From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay, Circa 1958

 

Peter Paul Markin and Frankie Riley had known each other from the days in the old 1960s North Adamsville neighborhood, the old just barely working- class neighborhood where the chronically unemployed, under-employed and just plain ne’er-do-wells, mainly Irish, mainly third or fourth generation Irish and thus firmly planted by the prior toil of forbears lived, where they had met, beyond North Adamsville Junior High corridor met, while hugging the walls (literally according to both sources) at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent, of course, and other odd-ball feast days like the Feast ofthe Immaculate Conception which even as ignorant, flat- out ignorant as these boyos were drew a guffaw) “sock hop” held by the senior parish priest, Monsignor Lally.

Held to, well, “keep an eye, maybe more than one, on the younger portion of his flock,” as he expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement for the next one in the line-up. The real reason, of course, whispered among the young, including wall-huggers Markin and Riley, was to keep said young sheep, away from too much heathen (read: ersatz Protestant music probably a Baptist or Unitarian conspiracy, the good priest spouted both theories) devil’s music; that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying, butt-flaying, making the girls“wet” (wet in the wrong places) praying false god Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, that unprotected flock to a person, but especially those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Adamsville Beach listening to fogged-up car radios in the back seat and digging the beat while, well, just while or for those without golden automobile access or too young, away from the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section of course, for the young set, the car-less healthy young interested in s-x (you know just in case the old bastard is still around).

Although they had known each other for some fifty years and were duly standing against the wall, as in old Sacred Heart day, at Lucy’s the site of their fiftieth anniversary high school class reunion not far from the old high school, North Adamsville High, Peter Paul and Frankie still remembered the first song that had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school time sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason they remembered that song so vividly was one sparking blue-eyed, flaming red-haired Clara Murphy, a girl who had given both of them her come hither twelve-years old look that night (and previously at school) and they had been hooked, hooked as bad as men (okay, boys) could be hooked by a woman (okay, girl). So it was not surprising that they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment decide whether she liked Peter Paul or Frankie better, or whether she liked either of them, according to Frankie’s intelligence source, his younger sister Amy who was friends with Clara’s sister Bonnie and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and turned them both down.

Naturally that denial after those come hither looks inflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks Peter Paul and Frankie made every mad school boy attempt to win her favors. Both had recklessly, although determinedly, courted legal danger by “clipping” (five finger discount, oh, you know, petty larceny) onyx rings (Frankie’s had a diamond in the center) for her (again intelligence, reliable intelligence, Clara sister Bonnie via Amy, had informed them separately that she liked those kinds of rings). She accepted both as tokens of friendship she called it. Ditto 45 RPM Elvis and Jerry Lee records (an easy “clip” for these adventurers, just place under your undershirt and walk out, or better slide into your underpants, no salesperson is going there, no way). Accepted, dispassionately accepted. Not ditto though, not ditto “clipped” flowers and candy (especially when Clara heard how the previous goods were “purchased” although she did not go so far as to give them back). They had each worked, really dragged their butts carrying doubles, as caddies as the local golf course to gather the dough necessary for those expenses. And on it went like that for several weeks.

To no avail because, also exhibiting another aspect of budding wiles, Clara took up with Bill Larkin, their friend and fellow classmate Kenny’s older brother (one year older). Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing, unquote.Both men laughed at the recollection that reunion night, a bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill, they later had drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s with Clara as a Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick –like lead singer and Bill on lead guitar, and a few years after that Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty town in Mexico, Sonora, they thought, when a major drug deal went south on him.

According to the reports, police reports, Mexican police reports, so maybe a little off on the details, but on point on the face-down dead part, Bill and Clara had “muled” many times for one of the budding drug cartels. Bill had decided to go “independent”trying to take-off with one of his deliveries to be used as seed money for his own operation and wound up in a back alley with six slugs in the back of his head. Clara who had accompanied him on that fateful trip (and had been holding that delivery, ten kilos of coke just then becoming the drug of choice for the hipsters, and not cartel recovered) was never heard from again.

