, boyhood friend Billie, William James Riley (mother, nee Dubois), were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. Even Billie though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers was mad to do the do of doo-wop and make his fame and fortune.

I remember much later, maybe the early 1980s, being in a New York City record shop, somewhere near Times Square, where they had a bin full of doo-wop records and the cover art of one of the albums showed a group of young black kids, black guys, who looked like they were doing their doo wop on some big city street corner. And that makes sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on that battery-drive transistor AM radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope, to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout of their lives. Moreover, this cover art also showed, and shows vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls (and maybe visa versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).

Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billie included, christ maybe Billie most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too ( remember girls just switch around what I just said). Yah, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the that summer vacation vacant elementary school on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do things, maybe a little feisty because of that, and start up a few tunes. Billie, who actually did have some vocal musical talent, usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, notes, or reading music we just improvised. (And I kept my changing to teen-ager, slightly off-key voice on the low, on the very low.)

Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot sun day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. Most of them were sticks (local term of art, pre-teen, just teen boy-man term of art signifying, ah, signifying that mysterious transformation from boyish girl shape to womanly shape occurring right before our eyes) And swoony and moony was just fine. Especially when one stick turning to shape Rosamund, Rosamund Genet, came around one night toward the end of summer and I got sore eyes just looking in her direction (and I think she peeked in my direction that night too). And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs from that Time Square- seen album could be heard in that airless night. Songs like Deserie, The Charts; Baby Blue, The Echoes; Till Then, The Classics; and, Tonight (Could Be The Night), The Velvets. Yes, long live doo wop out in the be-bop night.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-Fragments Of A Treasure Island (Cady Park) Dream #1, Circa 1955

Peter Paul Markin comment:

It’s funny how working now, on one thing or another, will bring back those childhood hurts, those feelings sealed, or is it seared, so deep in memory that one does not expect them to resurface for love or money, although this little piece did not start out that way and probably won’t finish up that way either. This “dream” started off from seeing, a few months ago, an unexpected and fairly unusual surname of a fellow female elementary school classmate innocently listed in an off-hand, indirect North Adamsville Internet connection. The very sight of that name triggered a full-blown elementary school “romantic” daydream, from my days down at the old Adamsville “projects” where I, Peter Paul Markin, came of age, that blossomed into a pining prose sonnet that would have made Shakespeare blush. I’ll tell you about that one some time, but not now.

That flashback, in turn, got me into a fierce sea-faring dreaming, rolling-logged, oil-slicked, ocean water on three sides, stone-throwing Adamsville “projects” mood that turned into a screed on the trials and tribulations of growing to manhood in the shadows of tepid old Adamsville Beach. And that, naturally enough, triggered a quick remembrance of too infrequent family barbecue outings as the old Treasure Island (now named after a fallen Marine, Cady, if I recall correctly). At least I think that was the name in those days. That’s what we called it anyway, down at the Seal Rock of the beach. You know where I mean, you probably had your family memory barbecue outings there too, or a place like that, at least some of them. But enough of that background. Let me tell you what I really want to talk about, the tricks that parents used to use, and still do I suppose, to get their way. The story isn’t pretty, or for the faint of heart.

I swear I knew, and I am pretty sure that I knew for certain early on when I was just a half-pint kid myself, that kids, especially younger kids, could be “bought off” by their parents and easily steered away from what they really wanted to do, or really wanted to have, by a mere trifle. Probably you got wise to the routine early too. Still, it’s ridiculous how easily we were “pieced off”, wise as we were, and I firmly believe that there should have been, and there should be now, something like the rules of engagement that govern civilized behavior in war-time written out in the Geneva Conventions against that form of behavior by mothers and fathers. After all what is childhood, then or now, except one long, very long, battle between two very unevenly matched sides with kids, then and now, just trying to do the best they can in a world that they didn’t create, and that they didn’t get a say in creating.

I learned this little nugget of “wisdom” from battle-tested, many times losing, keep- in-there-swinging, never-say-die, first-hand experience, although I guess I might have been a little too thin-skinned and have been a little too quick to feel slighted about it at the time to really focus in on its meaning. I know that you learned this home truth this way as well whether you got onto the scam early on or not. Sure, I could be bought off, I am not any better than the rest of you on that score, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t nurse many a grievance to right those wrongs(and, incidentally, plotted many a feverish revenge, in my head at least, some of them, if impractical, pretty exquisitely drawn).

