***As Our 50^th Anniversary Year Approaches… “Forever Young” (Magical Realism 101)

 

…an old man bundled up against the December weathers begins to run, no, better, jog/shuffle along the Causeway end of Wollaston Beach (by the CVS, formerly the First National, if you have not been in the old town in a while), huffing and puffing, head down and this day full of thoughts triggered by his up-coming 50^th anniversary high school class reunion. Thinking just then of the irony of running along a section of his old high school cross-country course, and as he moved along, of those mist of times Wollaston Beach days when he longingly looked out at the sea as if it could solve some riddle of existence. Thinking too, as he struggled along, of times when he was young and flexible and if not fast then able to run the distance in about half the time it would take him this day (his fast running friend back then, Bill Cadger, said he had the “slows,” well okay he had had a point).

As he settled into a pace he began thinking about places he had hung around back in the day, places like Harry’s Variety over on Sagamore trying to cadge pin-ball games from the rough and tumble corner boys; hanging  out at Balducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” begging girls to play some latest song on the jukebox; and, hanging out on sweaty summer nights on the front steps of North, no money in pocket, with that same Bill Cadger, also penniless, speaking of dreams, small dreams of escape and big puffed-ball cloud dreams of success.

Moving along he remembered, an old man’s harmless flash remembering, standing in corridors between classes day-dreaming of, well, you know, certain now nameless girls and of giving furtive glances to a few which they totally ignored. And remembrances too of sitting in classes, some dank seventh period study hall, wondering about what would happen Friday night when he and his corner boys cruised Wollaston Beach (HoJo’s a must stop on hot summer nights, make his cherry vanilla), the Southern Artery (Marley’s,  Pisa’s Tower of Pizza, Adventure Car-Hop, not the real names but memory failed him), and in a pinch going “up the Downs” to Doc’s Drugstore on Billing’s Road, looking, looking for adventure, looking for some magic formula to wipe away the teen angst and alienation blues that crept up on him more than was good for him.                  

An old woman (Jesus, better not say that, make that a mature woman) also bundled up against the December weathers, begins to walk, haltingly, but with head up (proper posture just like her mother taught her long ago), along Wollaston Beach from the Adams Shore end (around what is now Cady Park, named after some long ago fallen Marine). She was drawn to the beach this day after thinking that it had been almost 50 years since her high school graduation and she needed to reflect on that. Thinking thoughts about this beach and about old flames met here and what had happened to them (and creeping into her memory that first kiss sitting in the back seat of her girlfriend’s boyfriend’s car, what was his name, with him, some old flame now un-nameable as well, and about, she blushed as she thought of it, that first French kiss and how she felt awkward about it).

Later in her walk thoughts, funny thoughts, emerged about all the lies she told about those same steamy weekend nights just to keep up with the other girls at talkfest time (not knowing until much later that they too were lying just to keep up with her). And of all the committees she had been on; dance committee, North Star, Manet, whatever would keep her busy and make her a social butterfly.

Then a mishmash of thoughts flooded her mind as she passed Kent Park near the now vanished bowling alleys. About the girls’ bowling team she belonged to wondering, now wondering, why they kept the boys’ team separate; of reading in that crusty old Thomas Crane Public Library “up the Square” where she first learned to love books and saw them as a way to make a success of herself, and had; and, of hot sweltering summer afternoons with the girls down at the beach trying to look, what did Harry call it, “beautiful” for the guys.                

Somewhere between the Squantum Yacht Club and the Wollaston Yacht Club the old man and the mature woman crossed paths. He, she, they gave a quick nod of generational solidarity to each other and both thought they knew the other from some place but couldn’t quite place where. After they passed each other the old man’s pace quickened for a moment as he heard some phantom starter’s gun sounding the last lap and the mature woman’s walk became less halting as she thought once again about that first kiss (whether it was the French kiss that stirred her we will leave to the reader’s imagination) as each reflected back to a time when the world was fresh and all those puffed-cloud dreams of youth loomed ahead of them.        