Just then some oldies but goodies aficionado, or someone who had seriously misspent his or her youth, put Roll and Rock Is Here To Stay on, and for the life of the two boyos they couldn’t remember until later that Danny and the Juniors had recorded that song as well. They then raised a drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of their youth.

 

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Beat Was Neat-A Film Clip From The B-Film Classic “High School Confidential”

I ain’t saying that this low budget be-bop B-film’s (although with a solid A on the rock and roll intro with Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano in back of a flat-bed truck flailing, yes, flailing away on his classic rock and roll song, teen angst-busting , teen alienation-busting song, High School Confidential,  heralding the hint, just the hint, of a possibility that we of the generation of ’68 might be getting ready for that big jail break we were sitting under some atomic bomb air raid school desk looking for a sign of) “beat” poetess  will make you throw away your personally autographed first edition City Lights copy of mad monk om om man Allen Ginsberg’s Howl  or even some torn-up paperback copy of Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues or even some shotgun version of street gunsel mad poet Gregory Corso’s machine gun sonnets but she was a sister, a sister in the struggle to break out of squaresville, to break out of the void, to break from nine to five, to break from soda fountain giggle girl dreams, to break from seventy-six, count ‘em, forms of teen angst and sixty-six, count ‘em again, forms of teen alienation, to break from same old, same old, to, ah hell, just to break as portrayed by know nothing  Hollywood with its angst-less dreams and its alienation-less non-sorrows. So be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop. 

 

I ain’t, furthermore, saying that everything the sultry sister (1950s sultry don’t touch me just listen tea-head, but what were we to know of that kind of sultry out in Podunk teen land, cashmere sweater, black skirt, maybe devil black stockings not shown, teen boy dreams sultry whatever her message, or even no message but bop) had to say had its head on straight. Or that if we, we meaning those fledgling angst-filled, alienation sorrowed  ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club (no liquor allowed, no petting allowed, no, no allowed enforced by burly  guys with direct access to parents/priests/teachers/cops/authorities and hence to some mischievous god),  a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,  sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,  against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, that we would have understood half, hell, a quarter of what she said but like some mad dash shaman, oops, shaman-ess, it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop. 

 

And I definitely ain’t saying that even if  all she said did have its head on straight that we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club,  a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,  sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,  against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, would have dug, yes, dug, in dig beat language dug, exactly what she had to say any more than when our time did come (when we shed teen know nothing-ness, Hollywood know nothing-ness,  parent know nothing-ness, cop know nothing-ness, priest know nothing-ness, authorities know nothing-ness), the time when we got our bloody jail break time signal, that we more than echo- listened to om om-antic New Jersey mad monk Allen Ginsberg (tea head, acid head, Buddha head) howl against that evil night, or to Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac, sweet Lowell mill boy gone sour, sitting  in some hell-hole mere florida trailer park (or bungalow, maybe) sweating whiskey and hubris against his children, or to New Jack City Gregory Corso playing the lone ranger against the death night, but it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.   

 

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Rex Harrison’s “Night Train To Munich”

                                                         

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Carol Reed’s Night Train To Munich.

DVD Review

Night Train To Munich, Rex Harrison, Paul Henreid, Dorothy Lockwood, directed by Carol Reed, 20^th Century Fox, 1940

You have to hand it to the British, at least the cinematic British , to be able to both keep a stiff upper lip and to play World War II, European Theater, you know Hitler, Munich, the Third Reich and all hell breaking loose, including  the bombing of London, for laughs, or at least in an archly humorous manner. Maybe it was just to keep the home front spirits up but watching this one seventy years later knowing what we know about what happened on all fronts and by most of the parties was a little disconcerting.     