Sometimes it was just a word, sometimes literally just one word, usually a curt, cutting, razor-edged one from Ma that sent me reeling for cover ready to put up the white flag, if I ever even got that chance. Sometimes it was a certain look, a look that said “don’t go there." And, maybe, depending how I was feeling, I did and maybe I didn’t, go there that is. Hell, sometimes it could even be a mere inside-the family-meaningful side-long glance, a glance from Ma, a thing from her eye, her left one usually, brow slightly arched, that said "case closed," and forget about the pretense behind the “don’t go there” look, which at least gave you the dignity of having the opportunity to put up a little fight no manner the predetermined ending. Sometimes though, and this is hard to “confess” fifty years later and ten thousand, thousand other experiences later, that lady switched up on us and "pieced" us off with some honey-coated little thing. That damn honey-coated thing, that “good” thing standing right in front of full-blown evil, or what passed for that brand of evil in those days, is what this dream fragment is all about.

Now don’t tell me you don’t know what I am talking about in the Ma wars, and don’t even try to tell me it wasn’t usually Ma who ran point on the “no” department when you went on the offensive for something you wanted to have, or some place you wanted to go, especially when “desperately” was attached to the "have" or to the "go" part. No, just don’t do it. Dad, Pa, Father, whatever you called him, was held in ready-reserve for when the action got hot and heavy. Maybe, in your family, your father was the point-man but from what I have learned over the last couple of years about our parents from information that I have gathered from some reliable sources that was a wasted strategy. We were that easy. No need for the big guns, because our ever-lovin’, hard-working, although maybe distant, fathers were doing what fathers do. Provide, or go to the depths in that struggle to provide. Ma was for mothering and running interference. That was that. Thems were the rules then, if not now. The main thing was the cards were stacked against us because what we really didn't know was they were really working as a team, one way or another. In any case, I don’t have time to dilly-dally over their strategies as I have got to move on here.

See, here is what you don’t know. Yet. Those family trips to old Treasure Island, whether they were taken from down in Adamsville or later, when we moved "up-town" to North Adamsville, as they tapered off when we three boys (my two brothers, one a little younger one a little older, and me) got too big to pretend that we really wanted to go, were really the ‘booby prize’ for not going to places like Paragon Park down in Nantasket or down to Plymouth Rock or, christ, any place that would be a change of scenery from the claptrap projects. Of course, the excuse was always the same-dad was too tired to drive after working some killer hours at some dirty old dead-end job, or one of a succession of old, hand-me-down, barely running jalopies (and I am being kind here, believe me) wasn’t running, or running well enough to make the trip, or something else that meant we couldn’t go some place.

Yah, that was all right for public consumption but here is the real reason; no dough, plain and simple. Why Ma and Dad just didn’t tell us that their circumstances were so tight that spending a couple of dollars on the roller coaster (which I didn’t care about anyway), or playing “Skee” (which I did care about), or getting cotton-candy stuck every which way (which I didn’t care about), or riding the Wild Mouse (cared about) would break the bank I will never know. Or the extra gas money. Or the extra expense of whatever. How would I know. All I knew is that we weren’t going. Period.

But, here, finally, is where the simple “bought off” comes in, although I really should have been more resolute in my anger at not going and held out for better terms. Such is the fate of young mortals, I guess. My mother, and this was strictly between me and my mother as most things were in those days, dangled the prospect of having some of Kennedy’s potato salad in front of my face on the next family picnic. You remember Kennedy’s, right? If you don’t then the rest of this thing is going to come as less that the “Book of Revelation.” Or ask your parents, or grandparent.

There was one in Adamsville Square about half way down Hancock Street on the old South Adamsville Bank side and there was one in Norfolk Downs almost to the corner of Hancock Street and Billings Road next to the old A&P. I am not sure, and someone can help me on this, whether it was called Kennedy’s Food Shop, or Deli, or whatever but it had the best potato salad around. And fresh ground peanut butter, and sweet fragrant coffee smells, and… But I will get to describing that that some other time. Right now I am deciding whether I can be bought off or not. Yes, shamefacedly, I can and here is the closer -I can even go to Kennedy's and get the stuff myself. What do you think about that? From then on, moreover, I became the “official” Kennedy’s boy of the family. Did I sell out too cheaply? No way.

