***Billie’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame-Bill Haley And The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing a commercially- produced classic rock series over the past few years. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, 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, we small time punk in the old-fashioned sense of that word, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kids’ stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie who I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yeah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.

In many ways 1956 was the key year, at least to my recollection. And here is why. Elvis may have been burning up the stages, making all the teenage girls down South sweat, making slightly older women sweat and throw undergarments too, and every guy over about eight years old start growing sideburns before then but that was the year that I actually saw him on television and started be-bopping off his records. Whoa. And the same with Bill Haley and the Comets, even though in the rock pantheon they were old, almost has-been guys, by then. And Chuck Berry. And for the purposes of this particular flash back, James Brown, ah, sweet, please, please, please James Brown (and the Flames, of course) with that different black, black as the night, beat that my mother (and others too) would not even let in the house, and maybe not even in our whole white working- class neighborhood. But remember that transistor radio and remember when rock rocked.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. I told you about him once when I was reviewing a 30th anniversary of rock film concert segment by Bo Diddley. I told the story of how he, and we, learned first-hand down at the base, the nasty face of white racism in this society. No even music, and maybe particularly not even music, was excepted then from that dead of night racial divide, North or South if you really want to know. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or maybe almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music (which is where the innocent Bo Diddley imitation thing just mentioned came from although that story was later than the story I want to tell you now).

But see we were “projects kids,” and that meant, and meant seriously, no dough kids. No dough to make one look, a little anyway, like one of the hot male teen rock stars such as Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. Now this “projects” idea started out okay, I guess, the idea being that returning veterans from World War II, at least some vets like my father, needed a leg up in order to provide for their families. And low- rent public housing was the answer. Even if that answer was four-family unit apartment buildings really fit for one family, one growing three boy family anyway, and no space, no space at all for private, quiet dreams. Of course by 1955, ‘56 during the “golden age” of working- class getting ahead (or at least to many it must seem so now) there was a certain separation between those who had moved on to the great suburban ranch house dream land and those who were seemingly fated to end up as “the projects” fixtures, and who developed along the way a very identifiable projects ethos, a dog-eat-dog ethos if you want to know the truth. It ain’t pretty down at the base, down at the place where the thugs, drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters feed off the rough-edged working poor.

That didn’t stop Billie, or me for that matter, from having our like everybody else dreams, quiet spaced or not. In fact, Billie had during his long time there probably developed the finest honed-edge of “projects” ethos of anyone I knew, but that came later. For now, for the rock minute I want to speak of, Billie was distractedly, no beyond distraction as you will see, trying to make his big break through as a rock performer. See Billie knew, probably knew in his soul, but anyway from some fan magazine that he was forever reading that old Elvis and Jerry Lee (and many of the rockers of the day, black and white alike) were dirt poor just like us. Rough dirt poor too. Farm land, country, rural, shack, white trash, dirt poor which we with our “high style” city ways could barely comprehend.

And there was Elvis, for one, up in big lights. With all the cars, and not junkie old fin-tailed Plymouths or chromed Fords but Cadillacs, and half the girls in the world, and all of them “hot” (although we did not use that word then), or so it seemed. Billie was hooked and hooked hard on that rock star performer fantasy. It consumed his young passions. And for what purpose? If you answered to impress the girls, “the projects” girls right in front of him, hey, now you are starting to get it. And this is what this little story is about.

This was late 1956, maybe early 1957, anyway it’s winter, a cold hard winter in the projects, meaning all extra dough was needed for heat, or some serious stuff like that. But see here old Billie and I (as his assistant, or manager, it was never clear which but I was to be riding his star, no question) had no time for cold, for snow or for the no dough to get those things because what was inflaming our minds was that a teen caravan was coming to town in a few weeks. No, not to the projects, Christ no, but downtown at the high school auditorium. And what this teen caravan thing was (even though we were not officially teens and would not be so for a while) was a talent show, a big time talent show, like a junior American Bandstand television show, looking for guys and girls who could be the next teen heartthrobs. There were a lot of them in those days, those kinds of backwater talent shows and maybe now too.

This news is where two Billie things came into play so you get an idea of the kind of guy he was back then. First, one night, one dark, snowy night Billie had the bright idea than he and I should go around town and take down all the teen caravan announcement advertisements from the telephone poles and other spots where they were posted. We did, and I need say no more on the matter. Oh, except that a couple of days later, and for a week or so after that, there was a big full-page ad in the local newspaper and ads on the local radio. That’s one Billie thing and the other, well, let me back up.