 Here’s why. The deal had been done in Munich (a place name that stands for sell-out in world politics, rightly or wrongly compared, even today) whereby Czechoslovakia was forthwith handed over to Hitler in order, well, in order to bring “peace in our times.” This little action culminated the veer to war, big time war, after the earlier annexation of Austria and the forming of a German protectorate in Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia and merely whetted Hitler’s appetite. Serious stuff though, very serious especially for political opponents of the Nazis and those who had some special skills that the Third Reich could make use of in some way, particularly for military purposes. Of course the other players in the war build-up drama, including Great Britain, had that same interest.  And that conflicting premise forms the thriller core of this film.         

Enter one Czech scientist who is able to escape to London before the Nazis grab him and his clever fetching daughter who wound up left behind, left behind in a concentration camp when the German Army marched into Prague. The Germans were, however, ready to move might and main in order to get the scientist’s services so they sent a loyal Nazi-enflamed officer (played by Paul Henreid last seen in these quarters leading the European resistance, and caught up in a Rick’s Cafe love triangle in Morocco, in the film Casablanca.  Go figure.) into the camp to track him down by having him plot an escape for him and the daughter in order to win the daughter’s confidence. He does track the scientist down and brings him and the daughter back to Germany. That in turn triggers British efforts led by an undercover naval officer (played, played archly, very archly by Rex Harrison) who infiltrated the German high command in order to get one important scientist back to the Allied side.

Of course all of this is going on while Germany, in the meantime, has invaded British ally Poland which in the real world might have complicated things a bit. A very big bit. Not to worry though  Rex’s plan, and some personal heroics to impress that fetching daughter, to get father and daughter away to neutral Switzerland  via various subterfuges (including enlisting a pair of  British travelers, arch, very arch, British travelers) in the end gets them away from the grasping clutches of  the arch-villain Henreid. So you can see why this one is, well, like I said is disconcerting. This is not director Carol Reed’s best thriller effort, not by a long shot, the classic 1949 thriller The Third Man starring Orson Welles is.              

 

In The Time Of The 1950s Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out- On The Beach

 

 

A while back I was on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in an extensive 1950s Birth of  Rock ‘n’ Roll retrospective series. A lot of those  reviews had been driven by the artwork which graced the covers of each CD, both as catalyst to stir ancient memories and as a reflection on that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may have been, to the themes of those artwork scenes. One such 1959 cover showed a case of the latter, not fitting into such a scene by me. On this particular cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time, school’s  out for the summer, when we had at least the feel of our generational jail breakout before autumn prisons), two sun-bleached, muscular, blondish perfect wave surfer guys, brightly colored surf boards in tow, perfect wave-waiting  checking out the scene. The scene, the checking out part, at the beach naturally, and the only scene that mattered whether like them you fit in, or like me, not, involved seeing who was who among the hot bikini-clad girls (also on jail-break time) who to name my beach scene, eternally, sat on their collective blankets between the Olde Saco Yacht Club and the Seal Rock Boat Club waiting, well, waiting to be checked out by those guys, ah, those guy who fit in (all others, all beatniks, nerds, geeks, dweebs, shys, acne-encrusted,   call your not fit in shot name, go up to lame Olde Saco Pier or over to Perkins Cove and fish, play skee ball at the amusement park, watch the waves go in and out, or, hey, just disappear).      

That scene, that hot bikini-clad girls scene collectively blanketed, although not pictured (except a little background fluff to inform you that you are at the beach, the summer youth beach and no other, certainly not the tortuous family beach scene with its lotions, luggage, lawn chairs, lunches, and longings, longings to be elsewhere in early teen brains at those Olde Saco Pier and Perkins Cove locales of my youth), could, frankly, only mean checking out the babes, girls, chicks, or whatever you called them in that primitive time before we called them sister, and woman. No question too that this whole scene was nothing but a California come hinter scene, as against my hardened eastern seaboard hale winds and hearty fellows scene except about six week in July-August . No way that it had the look of Eastern pale-face beaches, family or youth-driven. This scene was nothing but early days California dreamin’ cool hot days and cooler hot nights with those dreamed bikini girls.