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

Markin comment :

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

Desperately seeking…

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Series"- Valentines Can’t Buy Her, Can They?

Valentines Can’t Buy Her, Can They?

 

Who knows when the endless walks started? Peter Paul’s endless walks. Maybe it was something as simple as not having, really his parents not having, a car, a reliable car in the 1950s golden age of the automobile, the American automobile fin-tail night. All such Markin vehicles, when there was motor transportation around, and in the early days he had memory-think of his father traipsing out of the house, lunch bucket in hand, to catch, although usually to wait to catch, the first morning public square bus more often than not, always looked like some Joad- mobile breaking down on some Route 66 (really Route 6 but Route 66 spoke of great American West night adventures) dust blow-out road waiting on some stranger’s kindnesses to send Tom into some godforsaken Western plains town for water , battery, or some spare part. Yes, now that he thought about it Peter thought it was just like the Joad’s clunker except for the no family heirlooms hanging from the rafters.

 

Names like Studebaker, Nash Rambler, and Plymouth (not the new, sexy tail-fin ones but some box thing that grinded along sputtering to the high heavens and smelling of oils, grease and always, always some foul unnamed smell that only went away when the car was properly fixed).  And see too Peter had a no driving mother, a no car-driving mother when there was a car around. No Mom to take him here and there, or for just goofing around looking for some new view of the world. All such new views depended on the clunker, and his father’s ability to keep it on the road while a carping wife and three screaming boys in the backseat tried his patience more than any Daytona 500 driver ever had to face.

 

So mishmash memories of endless waits for early morning, not as early as his father but early, because there was no midday transport, and late afternoon public buses filled his heart with terror. Terror that he would always be stuck in “the projects” waiting on some late-arriving or just barely arriving Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway bus (always called just the bus, except when he wanted to curse, or what he later learned was a curse and paid in penance for the knowledge, when yet again it arrived too late for him to easily do whatever mission he was intent on doing). At times like that Peter Paul  always thought about the time when  he (and his brother, John James) were to make their first communion at five and six years old (Roman Catholic- style in case there are differences in the way it is done in other kinds of heathen churches, heathen then anyway) and clad in all white. Mom dressed as well as he ever remembered seeing her and Dad as well, although he always seemed ill at ease in fancy dress, had to wait an eternity for the bus and barely, just barely made it to the church. Then they waited for an eternity, maybe more, for the bus afterwards into order to go have an out-of-the-house breakfast to celebrate this latest Christian victory.

 

So he started walking, walking that endless walk.        

 

Peter Paul established a certain fixed route to his walks not so much because he was enthralled by the idea of an established route, or because he had some idea even that it was fixed as much as “the projects”, which were located on an isolated old-time farm land peninsula near the bay, had only one road out (one asphalt-covered road, rutted even then, although later he would “discover” shortcuts through marshes and reeds, some of them Mother hair-raising, if she had known). And also because he feared, feared to perdition, that if he varied his route he would get lost, the cops would have to bring him home, and that would be the end of his endless walking since his walking was a motherless thing.  

 

See there was a certain practical necessity to Peter’s stealth as well because the mothers, even if just raggedy projects mothers, had some kind of unexplained and unexpected league of mothers-“projects” divisions pledge, that they would raise a hue and cry if one of the kids seemed to be wandering too far from home. So the first part of the journey was always sneaking out the back door down the hill to the shoreline and around the bend about half a mile to reach that lonely road out. Along the way out he passed seemingly endless seawall-flanked sea streets, all granite slabs, leftovers from local granite quarries that gave the town its granite-etched, granite-sweated, granite city nickname. From there he could see shoreline-flashing rocks, wave broken shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat to the left as he slip-shot his way to the main road to the town center (but what did he know then of fetid and mephitic they just stank, stank to high heaven in low tide time).