When Billie got wind of the contest he went into one of his rants, a don’t mess with Billie or his idea of the moment rant and usually it was better if you didn’t, and that rant was directed first to no one else but his mother. He needed dough to get an outfit worthy of a “prince of rock” so that he could stand out for the judges. Moreover the song he was going to do was Bill Haley and The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock. I will say he knew that song cold, and the way I could tell was that at school one day he sang it and the girls went crazy. And some of the guys too. Hell, girls started following old Billie around. He was in heaven (honest, I on the other hand, was indifferent to them, or their charms just then). So the thought that he might win the contest was driving him mad (that same energy would be used later with less purpose but that story is for another day)

Hell, denim jeans, sneakers, and some old hand-down ragamuffin shirt from an older brother ain’t going to get anyone noticed, except maybe to be laughed at. Now, like I said, we were no dough projects boys. And in 1956 that meant serious problems, serious problems even without a damn cold winter. See, like I said before the projects were for those who were on the down escalator in the golden age of post-World War II affluence. In short, as much as he begged, bothered and bewildered his mother there was no dough, no dough at all for the kind of sparkly suit (or at least jacket) that Billie was desperate for. Hell, he even badgered his dad, old Billie, Senior, and if you badgered old Billie then you had better be ready for some hard knocks and learn how to pick yourself up off the ground, sometimes more than once. Except this time, this time something hit Old Billie, something more than that bottle of booze or six, hard stinky-smelling booze, that he used to keep his courage and television-watching up. He told Mrs. Billie (real name, Iris) that he would spring for the cloth if she would make the suit. Whoopee! We are saved and even Billie, my Billie, had a kind word for his father on this one.

I won’t bore you with the details of Mrs. Billie’s (there you have me calling her that, I always called her Mrs. Bradley, or ma’am) efforts on behalf of Billie’s career. Of course the material for the suit came from the Bargain Center located downtown near the bus terminal. You don’t know the Bargain Center? Sure you do, except it had a different name where you lived maybe and it has names like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, etc. now. Haven’t you been paying attention? Where do you think the material came from? Brooks Brothers? Please. Now this Bargain Center was the early low- rent place where I, and about half the project kids got their first day of school and Easter outfits (the mandatory twice yearly periods for new outfits in those days). You know the white shirts with odd-colored pin-stripes, a size or two too large, the black chinos with cuffs, christ with cuffs like some hayseed, and other items that nobody wanted someplace else and got a second life at the “Bargie.” At least you didn’t have to worry about hand-me-downs because most of the time the stuff didn’t wear that long.

I will say that Mrs. B. did pretty good with what she had to work with and that when the coat was ready it looked good, even if it was done only an hour before the show. Christ, Billie almost flipped me out with his ranting that day. And I had seen some bad scenes before. In any case it was ready. Billie went to change clothes upstairs and when he came down everybody, even me, hell, even Old Billie was ooh-ing and ah-ing. Now Billie, to be truthful, didn’t look anything like Bill Haley. I think he actually looked more like Jerry Lee. Kind of thin and wiry, lanky maybe, with brown hair and blue eyes and a pretty good chin and face. I would say now a face that girls would go for; although I am not sure they would all swoon over him, except maybe the giggly ones.

So off we go on the never on time bus, a bus worthy of its own stories, to downtown and the auditorium, even my mother and father who thought Billie was the cat’s meow when I brought him around. Billie’s father, Old Billie of the small dreams, took a pass on going. He had a Friday night boxing match that he couldn’t miss and the couch beckoned (an argument could be made that Old Billie was a man before his time in the couch potato department). However all is forgiven him this night for his big idea, and his savior dough. We got to the school auditorium okay and Billie left us for stardom as we got in our rooting section seats. A few minutes later Billie ran up to us to tell us that he was fifth on the list so don’t go anywhere, like out for a cigarette or something.

We sat through the first four acts, a couple of guys doing Elvis stuff (so-so) and a couple of girls (or rather trios of girls) who did some serious be-bop stuff and had great harmonies. Billie, I sensed, was going to have his work cut out for him this night. Finally Billie came out, prompted the four-piece backup band to his song, and he started for the mike. He started out pretty good, in good voice and a couple of nice juke moves, but then about half way through; as he was wiggling and swiggling through his Rock Around The Clock all of a sudden one of the arms of his jacket fell off and landed in the front row. Billie didn’t miss a beat. This guy was a showman. Then the other jacket arm fell off and also went into the first row. Except this time a couple of swoony girls, girls from our school were tussling, seriously tussling, each other for it. See, they thought it was part of Billie’s act. And what they didn’t know as Billie finished up was that Mrs. Billie (I will be kind to her and not call her what Billie called her) in her rush to finish up didn’t sew the arms onto the body of the jacket securely so they were just held together by some temporary stitches.

Well, needless to say Billie didn’t win (one of those girl trios did, and rightly so, although I didn’t tell Billie that). But next day, and many next days after that, Billie had more girls hanging off his arms than he could shake a stick at. And you know maybe Billie was on to something after all because I started to notice those used-to-been scrawny, spindly-legged, pigeon-toed giggling girls, their new found bumps and curves, and their previously unremarkable winsome girlish charms, especially when Billie would give me his “castoffs.” So maybe his losing was for the best. My “for the best.”

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Raging Grannies 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Recently I have avidly been perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today). Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want.