Wait up. These perfect wave –waiting guys, all cool and collected, and maybe already dated up for the next week and just, well, just being perfect-wave-waiting guys staying in practice ,were, however, no question  just flat-out “beach bums.” No way that they were serious surfer guys, certainly not Tom Wolfe’s LaJolla Pump House gang where those corn-fed sons and grandsons of Okie/Arkie migrations then with disposable teen incomes and time on their hands surfers lived for the perfect wave, and nothing else better get in the way. For such all day (and all night too if the tides flows dictated) activity one needed rubberized surf suits complete with all necessary gear. And the girls? Well, yah, girls fit in, sitting on that same beach waiting for their surfer guys to find that perfect wave and scream out all oohs, and ahhhs. But also “civilians” don’t even think off talking (although looking was okay, even surfer-sworn girls needed to practice their teaser arts) down at Lookout Point section reserved, strictly reserved, So, in short, these cover guys are “faux” surfers. Whether that was enough, whether the times were desperate enough for the “faux” to have their day, to draw the attention of those bikini-shes not pictured that they are unquestionable checking out I will leave to the reader’s imagination.

As for the music, the 1959 music, that backed up this summer scene we were clearly in a trough, the golden age of rock, with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis kissing his cousin, with Elvis in the tank, and with Chuck Berry messing with the Mister’s women too much was fading, fading fast into what I can only describe as the age of “bubble gum” music (and the age of “faux” surfers as well, so maybe those guys were onto something). Sure I listened to it, listened to it hard against my ear on my old transistor radio, mainly because that was all that was presented to us. It was to be a while until the folk (folk minute, anyway), folk rock (later and longer), British invasion (read: Beatles and Stones as leaders), and free expression rock (read: drug-induced acid rock, flaming night strobe beam dreams and crashes too) engulfed us. This was the time of our marking time , as the music attested to (and those golden boys made their mickey mouse moves while beautiful black chino pant-flannel shirt-work boot-beret 24/7/365  midnight sunglass clad “beats” were shunted off to not fit in Olde Saco Pier skee ball shoot-out hells).

There were, however, some stick-outs that have withstood the test of time. They included: La Bamba, Ritchie Valens; Dance With Me, The Drifters; You’re So Fine (great harmony),The Falcons; Tallahassee Lassie (a favorite then at the local school dances by an eastern seaboard  beach boy who made good), Freddy Cannon; Mr. Blue (another great harmony song and the one, or one of the ones, anyway that you hoped, hoped to distraction, that they would play for the school dance last dance), The Fleetwoods; and, Lonely Teardrops, Jackie Wilson (a much underrated singer, then and now, including by this writer after not hearing that voice for a while).

Note: After a recent trip to the Southern California coast I can inform you that those two cover boy surfer guys are still out there and are still checking out the scene, or the ghost of that scene with those same bikini blankets. Although, reality check, that scene for them now is solely the eternal search for the perfect wave complete with full rubberized suit and gear. No artist would now, or at least I hope no artist would, care to rush up and draw them. For now these brothers have lost a step, or seven, lost a fair amount of that beautiful bongo hair, and have added, added believe me, very definite paunches to bulge  those rubberized surfer suits all out of shape. Ah, such are the travails of the baby-boomer generation. Good luck though, brothers.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay, Circa 1958

 

CD Review

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Follow-Up Hits, Ace Records, 2008  

Peter Paul Markin and Frankie Riley had known each other from the days in the old North Adamsville neighborhood where they had met while hugging the walls at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent of course) “sock hop” held by the parish priest, Monsignor Lally to, well, “keep an eye on the younger portion of his flock,” as he expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement. The real reason, of course, was to keep said young sheep, away from too much heathen (read: Protestant) devils’ music; that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Adamsville Beach listening to fogged-up car radios and digging the beat while, well, just while or at the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section for the really young, the car-less young interested in s-x just in case the old bastard is still around.           