 

Most days, most trips, he didn’t care how long it took as long as he was back by lunch, or supper depending on the time of day of his getaway. Today though, this day that forms the basis of the story that  he told Billy Bradley one summer night after it was long over, and he had “forgotten” the incident until something, actually someone, made him think about it this old route was making hard the way, the path, okay, to uptown drug stores. See added in was a little rain, the tide was up, and he was running a little late. But he had to get his uptown business (that’s what he called it, what he always called it with a little smirk) done because his tomorrow was an important day. Although when he told Billy the occasion day Billy yawned and wondered why all of a sudden that year of our lord 1956 it was urgent business.

 

Now the layout of Adamsville’s uptown, like a lot of towns, was a couple of streets of retail stores, a couple of places to eat, a few professional buildings, a movie theater (or two, depending on the town) some government buildings and so on. In short, boring. Except this day all Peter Paul’s focus was on the largest drugstore in town (and for a long time the only one), Rexall’s Drugstore. Why? Don’t laugh, or laugh just a little. Peter Paul, sweating a little from his exertions even on this raw winter day, needed, desperately needed, to get some Valentine’s Day cards. Yah, I know I started to yawn too.      

 

See all of a sudden this winter Peter Paul started noticing girls in his fifth grade class, and started kind of find them interesting, kind of. Kind of except when they started giggling, collectively giggling, about nothing at all or started to tease him. Tease him not in a mean way like they did the previous year, fourth grade year, because he came from the projects, and he didn’t have a father car, and he walked everywhere but blush tease him be because well because, they found him kind of interesting, kind of.  And that kind of interesting them and that kind of interesting him were on a collision course.

         

Like a lot of guys, young guys and old, when girls (young women and just regular plain old women, okay) are in play, Peter Paul went overboard. Went overboard for just that reason that guys have been going overboard since about Adam and Eve, hell maybe before, because some frail (Markin’s old neighborhood term coined by the local corner boy king Billie Bradley to denote, the, uh, fairer sex) looked in his direction for about five seconds and he looked back. See, he “promised” about five of these used-to-be-giggling and mean girls, that they would be his valentine. Exclusively, one and only, true blue, whatever. He explained to me how it happened but I don’t want you to yawn any more than you have to so I will just skip that part. Hey, you already know from your own going overboard, or your own peeking what happens when the blood is up so just use that as a frame of reference. Besides, as he laid the thing out, it sounded (and still sounds) goofy since some of the girls knew each other and some, I think he said, already had “boyfriends” or what passed for boy friends in fifth grade. Kid’s stuff, yes, strictly kid’s stuff. So he had to hightail it up to Rexall’s with no money really and try to work his “magic.”

 

And he did. Sending (or presenting in person) each a Rexall’s Drug Store, heist-stolen (the “clip” to use the term of art then in use in the Adamsville projects requiring quick hands, darting eyes and some version of nerves of steel) valentine, ribbon and bow valentine (hey Hallmark said the very best , or use to) good night. Signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, stating that, get this, if only she, five candidates she remember, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head (and endless sorrow-and delight), sticks all (another term of projects boyish art to indicate young womanhood), no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would only give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute sea street washed Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet. Jesus, classic Markin.

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Out In The “Submarine Races” Saturday Night

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Capris performing There's A Moon Out Tonight.
A few years back I literarily, well maybe not literarily but close, went over the edge trying find every obscure, and not so obscure, record that I could find from the golden oldies time, the classic age of rock and roll time, the 1950s and early 1960s. I searched through flea market album bins like some ghoul out a Larry McMurtry Cadillac Jack novel. I went up into god forsaken, and maybe worst, dusty, musty, crusty attics (people really should throw out or recycle that stuff moldering away up there but that is a screed for another day) in the hopes that some errant 1950s teenager had left his or her markings and Mother was too sentimental to toss the damn things (although at the time there was civil war in many households over permission to have such “devil’s music” in the house, or within fifty yards of it). Worst, I went around to old time drugstores (any that were left in the age of Osco and CVS), steamed food diners, bent pizza parlors, and local mom and pop store hoping that in some back room they had some records left over from the 1950s jukebox days (or even better maybe still had the old jukebox). Yah, I had a jones, a big time rock and roll jones just then. I am better now, thank you. Well, thanks to YouTube and one million other Internet variations that would have saved me much shoe leather, some dough, my health and left my sunny view of previous pre-flea market- attic-pizza parlor human nature intact. The idea though was to go back to my musical roots, the real roots in classic rock not that Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, Inkspots stuff that was force-fed wafting throughout the house when my parents wanted to listen to the stuff that got them through the Great Depression (always these days meaning the 1930s one, okay) and the big one, World War II. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes, like for example Gene Pitney’s Town Without Pity that I played endlessly, it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked elsewhere about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store street corner hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big-sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor juke box coin devouring, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, as well, the drug store soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, naturally, eternally naturally. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their music, the eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing. Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working-class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them).