 

Forever Young-lyrics by Bob Dylan 

 

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

 

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

 

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

 Copyright © 1973 by Ram's Horn Music; renewed 2001 by Ram’s Horn Music

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin – They Shoot Blackmailers, Partner  

 

 

As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story although not about himself but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars driving cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after the deck ran out).

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

A lot of times guys, hard guys with fast-trigger fingers, or an itch for the high life fall off the edge, fall into places where they never should have fallen. Take our slumming streets of Los Angeles private eye Stubs Lane’s client, let's call him Lance Landry, in this short story about blackmailers (although I would not bet money, bet six-two and even money, that pressed, hard-pressed blackmailers would not be above putting a pair of slugs in anybody who got in their way if necessary). Lance, a hard guy, a former hard guy anyway from back East who went West for the sun, easy pickings, and golden pay- dirt, had an old flame thing, and maybe not so old flame, for Rita Farr. Yes, Rita Farr the exotic and erotic latest 1940s screen siren who made all the boys flutter and the girls shutter (that the boys are fluttering of course, and not over them) was working on another picture to enrich Paine Productions. Paine Productions which had a great deal at stake in the reputation of one Rita Farr.

That is where the maybe not so old flame with Lance came in. See the studio put the big nix sign on Rita and Lance being together. It seemed then (and maybe now too) that movie stars, high profile sex goddess movie stars and rough -edged gangsters were a lethal audience mix. So Lance was out. Except somebody, okay, a blackmailer, had the photos and letters that showed for all the world to see that Lance was still carrying the torch, had still seen Rita after the studio nix.

Enter our man Stubs whom Lance had hired to keep an eye on Rita, keep the riffraff and grifter of the world away from her. Stubs, not always able to be choosy about whom he worked for, and in any case was friends, or at least on speaking terms with more than one outlaw as part of his chosen work, including Lance, took the job, took it seriously too.

 

The problem was that no sooner had Philip been employed than Rita was kidnapped by her driver, kidnapped at the behest of a party (or parties) unknown. As we all know that falling down on the job would make a tough gumshoe like Stubs see red, seek to right thing up quickly, in short, to deliver the ransom and create hell for the kidnappers. And so he did, taking guff from the studio boss, from Lance, from the party unknown, including a few fists flying and bullets whistling by along the way.

But some rough justice wins out in the end. It seems that one of Lance's old partners in crime, as will happen in any enterprise, did not like being shut out of the golden pay- dirt and was seeking revenge for that slight. In the end he went down, the actual kidnapper went down, and even Lance went down in order to save Rita when things got dicey at exchange time. And Rita? Well Rita after taking a run for the satin sheets at Stubs in gratitude (so he said) who was not buying, possibly fearing an affair with Rita might come with a bullet not far behind, went off to marry the studio boss. Jesus.

 

 

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator – The Wind 

 

As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story although not about himself but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars driving cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after the deck ran out). Marlin let Stubs tell it in his own voice and I will do so here.      

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Sure I have been around the block, around the block of life, but also around the block of seeing stuff that is sometimes better left unremembered if not creating some vague sense of unease about my fellow man. Yeah, I am a detective, no, not the kind that snoops looking into bedroom windows or stand outside the door of illicit hotel rooms listening for that sound, the sound, coming from within that meant a big payday for me in some divorce case (and no, not like some shamuses, I didn’t linger to hear the thrashing and grunts, no need on groan and I knew the silky sheets were being messed up).  And not the kind that chases down some missing person who wants to stay missing, missing from some overbearing husband or wife. Although I have done my share of those cases, more than my share.

What I do is try to come in, paid by private parties to do so, and find out why somebody is embezzling the company, why the books don’t match up, why some guy committed a felony of some sort against my client, and sometimes why somebody got killed, got murdered doing something. Yeah, the cops, the public cops do okay most of the time if the whole thing is laid out for them like a guy shoots another guy and runs to the stationhouse to turn himself in pronto. That is they solve if they are not busy cadging coffee and crullers, shaking down the owner, or giving some poor sap who just blew into town the third degree for half the crimes committed over the past six years. For the more complicated stuff. the stuff that doesn’t make sense, they fumble the ball and let it die in some cold file. Me, I go at it tooth and nail. Go at it like in the Galton case, a case of murder straight out.