Although they had known each other for some fifty years now, and were duly standing against the wall at Lucy’s at their fiftieth anniversary high school class reunion not far from the old high school they still remembered the first song that had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason they remembered that song so vividly was one Clara Murphy. See they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment decide whether she liked Peter Paul or Frankie better and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and turned them both down.   

Naturally that denial enflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks they
made every mad attempt attempt to win her favors. To no avail because, also exhibiting another aspect of her wiles, she took up with Bill Larkin, their friend and fellow classmate Kenny’s older brother (one year older). Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing, unquote.  Both men laughed at the recollection, the bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill, they had drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s, and a few years after that Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty town in Mexico, Sonora, they thought, when a major drug deal went south on him. Clara was never heard from again.

Just then some oldies but goodies aficionado, or someone who had seriously misspent his or her youth, put Roll and Rock Is Here To Stay on, and for the life of the two boyos they couldn’t remember until later that Danny and the Juniors had recorded that song as well. They then raised a drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of their youth.           

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Watching The Submarine Races, Circa 1960

 

 

 

Chains-Carol King

Chains, my baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

Chains, well I can't break away from these chains
Can't run around 'cause I'm not free
Woh these chains of love won't let me be

Now believe me when I tell you
I think you're fine, I'd like to hold you
But I can't break away from all of these chains

My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

I wanna tell you pretty baby
Your lips look sweet, I'd like to kiss them
But I can't break away from all these chains

My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

Chains
Chains of love
Chains of love
Oh these chains of love gotta hold on me

“No Jimmy, no I can’t go out with you tonight, I have to study for tomorrow’s biology exam ,“ protested Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, Jimmy LaCroix’s , one and only, his ball and chain, his, well, sweetie, the one that he gave his ever-loving’ class ring to. His gave that valued, girl-valued if not pawnbroker- valued, class ring the night that Lorraine and he had first gone down to watch the “submarine races” off of Olde Saco Beach (Maine), or rather  down at the Seal Rock lovers’ lane end. Seal Rock where rumor, long-time rumor had it going back a couple of generations, that that locale was where many knots were tied (sex, for the clueless, the 1960 clueless, the 1960 non-Olde Saco clueless) and sealed their love, or at least did the deed, get it, by placing the assignation parties’ initials on that rock on their, ah, first assignation. Of course , only after having watched those mythical nighttime submarine races deep in the back seat of some father-borrowed (meaning some tail-fin Plymouth, strictly for universal square parents, and, and serviceable for the “races,”) or better, some father- bought, reflecting good times, souped-up two-toned ’57 Chevy and thus chisel-worthy. (Jimmy had borrowed his older brother Jeanbon’s, called Jack except at mother/grandmother home, Dodge in exchange for a full wax job on the car. Cheap at any price after the fact Jimmy thought, Jimmy Lorraine fulfilled thought.          

Jimmy this night though protested to her that he had not seen his sweet Lorraine for five whole days since he had been ill and therefore indisposed. Jimmy tried every trick in the book, including the old dodge of studying together at her house (more specifically in the basement family room) but nothing worked, nothing that night. Or for that matter the next several nights. Jimmy was beside himself. And one did not have to be a high-priced psychiatrist or a sociology professor at some elite university to know that Jimmy had the “itch,” the submarine races itch. But beyond that his, if you could believe Jimmy’s corner boy talk, or more importantly, his Olde Saco High Monday morning before school boys’ “lav” weekend lie-fest confession of love for one Lorraine Dubois (to clearly stake out his “territory” for anyone within earshot who might have Lorraine, fetching Lorraine Dubois thoughts, on their mind). 