Yah. but see that was all basically innocent indoor stuff. Today I want to talk about the outdoors stuff, the, hell, we are all adults, the sex stuff. And just to show I am not being just another prurient interest dirty old man I would direct your attention to the very, very on point album cover art work that accompanies this sketch. What could be more on point that a guy and his honey (or a gal and her honey if you want to look at it that way) sitting, star-light nighttime sitting, nighttime after that last dance high school opening shot young love sitting, in some early 1960s model convertible (maybe dad’s borrowed, maybe in new-found teen discretionary spending America his, probably the latter from the feel of the scene) in the local lovers’ lane. And one “bashful”, befuddled, “where do we go from here?” guy getting a seemingly innocent kiss from said honey. Nice, right

Sure all that stuff is nice for public consumption but like I said before, we are all adults, and that cutesy eyewash will just not do. So here is my expose. Every town, hamlet, hell, any place that has at least one teen-aged couple had its own local lovers’ lane where more fierce lovin’ went on that I would every have time to tell about, although Billy and Sue will be glad to fill in their friends come Monday morning in the boys’ and girls’ room at school. Our local lovers’ lane happened to also double up during the daytime as a beach, a very public beach. Can you believe that? Wasting all that good natural teenage dreamy night scene on people going swimming, digging for clams or some silly sea animals, sunning themselves, or having some ill-thought out family picnic. Christ, what a scene.

No, a thousand times no, this place was meant for the sun to go down on, a big blazing sun turning fast into the blue-pink night, boy and girl in car (or poverty-bound, not privy to that discretionary spending mentioned above, walked there and are now sitting moony-eyed on the seawall). And all car-bound or wall-bound “watching the submarine races.”
What? Yes, intensely, forthrightly, intelligently watching the submarine races. Oh come on now, you all had your own local expressions for doin’ the do. Naturally, if you are from the great plains night, or rockymountain high, or some Maine forest this was not possible but doin’ the do was. And what is doin’ the do? Oh well, yes we are all adults but I just remembered this cyberspace thing allows for small, peeking eyes, so I will leave you to figure it out. Or wait until Monday morning in the “lav” and ask grinning Billy and blushing Sue. Know this though that old car radio (or transistor radio, if seawall-bound) was blasting out tunes from some of those records I found in beaten bins, infested attics, and defunct drugstores. Here’s my selection for “getting in the mood” songs in the face of the great white-waved, Atlantic Ocean submarine race night:

There’s A Moon Out Tonight, The Capris (hopefully this was a double-header, the last dance at school and kingdom come mood-setter in that old convertible); Blue Moon, The Marcels (not bad as a runner up to The Capris as everybody starts to get a little swoony); Dedicated To The One I Love and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, The Shirelles (incredible harmonies, and let me tell you sometime when the kids are not around about my own story of young love when the sun comes up in the morning, yah, the morning, and how I got my very own personal version of the will you still love me question); Runaround Sue, Dion (every boy, oops, young man’s dread a girl always ready to throw you over in a week for the next best thing that comes along, damn); Hats Off To Larry (and you know what for if what he went on and on about at Monday morning boys’ “lav” roll call was true, or better, half true); Del Shannon; Stand By Me ( a mood setter if there ever was one), Ben E. King (great lyrics); and Daddy’s Home, Shep and The Limelites (good for going home from that gentle beach night after a hard night at the races).

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Jody Reynolds “Endless Sleep”- Billie’s View

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing the classic Endless Sleep.