It did not start out that way. It started out as a case of trying to find who in the company, the Galton Company, was leaking information, sensitive information, about some formulas the company was developing to make heat-resistant shields for aircraft. Like a lot of industries the competition to grab the first patent or copyright to anything like that was worth millions, millions in government business or private later when things were regulated. So old man Galton, or rather his right hand man Jenness, called me in to see what was happening right under their noses.   

Now when information, important information, gets leaked it is either a disgruntled, slighted employee nursing some grudge or a guy who is deep in hock, probably over some dame and her wanting habits, and would sell out his own mother to get out from under. Especially if a wanting habits dame is involved. So the first place I looked was through the employee records. Nothing. Then I nosed around the place, it wasn’t large, maybe a couple of hundred employees, to see who knew about anybody who had been spending big dough, or complaining about not enough dough, or grousing about his honey. Pay dirt.   

 

Or almost pay dirt. One of the engineers, a young guy from Cal Tech, was always fretting about the wanting habits of his girlfriend, some wannabe starlet that he had picked up in some gin mill on Hollywood Boulevard and had gone nuts  over like some guys will, although not always in Hollywood. But here is the hell of it before I could nail this guy down somebody shot him in a back alley behind the Hi-Lo Club over in El Segundo, shot him dead with two right where it hurts the most. The girlfriend did not know anything, the cops did their usual ho-hum felony robbery theory and let it slide. Me I had to double back on the thing. Something, didn’t make sense. A guy, a normal guy, with dough in his pocket when searched, got scratched for no reason just when I am honing in on him.

 

And that is where the whole thing came together. Seems that Jenness, that right hand man of Galton’s, was nursing both a grudge against old man Galton for not letting him take over day to day operations of the plants and had a secret honey, unknown to his wife secret, over in Malibu who was churning up expenses faster than he could steal the secrets. The engineer ran into the couple one day at the Santa Monica Pier and put two and two together. He became expendable, very expendable since the woman Jenness was with was not his wife whom he had met at Christmas party one year. They hung Jenness, hung him high up in the Q a while back. Watch out for those strange Pacific winds if you are ever out this way, and remember what happened to poor Jenness when you are here, okay.

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

… it had been quite  a day as she viewed, viewed in awe since she was of an age, eighteen, when the wonders of the world could awe her, awe her small world North Adamsville existence, as the million twilight lights, maybe billion lights, of New York City came into view from the railing of ship she was standing on. It had been a struggle, a titanic struggle, to get her mother, her sainted small existence Irish Catholic mother, to let her take her first trip away from home alone. First trip of any sort except that time they drove up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire back in 1939 but at eighteen and adventurous that did not count. And she was not really alone on this trip either since one of the conditions for going was that she go with a girlfriend. In this case, Lottie, or as her mother called her, that Riley girl, who was standing awestruck right beside her just then.

And so here they were coming into the New York port after spending most of the day getting there from Rose Wharf in Boston having gone through majestic Cape Cod Canal on the way, awestruck then too. As they prepared to dock she, nor Lottie either, could not believe that so many skyscrapers, topped off by the Empire State Building, could exist in so an small area. The Boston skyline looked like some boondock outpost in comparison. They would investigate all of that after they settled into the Hotel Bellevue and freshened for the beginning of their three day stay.

