tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58022042353319650272024-03-05T11:20:00.604-08:00The Mumbling MuseThe Mumbling Muse is a a group of friends who love the creative arts and who want to share their experiences. What each of us sets down is a personal choice – reflections, reviews, orignial works, essays, opinions, poems, stories, must-reads, show openings, useless clap-trap, what-have-you.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-43605464239436320312009-01-26T10:04:00.000-08:002009-01-26T10:23:38.318-08:00SXSW II<div>SXSW<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">SXSW Music is four hyperactive days of making connections for musicians, recording companies and every other business touching on music, from concert bookers to copyright lawyers, publishers to Web geeks." New York Times, 3/19/07<br /></span><br /><strong>My American Pie rises</strong><br /><br /><em>A long, long time ago...I can still remember</em></div><div><em>How that music used to make me smile.</em></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYClHRah_SExrk4qorMrd-hFdZ7_GHTGFu_VgxtDeQS3uRxrMH9LEw3Nq3weJSdZK_mrdsQYyAaeFZS73sYun1MgLleqItl4wbQMviMtzbsUj1gnpCCfW7W4bH_yesob3Jm8bYy4Jw0ow/s1600-h/013ha.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295665808963028050" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 160px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYClHRah_SExrk4qorMrd-hFdZ7_GHTGFu_VgxtDeQS3uRxrMH9LEw3Nq3weJSdZK_mrdsQYyAaeFZS73sYun1MgLleqItl4wbQMviMtzbsUj1gnpCCfW7W4bH_yesob3Jm8bYy4Jw0ow/s320/013ha.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em><div><br /></em></div>And still does – otherwise why would 1700 bands show up to play their music just for me?<br /><br />Steve and I will do our second journey into blissfully hard rhythms and melodies and verses telling stories that come from today’s new musicians. These are talented, accomplished artists sometimes looking for their first record deal. Mostly, they look to find a chord lost and a riff yet to come. When they do they come to SXSW.<br /><br />I know I’m a little selfish about this festival, but seeing as how I’ve missed the first 24 blowouts, I think I should be allowed to gather more than my share at this years fest that runs from March 18 through 22. I know from last year that Steve and I must be quick and durable and have earplugs for some of the small clubs that the electrified and amplified music drives out to adoring (and critical) audiences.<br /><br /><em>Do you believe in rock n roll,</em><div><em>Can music save your mortal soul<br /></em><br />I’ve known of this festival for years and somehow never got here. Now that I’m a little older and still a believer, this venue has provided a saving shock to my soul. I was around for those early first strains of rock and roll that broke down the non-believers with its energy and poetry and love of an up-tempo beat - and then was lost.<br /><br /><em>Do you recall what was revealed</em></div><div><em>The day the music died?</em><br /><br />We were saved by the music coming out of deep urban centers that sent forth the embryos to a disappointed and disaffected generation. We awakened and subsequently nourished rock and roll back to vigor and endurance.<br /><br />Now SXSW serves my music still; those who make this festival and those young musicians alone with their guitar who play and learn in solitary places. Together they may well be that wellspring of embryos to supply a soul to generations behind me.<br />Heavy? Maybe so! Yet, today </div><div><br /><em>maybe they’ll be happy for a while.</em><br />Thanks, Don</div>bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-70358639962657804882008-12-23T06:30:00.000-08:002008-12-23T06:39:35.056-08:00Mind slushWhen snowflakes gather into a grimy pile of slush,<br />flowers dry to fragile black ash,<br />and birth transitions into death<br />Is there purpose ?<br />Is awareness nothing but a point in time ?<br />Is cycle just a continuum of endings?<br />Is there an answer to the question of life ?<br />And is that answer participation ?<br /><div align="right"><span style="font-size:78%;">- Jerry Wendt 2008</span></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-30965666558400327942008-12-16T08:56:00.000-08:002008-12-17T05:49:46.246-08:00Cadillac RecordsCadillac Records<br />………is the story of two masters: McKinley Morganfield and the twined character named Leonard Chess; one from the Mississippi fields, the other from a Chicago scrap yard. Their hard beginnings from the late forties into the sixties brought together some of the best blues musicians and put them in a studio called 'Chess Records’.