As with any human event celebrating the 50^th anniversary of almost anything, any human experience, the question of grandchildren, their doings and not doings, including a zillion photographs of necessity raises its head. The probabilities of this occurring with a class website of nearly two hundred people is almost one-hundred percent. I, personally, have made it a habit to keep references to grandchildren to a minimum in my own case but I did run across a personal profile page where the question of grandchildren, lots of grandchildren, are the order of the day.        

 

Of course as I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren mentioned above, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Rose’s’ grandmother saga fits right in with that interesting to a point idea and here is why. At least my private e-mail to her why:

 

[Rose on her profile page had gone through all the usual details about post-high school schooling, marriage, children and grandchildren. The children raised part struck me as a man of the 1960s as high, nine. Rose had listed all the names and ages and I had marveled that she could remember them all. That was nothing compared to the twenty-six grandchildren, unlisted by name or age, but you could sense that she was beaming when she put that number down. Also as a result of a family experience with one child, a child with disabilities, she in her 30s had gone back to school to become a special educator to work with youngsters who had her son’s disabilities. Kudos, Rose.]    

“Rose -You cannot just leave us hanging in the air like this. You have two important stories to tell us in more detail-First -Your decision to become a special educator after your son Michael’s birth at a time when you would have been in your late 30s, had your hands full and probably had not been in involved with the rigors of school for a while. Second-You must have at least a million funny stories to tell about your platoon of grandchildren (do you have them line up ranks when they come to visit?). Stuff like remember their names (at a time when frankly I have trouble remembering where I put the car keys half the time), birthdays, etc. That will be enough writing for you until the reunion. Oh yeah, thankfully, very thankfully in your case, we may have just enough cyberspace on our class site so that you can share photos of ALL your grandchildren.”          

Enough said.

***Why Don’t You Listen To What I Have To Say- With Rod Stewart’s Lady Day In Mind

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

 

They, Sal and Edwina (no last names needed not out of any sense of legal harm or litigation but because their story survives just as well as if last names were used, survives maybe as a cautionary tale), had met in ninth grade in high school. Okay, I will tell you it was North Adamsville High School, the school that I had graduated from in 1964 although it could have been any high school. The way I heard the story, or the latest version of the story since there have been a few stages to the thing, had been through a connection with my old running mate Brad Badger (running mate in two senses, we were teammates on the track team and we also hung out together in those long ago lonesome sultry, sweaty, no dough North Adamsville summer nights talking dreams, yes, escape dreams).

 

The way I connected with him was through joining the 50^th anniversary reunion class website late last year where I noticed that he had joined, sent him some private e-mails, and we started cutting up torches about old times. Sal and Edwina came into the discussions one time when we were talking about old flames and Edwina‘s name came up because  Brad had had a unrequited  “crush” on her all through high school and never got to first base with her once Sal made his move. Brad also had stayed around town long enough after high school to keep tabs on what the pair were up to and had run into them both a couple of times. So he is the real source of this story, this ill-fated story. (Ill-fated for him as well since Brad tried to get to first base with Edwina again after the pair split. No dice.)

 

I personally did not know either Sal or Edwina but from the ninth grade on until graduation they were one of those “item” things that no school seemed to be without and which was always brought up as some kind of ideal back then, their relationship. Naturally over four years I would have heard about them but they and their problems were off my radar. I do know that at least one girlfriend I had talked dreamily about them. How they fit together and were slated to live happily ever after with kids, dogs and white picket fences thrown in. And maybe it was, and maybe it should have been but the way things worked out, or better, did not work out, that is a very close question.

 What is not in question is that North Adamsville back in those days (now too) was very much a by-the-bootstraps working-class town where almost everybody was poor, or worse. And of course Sal, son of a constantly unemployed bricklayer, and Edwina, daughter of a hardware store clerk, were no exception. So big dates were either double-dates with some Edwina girlfriend whose boyfriend had a car since Sal could never afford a car and his father had no car to offer or else they walked down to Adamsville Beach when their hormones were raging and found some secluded spot to do whatever they were going to do. And by senior year, if you could believe either the boys’ “lav” or girls’ “lav” Monday morning before school talk, they had done the “do” (if you need that explained, well, let’s just assume that you don’t). One of Edwina’s girlfriends who had been sworn to secrecy had told one of her girlfriends and that was all that was necessary. Naturally every virginal guy (and maybe girls too) envied Sal and dreamed of taking his own love down to those secluded sands. The talk around school was that since they were to be married just as soon as they got out of high school (a very, very common experience as late as the early 1960s) that they were just practicing for that eventuality. And so it went all through high school and since Edwina was a beauty and Sal was handsome in his own way they topped off their high school careers as the king and queen of the senior prom (there had been talk that this was a question of sentimental favorites since Virginia Malone was declared by one and all, including me, to be the “fox” of the class).  