They, naturally, fully expected to see all the sights, the Automat, Times Square, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, go up that Empire State Building in person, and do all that any tourist was supposed to do. But what drove them to this city, what made her cross swords with her mother, what drove her to pressure Lottie into coming along in the face of mother onslaught, and face the prospect of seasickness was to be able to go to one of the clubs, one of the billion clubs like Minton’s, the Kit-Kat , or the Hi-Top and hear real guys, Benny, Duke, Chick, Tommy, Jimmy, Frank, Jesus, maybe Frank,  whoever was in town play or sing to swing, blessed sainted swing and nothing else, for keeps. And she, they, were not disappointed as they leaped in one night from small town girls to swaying swing aficionados. And they were not dancing alone or girl to girl either but you can figure that out…                 

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

…she was just as patriotic as any other of the young women of Olde Saco, no question. The USO was sponsoring a series of Friday night dances at the Starlight Ballroom over in Old Orchard Beach for the servicemen stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Station and other military posts. So when the call for young women to act as hostesses went out in that town from the USO in Portland she volunteered. It was the least she could do to show her support for those, like her brothers, who were oversea fighting the night-takers, fighting those who wanted to make the Jacques and Jeans of the world, of their French-Canadian-etched world, sit down and take it, take it quietly.

That first Friday night she dressed herself in her best dress (from her high school graduation party), and fixed herself up to look very nice indeed (ever younger brother, Jean-Paul, did a double-take and he, that funny age of thirteen, barely recognized her existence) and left the house escorted by two other female patriotic friends.

Now the idea of the dance, from the distaff side, her side, was to mingle and dance with as many young soldiers and sailors as possible without letting any one young man monopolize her time. This was not a pick-up situation, or at least it was not supposed to be and she respected the idea of mingling and dancing with one and all. Frankly she, and her two friends, while they were always talking about men, well, about prospects and sex mostly, had very little actual experience, had not dated much in high school so they were not prepared for the mad rush every guy in the ballroom would make their way. And then she spied him (or he spied her depending on whose story you wanted to believe fifty years later), him all dressed in his Marine blues, all beautiful and manly. He, or she (again depending on who you wanted to believe later), walked toward her, they talked a bit and then what would become “their song” came on and they headed to the dance floor. That night she, they, mingled and danced with others per the protocol of the evening but that was the last time either would do so. No more going away alone after the dance ended … 

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin – The Two Knives

As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story although not about himself but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars driving cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after the deck ran out). Marlin let Stubs tell it in his own voice and I will do so here.      

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

You know not all cops are on the level, in fact most of them aren’t, aren’t on the level, and maybe don’t know what being on the level entails. Oh yeah, there is a good cop every once in a while, a guy not on the take one way or another, a guy who is okay with working for coffee and crullers, a guy like Detective Danny Shea down in the Los Angeles Police Department, a guy I have worked with on a few cases. But even Danny gets squirrely ever once in a while like the time he threatened to have me locked up as a material witness in the Galton case when I refused to tell what I knew, knew confidentially, in that grisly murder case. See I should know about cops and their easy on the take ways since I run up against them as an operative for the International Operations Organization and have to pay a courtesy call on them occasionally. But that coffee and cakes part is right, they work for peanuts and so maybe they don’t feel too bad about shaving the law in the interests of their pocketbooks. And just maybe they are around crime so much it rubs off, gets easy to blur the distinctions between law and the jungle. Here’s a case in point from one I worked on the sides, the official cops get all the credit for busting one their own but it was a close thing, and a murder to boot. 

Detective Johnny Ladd and Sergeant Billy Brooks had been partners for a few years, had cracked a couple of big cases and so were moving up the line in the San Pedro Police Department. Both were on the take to Marty Sheen’s criminal operation but that doesn’t enter into this story, not the “on the take part” but Marty’s part. This was strictly an independent operation on Billy Brooks’ part. It seems that he had met some dame, Lana Wadsworth, a divorcee over at the Kit Kat Club across from the 6^th Precinct Station and the favored hang-out for off-duty cops. Well he went for her and she went for him and they talked of marriage. One night she told him about her ex-husband, a rich guy, and how she didn’t want a penny from him. Things just didn’t work a while back out and she wanted it left that way. But like I say the guy was loaded, had no relatives, known relatives anyway except Lana, and that got Billy thinking, thinking about easy street, about getting away from the coffee and cakes life, finally. 