Markin comment:

This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the mad hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Yah, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own. This song, Endless Sleep, came out at a time when I my family was beginning to start the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe. I was in my 24/7 reading at the local public library branch phase in lieu of being Billie’s accomplice on various, well, let’s call them capers just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. Still Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.


Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.


Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.


[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
*****
Billie back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over the Adamsville Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he told me his family was going to move out of the projects and who had developed this big thing for the local library and books lately, came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of my rock universe-adorned bedroom when we got to talking about this latest record, Endless Sleep, by Jody Reynolds. All the parents around here, at least the parents that care anyway, or those who have heard the lyrics screaming from their kid’s plug-in blaring radio (that’s why they invented transistor radios-so parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t, catch on to what we are listening to- smarten up is what I say to those kids still on plug-in mode, for christ’s sake) about the not so subtle suicide theme. Yah, like that is what every kid is going to do when the going gets a little tough in the love department. Take a jump in the ocean, and call one and all to join them. Come on, will ya. It's only a song. Besides what is really good about this one is that great back beat on the guitar and Jody Reynolds' cool clothes and sideburns. I wish to high heaven I had both.

But see the pope of rock lyrics, me, can’t just leave this song like that. I have to decode it for the teeny-boppers around here or they will be clueless, including big time book guy Markin. And that is really what is going to make the difference between us here. We had a battle royal over this one. See, Markin always wants to give big play to the “social” meaning of the song, whatever that is, you know where the thing sticks in society, at least teeny-bopper society. Yah, and Markin is also the “sensitive” guy, usually. Like pulling for the girl to get her guy back, or at least go back to her old boyfriend for some back-up love, in Eddie My Love. Or has a kind thing to say about the dumb cluck of a bimbo who went back to the railroad track-stuck car to get some cheapjack class ring in Teen Angel (although he agreed, agreed fully, that the dame was a dumb cluck on other grounds).

Here though I am the sensitive guy, if you can believe that. Here’s why. It seems that Markin has some kind of exception to the “social” rule when it comes to the ocean, to the sea, christ, probably to some scum pond for all I know as the scene for suicide attempts. Apparently he is in the throes of some King Neptune frenzy and took umbrage (his word, not mind I don’t go to the library much) at the idea that someone would desecrate the sea that way, our homeland the sea was the way he put it. Like old Neptune hasn’t brought seventy-three types of hell on us with his hurricane tidal waves, his overflowing the seawalls, his flooding everything within three miles of the coast, or when he just throws his flotsam and jetsam (my words, from school, I like them) on the projects beaches whenever he gets fed up. So I have to defend this frail’s action, and gladly.

You know it really is unbelievable once you start to think about it how many of these songs don’t have people in them with names, real names, nicknames, anything to tag on them. Here it’s the same old thing. Markin would just blithely go on and makes up names but I’ll just give you the “skinny” without the Markin literary touches, okay. Rather than calling the girl every name in the book for disturbing the fishes or the plankton like Markin I am trying to see what happened here to drive her to such a rash action. Obviously they, the unnamed boy and girl, had an argument, alright a big argument if that satisfies you. What could it have been about? Markin, wise guy Markin, wants to make it some little thing like a missed date, or the guy didn't call or something. Maybe it was, but I think the poor girl was heartbroken about something bigger. Maybe boyfriend didn’t want to “go steady” or maybe he wasn’t ready to be her ever lovin’ one and only. Let me put it this way it was big, not Markin’s b.s. stuff.

Okay she went over the edge, no question, running down to the sea and jumping in. On a rainy night to boot. Hey she had it bad, whatever it was. But see old Neptune, Markin’s friend, maybe father for all I know, is taunting said boyfriend, saying he is taking his baby away. Well, frankly, and old wimpy Markin dismissed this out of hand, those are fighting words in the projects, and not just the projects either. And the girl, given the cold and what that does to you when you have been in too long is forced to taunt her lover boy, trying to bring him down too. This is the part I like though, although Markin would probably take umbrage (again), the boyfriend is ready to reclaim his honey, come hell or high water. Yah, he’s taking his baby back, and taking her no questions asked, from that nasty relentless sea. Chalk one up for our side. Yes, Billie, William James Bradley, is happy, pleased, delighted and any other words you can find in the library that this story has a happy ending. Markin be damned.