And so they graduated with high hopes. Then reality set in. Sal had not been much of a student, had been more of a steady worker type and not an intellectual but he had high hopes of getting into the apprenticeship program for welders down at the shipyard, the major employer in the area giving many fathers good paying if hard jobs and other fathers further down the food chain occasional work when there were ships to be built. The announcement that the shipyard was closing and to be relocated in Greece hit Sal (and many others as well, including my occasional work father) hard. There was nothing else for him to do though but go to work in the dirty dusty granite quarries that was the town’s other major industry. Edwina, having received some scholarship money to go to modelling school, did just that and  was beginning to make connections with various locally well-known photographers and advertisers looking for a certain look, not high–end fashion model looks like in Vogue or those kinds of publications but wholesome looks for average young women consumers. Yes, Edwina fit that need, no question.    

 

And that contrast in fortunes was the downfall of the house of Sal and Edwina. Naturally Sal’s having to take any job he could find left those marriage plans in abeyance since the money at the quarries was a pittance compared to the shipyard work. Moreover Edwina began to take assignments away from town. They fought over this, fought so hard that they decided they needed time away from each other. Or rather Edwina wanted time “to grow” as she put it. The long and short of that “to grow” was that one of the advertiser’s sons that Edwina did work for, Jack Remmick, had taken to her, and she to him. So without telling Sal but also without telling him to get lost Edwina suddenly was not at home many times when Sal called. Moreover one night when she was home and consented to see him she was totally dismissive of him and his dirty fingernails and dusty clothes. And told him. Not good, not good at all.    

 

Eventually Edwina gave Sal his walking papers, although that did not stop him from trying to speak to her about the future. But the more he tried the more she dismissed him out of hand. He tried to confront her with her haughtiness but to no avail, she just laughed at him and told him to go find a nice quarry girl (meaning some girl from among his work-mates’ children, some nice working-class girl, maybe an immigrant, with no prospects except producing many children). It got worse when she snubbed him in public, snubbed him in front of friends. Sal was crestfallen but did not know where to turn. One day on the street he tried to evoke their past, their high school days when she knew what she wanted, and that what she wanted was Sal. She laughed at him again. Worse she plugged her ears when he continued to talk after she said she had to go.   

 

Sal had not seen Edwina for about a year when Brad caught wind of the story when they met in Adamsville Center on fall afternoon. (I had moved away to go to college and had assumed they were married and working on their first child.) Sal kept on saying to anybody who would listen (Brad at that moment) that he knew her back when and that she would be back.  Said he knew that she knew how to do the right thing, had back in the day anyway. Brad just rolled his eyes and thought poor bugger. Me too.

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..The Be-Bop Night  

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Recently I have avidly been perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today). Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want.

That was the case with a guy I barely knew in high school since he had moved away in the tenth grade before I had a chance to meet him since he said that at his new school he was on the track team there as I had been at North Adamsville and I assume that if he had stayed he would have been a member. He had earlier grown up for a time in the Adamsville projects where I came of age although I did not know him from there either, at least I don’t remember him from that time. This guy, a guy named Gary Tibbetts, who has as a result of permission granted by the webmaster been allowed to be part of our site although he did not graduate with us, has been regaling us with his very quirky (and sometimes purely off the wall) thoughts. Some classmates in response have commented that Gary should tone down or curtail his screeds but I have come to his defense. Not out of some free speech political angle, although that is a thought but because quirky guys should have their say too along with beaming grandparents, golfing aficionados and other hobbyists, and shop-until-you-drop devotees. So there.             

Of course as I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Gary’s is in something of a different category but let my message placed on the generic class “Message Forum” page tell the tale:

[As mentioned above Gary did not graduate from North Adamsville with us but rather at Fort Pierce High down in Florida. He insisted that despite that fact he had stronger attachments to his years in the old town. Moreover as the comments on his personal profile by those who knew him back in the day indicate he was a colorful and well-known figure then. Particularly well-known for his antics at Adamsville Central Junior High School, one of the two feeder junior highs to North (the other being Adamsville North Junior High where I went).]     

“The Bard Of Adamsville Central Junior High School, Class of 1961-In Reply To Gary Tibbetts Message Forum #21

Sorry Gary I have done you, my fellow Adamsville projects boy (he of Figurehead Lane and me of Taffrail Road) a great disservice. Yesterday in response to Danny Valentine’s MF#24 (also a fellow Adamsville projects boy who I did know, and know well) I wrote a short note (MF#25) about the need to spice up this site. In short I proposed that we s-x the site up a bit and I asked him, maybe begged him, to tell us all about his experiences at the “submarine races” down at Adamsville  Beach in the old days. But see I had neglected to read your beautiful screed before his where you had already done your best to liven things up, and maybe made a few old geezers, well let’s say, hot under the collar as they thought back to those junior high days at Adamsville Central Junior High School (the same stuff went on at Adamsville North except we only had two years to do it rather than the three you got to wreck the joint and to tweak the girls, and they us).         