See before Lorraine Jimmy was strictly what his corner boys called a “love ‘em and leave 'em kind of guy.” (Said corner boys holding forth over at Mama’s Pizza Parlor, the one on Main Street with the jukebox and kind of reserved after school and on weekends for Olde Saco teen-agers. Others could go there at their peril during those hours and were kindly advised to go to Mama’s on Atlantic Avenue that was kind of set aside for families and others in no particular need of jukeboxes, lively girl and boy watching, or stuff that might other cause too much excitement contrary to doctor’s orders.) 

Such guys, such callow youth, existed even in the very attached by sixteen (and therefore theoretically for life), married by eighteen, two bratty kids by twenty world of the old French –Canadian quarters in Olde Saco (the local F-Cs called it the Acre, as in God’s Little Acre, the actual residents, at least some, called it Hell’s Acre).  Jimmy, having seen that unchanging cycle in his downhill parents, his older brother Jean, his older sister Lara, and about twelve hundred other Acre families wanted none of that. No way. Not for him.

Until Lorraine. Until not so sweet Lorraine that is. She threw Jimmy for a loop and had him running through hoops from the first time he eyed her in tenth grade homeroom over at Olde Saco High. And after almost two years he finally got her to the races. (Little did Jimmy know, know then anyway, that he could have successfully made his move much earlier if he hadn’t been so single-minded in trying to get her to the Seal Rock traditional mating ground. At least according to his corner boy, Ray Bleu, or rather Ray’s sister who heard that pronouncement from Lorraine at one Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” weekend doings lie-fest.)

So Jimmy surrendered, surrendered that night without a fight, because after all what is a guy going to do when a frill (local Acre guy talk for a girl, woman in those days) has a guy all balled- up and calling her every night just to hear the sound of her voice. So every one of those nights after Lorraine gave Jimmy her nightly excuse for the day Jimmy went to his room, threw his younger brother, Raymond out, closed and locked the door and played Chains by The Cookies a few times and fell asleep. Raymond knew enough not to knock and so he spent more than one night sleeping on the downstairs sofa.        

P.S. Jimmy and Lorraine were married, married over at Saint Brigitte’s (just like their parents and grandparents) at eighteen (just graduated and she three months pregnant for the curious, from Seal Rock submarine race initialed-love adventures or elsewhere was not entirely clear. Entirely clear is that Jimmy got his “itch” problem with Lorraine worked out ), had two so-so bratty kids by twenty and the last I heard were still “chained” together forty years later. Go figure.

When Beat Was Neat-A Film Clip From The 1950s B-Film Classic “High School Confidential”

I ain’t saying that this B-film (although A on the rock and roll intro with Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano in back of a flat-bed truck flailing, yes, flailing away on his classic rock and roll song teen angst, teen alienation song High School Confidential  heralding the hint, just the hint, of a possibility that we of the generation of ’68 might be getting ready for that big jail break we were sitting under some atomic bomb air raid desk looking for guidance on) “beat” poetess will make you throw away your personally autographed first edition City Lights copy of mad monk om man Allen Ginsberg’s Howl  or even some torn-up paperback copy of Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues or even some shotgun version of street gunsel mad poet Gregory’s Corso’s machine gun sonnets but she was a sister, a sister in the struggle to break out of the square, the big box that they had waiting for us as portrayed by Hollywood. Be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.        

I ain’t saying that everything the sister had to say had its head on straight or that if we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teen age night club,  a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,  sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,  against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, that we would have understood half, hell, a quarter of what she said but like some mad dash shaman, oops, shaman-ess, it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…Be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop. 

And I definitely ain’t saying that even if  all she said did have its head on straight that we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teen age night club,  a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,  sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,  against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, would have dug exactly what she had to say any more than when our time did come that we more than echo listened to om-antic mad monk Allen Ginsberg howl against that evil night, or Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac sit in some hell-hole mere florida trailer park sweating whiskey and hubris against his children, or Gregory Corso playing the lone ranger against the death night, but it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…Be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.