Of course a cop, a police officer has access to all kinds of information: finger prints, criminal records, evidence room materials, and the like. So Billy grabbed some opium from the evidence room and has one of hi stoolies goes over to this Wadsworth guy’s house in El Segundo and plants the dope in the house, in Wadsworth’s study, after having given one of the servants some cock and bull story about inspecting something. Then a few days, maybe a week later, he planted an anonymous tip to his fellow officers that this Wadsworth character was selling high-grade dope to the Hollywood crowd. Then Billy went all out by saying, through one of his confidential sources, that this Wadsworth operation was protected by some high-powered weaponry in the house. Naturally the cops, including Billy who asked personally to be in on the bust,  working under  some “eminent danger” theory went in like gang-busters. Wadsworth never knew what hit him as Billy fired point blank at the man. Billy later said that Wadsworth threatened him with a gun, a gun that later proved to have been placed in his hand by Billy.  

After the dust had settled and after some civilians wanted to know what the hell happened when one of the leading citizens in El Segundo was shot down like a dog the Police Commissioner was forced to conduct an investigation. The long and short of it was that Detective Ladd was assigned to do the investigation. Billy figured he was in clear, was all set to grab the dough, especially when Wadsworth’s will had been left as it was when Lana and he were married. She was to get all the dough. Thing was though that Ladd saw early on that this thing stank to high heaven. Even then, even after he figured out that Billy had set the whole thing up, had done it for the big payoff he was willing to cover him if he would just leave town and stay out, go east someplace. Billy offered him a cut of the proceeds and he almost went for it, had in fact agreed to it when a higher up in the department learned of Billy’s role in the caper through that stoolie who set the whole thing up. Then Detective Ladd was forced to turn Billy in, did it with a certain relish roughing Billy up before he brought him in.  Yeah, so the next time somebody, some rube tells you the cops are on the level tell them the little story I just related to you, okay?   

***Out In The 1960s Psychedelic Night- The Byrds-Fifth Dimension - A CD Review

CD Review

Fifth Dimension, The Byrds, Warner Brothers, 1966
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own

Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for it’s sound
In places small faces unbound

Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone


Hari, hari, hari, rama, hari, hari came some hidden from view sound from the street, the street of street dreams and scores, or just the street outside Harvard Yard, just off Mount Auburn Street near Tommy’s Lunch, as music, stereo music, blared out from some fourth floor garret signaling the advent of the next day of the “new world.” Music, blaring night and day, and if anybody minded they kept it to themselves. More likely they craned their ears for a closer listen, listening until the notes meshed with their brains, and the slightest trance-like movement began to shake their bodies. Then the guitar sound high and shrill like no Bobby Darin flip or Percy Faith bong from a couple of years before when the music was s-q-u-a-r-e gave forth sounds that became you, man, became you. Dig it.

Just another mid-1960s Cambridge day, a day that had started fresh with a joint passed around by those fourth floor garret “squanders,” (not really, the guy whose name was on the lease was away in Europe for the summer trying to find himself and he had “sublet” the place to his hometown friend, some Cos Corner place in Connecticut, and that friend had multiplied his friends in his midnight crave wanderings around Cambridge Common), four refugees at this hour, jammed every which way on the floored mattresses that passed for sleeping quarters. Four refugees, two boys and two girls, trying to keep their heads attached, literally, against the hard war news, another seventy death casualties this week and no end in sight and one of the boys very, very draft ready.

Trying to keep their heads together, literally, against the crowding day, the do this and do that day, the day of work and more work for no real purpose in a world they did not make, and were scratching their heads to figure out. And not winning on that bet. Topped off, trying to keep their heads together, literally, against some hard drug news, hearing earlier that another comrade had been busted “for possession” down in death hole Texas. Adios amigo, there are not enough prisons for us though

That chant, that hidden from view chant, could only mean, that the Hari Krishnas, just then thick as thieves and growing in the incense, jingle-jangle bell, saffron, or whatever they called their silken sheet garb, in Harvard Square were getting ready to attend to their daily ministrations, meditations, and frankly irritating beggings. Then, like magic, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High started playing on the stereo. And another joint, or maybe just a bogart made the rounds and the four denizens of that new world started to, well, giggle, giggle that pretty soon they too would be eight miles high. And the daily bummers could wait a little longer to be figured out.