Believe me, my brother, I liked your automatic writing, shades of Jack Kerouac, maybe not On The Road but definitely sections of Big Sur, William Burroughs in Naked Lunch and mad poet Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.  You are kindred even if you have never read them- you are a “beat” brother no question and even though their time was before our time and we only caught a whiff of what was brewing you carry on in their spirit. More importantly you have caught the spirit of this site- to contribute to the collective memory of our class in your own way. Who better than somebody who fifty years later wants to and can give a, well, quirky meaning to those teen experiences. Thanks Braveheart.

As The First Anniversary Of The Start Of The Trial Of Heroic Whistle-Blower Chelsea (Then Bradley) Manning Approaches- We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!- An Update

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

In a speech made on behalf of Chelsea Manning at the annual Smedley Butler Brigade Veterans for Peace- sponsored peace event on Armistice/Veterans Day last year in Boston the speaker, as he updated the audience on what was happening in her case after the  trial, mentioned that he was speaking on her behalf under the slogan -We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now! As we approach the first anniversary of the beginning of her trial on June 3, 2013 which resulted in a late August conviction on many counts, including ominously several espionage counts, and a thirty-five year prison sentence to be served at the military barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas this is another appropriate time to take stock of what has happened in her case over the past year. We in any case still operate under that Veterans Day speaker’s slogan.

 

The headlines that seemed to be a daily media occurrence last summer in the Manning case from the first of June when a couple of thousand supporters marched in front of the main gates at Fort Meade in Maryland just before the trial’s opening day through to the verdict and sentence in August are still now barely making a ripple. The verdict, the legal verdict if not the verdict of history, in the case of the United States vs. Private First Class Bradley (Chelsea) Manning was proclaimed in late August, guilty on 20 of 22 counts. The draconian 35 year hard time sentence imposed by the cruel blatantly pro-government military judge, Colonel Lind, is now being served as the appeals process slowly unwinds. The media pundits and commentators then had their say, mainly that stern justice had been served by the conviction, a conviction in keeping with their own desire to keep things secret from us and not let some lowly enlisted soldier expose their house of cards. Some, like the ostrich-like New York Times, balked a little at the excessive sentence and then moved on. Others had a momentary titter when Bradley turned into Chelsea to express her real gender identity and then they too moved on. All is now quiet, the case is yesterday’s news now long outside the 24/7 news cycle interest. In their eyes Chelsea Manning has had her fifteen minutes of fame and now she is reduced to just another military prisoner confined to the maximum security barracks out in the prairies of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth to face an uncertain future.

 

Chelsea Manning also faces the hard fate that occurs in almost all political prisoner cases; doing the hard time while waiting for the slow cumbersome appeals process to work its way through the military and civilian courts of appeal. Private Manning has already suffered a couple of set-backs in that process recently with the denial of a reduction of sentence by General Buchanan of the Washington Military District, the convening officer of her court-martial. And subsequently on the heels of that announcement hopes of a presidential pardon have faded as the White House has cowardly announced that no such request will be reviewed until all the appeals processes have run their course. Appeals which, according to Chelsea’s newly procured appeals legal team of Attorneys Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward, will take several years, more years than President Obama, who wrongfully interjected himself into the case with his comments early on, has left in office. That pardon campaign while still on-going had in any case in late September of last year taken a serious turn for the worst when the post-conviction Amnesty International/ Private Manning Support Network White House on-line petition failed, falling seriously short of getting the required 100,000 signatures that would have forced the Obama Administration to address the question posed by the petition. On the personal level the Army has fudged the issue of giving Chelsea appropriate medical treatments to reflect her gender identity, although recently a civilian judge has given her an important personal victory and boost to her morale by granting her request to legally change her name to Chelsea.

 

Chelsea has also faced the very real falloff in the fervent public support and activity around her case now that the verdict and sentence are in and the media interest has shut down around the case. There have been fewer periodic public rallies around the world from Afghanistan to the States on her behalf, reflecting a diffusion of focus now that supporters are not riveted to the public presence at trial. Despite that publicity slowdown she has received several whistle-blower awards, including the prestigious Sam Adams award, and is slated to be the honorary grand marshal of the huge San Francisco Gay Pride Parade in June (after being snubbed last year).

 

And that point above about falloff of interest is really the crux of the matter. Despite everything the struggle continues, our struggle continues until Chelsea is free. That is where we of Veterans for Peace come in, people who have served in the military, who have gotten “religion” on the right side of the angels on the questions of war and peace and who have stood in solidarity with, and defense of, Chelsea Manning since the beginning of her incarceration four years ago. All VFPers, whether we served in wars or in “peace-time,” went through the rigors and madness of basic training where hoary old drill sergeants beat us over the head with the notion that we had to take care of our buddy, that our survival, and by this they meant in the heat of battle, depended on us buying into that concept.

 

Any veteran can tell you many stories about how in the end their involvement with the military came down to just that embedded idea when the deal went done and the dust settled. Not letting our buddies down. Not leaving our buddies behind. Whether most of those drilled-in military concepts we learned are worth anything is hard to judge, fear and recklessness may in fact play a larger role. Nevertheless we can take that "not leaving our buddy behind" concept and apply it to this case. However we may end up providing support to Chelsea Manning, financial for her legal appeals and further education, political via the on-going pardon campaign, or socially with messages of solidarity sent out to her in Fort Leavenworth, or wherever civilian facility she might be transferred as a recent posting of hers from the Support Network has speculated, it is with the understanding that she is our buddy. We will not leave our sister behind. Remember that. Remember this as well- We will not let President Obama hide behind his cowardly legal screen in this case and will continue to call on him to pardon Chelsea Manning now!

***Holden Caulfield Is Me And You- J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye-Take Two

 

Book Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Catcher In The Rye, J. D. Salinger, Little Brown and Company, New York, 1945, 1991   

Yeah, I know, you and I were the only ones who ever suffered the horrors of growing up absurd in America-name your generation. Whether it was my generation, the angst-filled generation of ’68 that tried, tried like hell to seek a newer world and got our fingers burned for the efforts, efforts that faded as the decade passed and many got tired and weary of rolling that Promethean rock up the mountain, or the millennium just struggling to get out of the damn house and being able to fly on ones’ own. Yeah, whatever battle –scarred generation we, you and I, were the only ones who suffered the pangs of teen angst and alienation like it didn’t come with the territory of being a teenager ever since they invented the category back a hundred plus years ago. Hell maybe going back to Adams and Eve, or before, but you’ll have to ask Cain and Abel about that. Yeah, like every kid didn’t balk at the prospects in front of him or her in facing a society that they did not create, and had no say in creating. Just keep your head down and your eyes ahead, or else.

Personally for a long time I believed that my generation, that now hoary and aged generation of ’68, like I said the ones who made a lot of noise for a time about turning the world upside down and who today they make nostalgia films about, was the only generation that faced the grinding. Then I started talking to younger people about what had been on their minds back in their youths and, not so strangely, we could have copied each other scripts with the exception of specifics derived from generational differences. The real show-stopper though occurred one day when I was driving along to some medical appointment and listening to a talk show on NPR that was discussing the impact of J. D. Salinger’s book, the book under review, The Catcher In The Rye, on various generations. One caller, a millennial, took a couple of moments to describe his angst-filled youth and the book. Jesus, the kid, this working-class kid, described my own traumas growing up the 1950s: the eternal struggle to get out from under “know-nothing” parents; the confusion about identity, including sexual identity; the need to fit in, fit in where the others kids laughed at you and your raggedy ways; the eternal struggle to figure out girls and what they wanted (today in a more generous time just fill in the relationship struggle you are trying to figure out). Jesus.

Strange as it may seem now some of us from my time for a time made Holden Caulfield, the central figure in the book and the one who is at his wit’s end trying to figure out his world that he had not created, and had no say in creating, our literary hero, the kid who “spoke” to us in our coming of age time. That is Holden held us in thrall until we, having come of age in the early 1960s, “discovered” Sal and Dean in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and began to listen to our own beat, to understand being beaten down, beaten around but also blessed beat. But before that sea-change Holden held forth in many minds. We would even, a schoolboy friend of mine and me, if you can believe this, while we sat out in the steamy, sultry summer night on the front steps of our old high school with no money and no prospects, ask each other what Holden would do in any given situation that preoccupied us at the moment.

While there were many elements of Holden’s personality that might not ring true, or be off-putting, for any individual then (or today) like his put-downs of some of his schoolmates, his penchant for rationalizing everything to his benefit, and his snobbishness with the hired help (from elevator operators to cabbies), collectively his plight resonated. Problems of sexual identity (including homosexual yearnings not fully articulated in writings and books in the immediate post-World War II period), of intellectual identity (seemingly as a prototype for the later beat and hippie generations, of a hipster drop-out from the academy with his feeling hemmed in by institutionalized learning but with a great love of books), of class, of falseness and perversity, of the clash of household generations (ah, parents and grandparents), of fighting against a system stacked up against the young, of personal depression, they are all there. As well as are some less savory traits, a certain elitism, a certain distain of the masses, and of women, well girls really, and lots of mannerisms like having a negative spin on almost everything that one would hope he will grow out of soon.  Attributes which easy to say now but which we found, my friend and I, well, cool.              

The story line of the book is fairly simple for all the complex issues that arise in young Holden’s life in a Jetstream torrent - a couple of tough winter days in the life of a well-off New York teenager whose problem at the moment was to hide the fact, postpone really, that once again he had been kicked out of a school for, ah, “not applying himself (sound familiar).” The momentary solution to that situation which sounded reasonable to anybody who actually had been a troubled teenager was to say the hell with it and do a junior version of wine, women and song. Except, at least on the surface, our man Holden takes no pleasure in that-carping against everything not nailed down, fellow classmates, teachers, past and present, cab drivers, elevator operators, whores, dicey girlfriends. Everything. By the end it is an open book whether he will be a CEO of a major corporation or wind up on skid row. While some of the stream-of-consciousness devise used by Salinger to make his point about the modern teen condition is a little over the top, at least on my recent re-re-reading this is a great American literary work of art from one of the best of the “non-beat” New York writers hanging around in the post- World War II period. Read the book, read the book more than once like I did.

 

 

 

While there were many elements of Holden’s personality that might not ring true for any individual collectively his plight resonated. Problems of sexual identity, of intellectual identity, of class, of falseness and perversity, of the clash of household generations, of fighting against a system stacked up against the young, of personal depression, they are all there. As well as some less savory traits, a certain elitism, a certain distain of the masses, and of women, well girls really, and lots of mannerisms like having a negative on almost everything that one would hope he will grow out of.             

The story line here is fairly simple- a couple of tough winter days in the life of a well-off New York teenager whose problem at the moment was to hide the fact, postpone really, that once again he had been kicked out of a school for, ah, “not applying himself (sound familiar). The momentary solution to that situation which sounded reasonable to anybody who actually had been a troubled teenager was to say the hell with it and do a junior version of wine, women and song. Except, at least on the surface our man Holden takes no pleasure in that-carping against everything not nailed down, fellow classmates, teachers, past and present, cab drivers, elevator operators, whores, dicey girlfriends. Everything. By the end it is an open book whether he will be a CEO of a major corporation or windup on skid row. While some of the stream-of-consciousness devise used by Salinger to make his point about the modern teen condition this is a great American literary work of art from one of the best of the “non-beat” New York writers hanging around in the post- World War II period. Read the book, read the book more than once like I did.

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of….. Good Friends    

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Recently I have avidly been perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come onto the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight year old today). While on the site I came across a series of comments concerning a group of women, seven in all as far as I can gather, from the class who have by hook or by crook have held together as friends since high school days. I found that fact simply amazing and worthy of further comment.    

Of course I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or as mentioned above by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.)

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

There are other stories as well like the story of “the seven” that are also worthy of interest, although telling the story, or rather my telling the story has been greatly hampered by some code of omerta that the group has imposed on itself. Or so it seemed.  After first striking out when I sent a private e-mail to the one member of the group I slightly knew back in school, Theresa, who informed me that someone in the group would probably get around to telling the story sometime I did an end around and contacted group member Pauline who I knew not at all but who at least directed me to a central source, Delores, who did fill me in somewhat. Here is the e-mail I sent to Pauline:

“Pauline- Pardon me for the bother but I have been told that you were one of “the seven.” One of the women in our class who have stayed in touch all these years. I know that Theresa who told me that somebody from the group would eventually write something up, Paula, our super wizard website person Delores, and our class memory Joan from the reunion committee are members but I would be very interested in knowing how it all started who started it- it seems to have gone back to elementary school-which one?-Did you all hang together in high school?-what triggered you all getting together each month?-What do you do on those occasions?

Also I think you, actually all of you, should be filling up the Message Forum or the Memories page when Delores sets it up with your versions of this story. Tell us about your joys (kids, grandkids, achievements, funny things in school or life), places that you went together since I know you have taken trips together, your differences (I am sure not everything has gone well among you for that length of time), sorrows (deaths, especially in our generation-parents, things that went awry)- high school dreams that did or did not pan out. Not Oprah stuff although if that’ what you want to write about that is fine too.

I find the fact that seven women from one fairly large high school class have stuck together through thick and thin extraordinary. The closest that I have even come to that with anybody is my on and off friendship with Brad Badger the great runner from our class who I have known since Snug Harbor Elementary days. This story needs to be told in this age of Internet-directed “friendships” on FB, etc. Of course I have an ulterior motive on all this since I intent to write something about the “seven” from the outside perspective. The more I know the better sketch I can write about this grand group-Later Frank Jackman.”                   

Here is what I wound up writing, a sketch not everybody in the group was happy about:  

“On Friendship-“The Seven”-For Delores, Millie, Pauline, Paula, Karen,   Joan, and Theresa-NAHS Class of 1964

The story of the continuing active friendships of seven  of our fellow Class of 1964 classmates at NAHS has intrigued me since I first heard about it back in December. Personally I can think of only one relationship of my own that goes back to high school days. Forget about seven. I have asked around about this phenomenon as well and nobody else can come close to that number either. Amazing. 

I am a little light on details of how it all started, how it continued, and the specifics of what this group has done and is doing.  Fortunately I can make up a story (use some literary license, okay) and maybe they will grace this piece with some real details of their long- standing friendships. Thanks to Delores for some of the information below and see Paula profile page for recent photos of the honorees. Here is a little bouquet…

Hey, I have just confirmed my 158^th “friend” on Facebook today.  Well not exactly a friend but a woman who knows a woman I “know” whom I “friended” (by the way when did friend become a verb). That latter woman had been added to my “circle” after I confirmed for a man, somebody who actually is a friend of mine. Or rather a person that I do some political work with who has a huge network of “friends” and I now am part of that network. 

By the way many of those 158 friends I don’t know, have never ever met. Many are Brazilian who write in Portuguese and I don’t (I remember a little Spanish so I can roughly translate), and a number are somehow “friends” that are always pestering me to play some foolish on-line game that they participate in. All of this by way of introducing a rather strange idea these days- the idea of real in-person friends. A story about a group of friends, seven  women from the Class of 1964 at North Adamsville High (listed in the dedication), who have actually gotten together regularly and done stuff, and who have been doing that stuff together for at least forty-five years. Yes, 45 years.

Here’s how it started. One young girl, Pauline,  met another, Karen, in elementary school, the old Wollaston School, on the playground playing jacks, one won, the loser cried, the winner came over to console the loser and they thereafter were fast friends for life (no one can remember who won or who lost such are the vagaries of time but no matter). Then came dreaded hormonally-driven junior high days at Adamsville Central Junior High and those two formed a friendship with Joan to gain added shelter against the raging hormones, bothersome boys, and what to do about that “crush” two of them had on one of those same bothersome boys.

At North the group snowballed, picking up the remaining four through attendance in the same classes (some business classes) and this or that school club or event. At North this enlarged grouping came together to try to survive those still raging hormones, figure out what to do about those now not so bothersome boys, and, most importantly, what to do about that “crush” two of them had on one of those now not so bothersome boys. On the whole the group was on friendly terms at North. Maybe not every day in every way girls’ “lav” Monday morning talk- friendly but more than some passing “Hi.” (Or some such equivalent term used to acknowledge another’s girl-ness. Guys gave the ubiquitous nod.)

Then came graduation and the seven were swept away with the winds of change. Swept away to go their separate ways and look forward to more school, work, romances, and marriages. Or so they thought. Later, the year after graduation, 1965, the group came together again at a Christmas party hosted by Millie and that original mist of time from elementary school on thereafter extended itself to the present. There you have it.

Now was what the group met over lunch or some other occasion about some world-historic event, discussing matters of great national and international import. Well, maybe in passing, as those events impinged on their lives and they worried about their love ones going off to war, losing jobs, trying to get home loans, stuff like that. But what drove them was the stuff of ordinary human clay-at first school hassles, going to the Cape on summer weekends, new jobs, trying to move up the ladder, dates, finding some "Mr. Right."  

Then came marriages, marriages hopefully made in heaven, but as was the ethos then made hopefully to last forever. (There is now a famous, class famous, photograph of one of their number's wedding, Paula in 2005, so hope springs eternal.) Unfortunately the group was not exempt from the modern societal norms and not every marriage lasted as long as the friendships. The coming of  children (I will not even hazard a guess at the collective number nor will I grace this sketch with all their names and those of grandchildren for fear of running out of cyberspace) who were a joy (mainly) and animated many a luncheon table hour. Thereafter the telephone wires burned constantly with glad tidings, mainly kid-centered, and sometimes sorrows as parents passed on.  

Later as the kids went out on their own and had their own sets of children for grandmas to fret over, they had an excuse to shop away the hours again and to make Oshkosh By Gosh and the like very profitable. More ominously they talked of new pressing issues such as that tell-tale faraway look on a middle-aged husband’s face which caused alarms to ring. (It is okay to mention this male genetic defect I have had that faraway look myself, three times). That is where the bonds of friendship held firm as they gathered around to protect their own. But that vagrant look on his face passed.

A little later more mundane alarms took center stage as the first signs of that raging illness that catches us all reared its ugly head.  The medical appointments schedule replaced the kids' activities schedule in holding the place of honor on the refrigerator door. The group too began to speak more often of how husbands had become less attentive, more interested in Sunday television sports or strange desires to hit the golf links, although still pledging eternal love. 

By then though with time on their hands and some unused dough now that the kids were no longer a constant drain on the household economy they traveled, travelled by boat, by air, maybe took an automobile trip and investigated those places that they had really meant to see when they were younger but, well, his job got in the way, the kids cried for Disneyland (and in their turn the grandkids), and the time just flew. They travelled to the now obligatory Florida to catch some sun for frozen Northern bones and when they hit fifty four of them for some unfathomable reason (unfathomable to me who gets nervous and expects civilization to expire when a streetlight goes out or when I am more than ten miles from the ocean) went to the Canadian Rockies together. 

Those are the ways the group spent its time together, hanging tough, as one of their number said "through thick and thin" and without a recorded argument if you can believe that. And here they, the “seven ,” stand as a monument to some pretty old-time values on a globalized earth gone berserk with “interconnecting,” interconnecting for some purpose, some purpose that I have not quite caught on to, and they probably have not either.

They meet still, to share the latest gossip, to show endless photos of grandkids and trips taken (photo-taking the one blessed thing made easier in the world these days), to plan the next trip to the islands and to occasionally look wistfully at the calendar and wonder where the time went. Know this though in about one hundred years from now when future generations are “connecting” on VirtualRealityBook or some such “social networking” system if they look up the old-time meaning of the word “friend” on some stratospheric cloud archives they will find this very important example of what it was like when real friendships mattered. Hats off to the “seven.”

Excuse me, my 158^th “friend” just sent a message.