<br />Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Lil Walter, Willie Dixon and more, all watching Chuck Berry play music like they’ve never heard before – leading to a brief portrayal of where all this were to lead when The Rolling Stones drove up to the door on Michigan Ave.<br />But where was Bo?<br /><br />It was Bo Diddley that wrote, first performed and recorded “I’m a Man” for Checker Records (a wholly owned subsidiary of Chess Records) in 1955 under the name Elias McDaniel. I must, therefore, ask Willie Dixon to apologize on behalf of the screenwriter for his assertive substitution of Bo (the man who called himself “The Father of Rock and Roll”) and his square guitar.<br />Historically it is litely flawed but creative license is given to the flow of feeling – if not real events. (sort of the way I write). It’s about the music, isn’t it?<br /><br />Where was Phil Chess – brother and co-owner of Chess Records (morphed into Leonard)?<br />Why would the screenwriter not mention - or devote a minute - to Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones on stage, playing together in a historical, un-equaled set of blues and rock at the Checkerboard Lounge?<br />And how could they ignore the Maxwell’s street musicians that lined the sidewalk in front of 2120 South Michigan building hoping for a sideman’s job that day. Or those hoping Lil Walter would bring a minstrel from Halstead Street into the studio for a session of the creative blues music that became rock and roll.<br /><br />Did it really? Or do you still believe that Bill Haley was first on the clock?<br /><br />If you do, you must go see this movie – historical creative license and all – because they got it right. Young people who came to see Beyonce` were treated to a lesson about the roots of rock and roll (and saw her in a better performance than her last CD (or next).<br /><br />I think some of the reality tidbits in the film more than make up for its creative license – like when Chuck Berry is listening to a radio and hears “Surfin USA” by the Beach Boys blaring out of one of Chicago’s payola stations. He says “Hey that’s my music” and becomes all upset about a guy named Brian Wilson stealing his tunes.<br />FACTOID – Chuck Berry’s name now appears as both composer and lyricist on that surf song – and gets all the royalties, too.<br /><br />The scene that humbled me was the portrayal of all I’ve been trying to get at and say in my ‘hood story; that music of that era had something to do with enhancing race relations and seeing people as people. My rendering of self and that era used (and will use more) illustrations of those small elements – like the un-equal equals on the basketball court, etc.<br /><br />But the writer and director of Cadillac Records ‘did it all’ in one 30 second scene. It was Chuck Berry (nicely played by Mos Def) on stage at the Chicago Theater. A chalk line and a police line, separating black and white teens, all crossing the line to intermingle and dance and share the joys of music with each other if even for one night – all to the strains of “Maybelline” (which came out of a country music song called “Ida Red”).<br />Thirty seconds of film depicting a ten year period of time and conveying exactly the right message – I’m very, very jealous.<br />And feel very, very good about having been there!bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-67964482962788243742008-11-16T19:07:00.001-08:002008-11-16T19:11:03.111-08:00Reflective perspective<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPcMGRJrQpVvbSrzy5k-YbEpc8hSRbtLI1uj2BDH5gsvNbTkqTWzSD35-LKUbQYsSJEf4NnUosQxwlvXR4SHxbOW6JTVSLHWCPN_Fiw4IDjHyHXs7984CYZInYlBC0bTp7mbcuWmX5LMs/s1600-h/glass+doorknobs.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269458003157751746" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 134px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPcMGRJrQpVvbSrzy5k-YbEpc8hSRbtLI1uj2BDH5gsvNbTkqTWzSD35-LKUbQYsSJEf4NnUosQxwlvXR4SHxbOW6JTVSLHWCPN_Fiw4IDjHyHXs7984CYZInYlBC0bTp7mbcuWmX5LMs/s200/glass+doorknobs.bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div align="right"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Glass doorknobs on bedroom doors with key locks<br />big green worms on tomato plants<br />a dime in hand for the newest "Uncle Scrooge" comic book<br />playing cards clipped on bike wheels with wooden clothes pins<br />the nurse in white with pins on her chest taking temperature with a glass thermometer tasting of alcohol<br />wild blackberry feasts in the back lot<br />the smell of blooming basswood trees<br />forts made with old chenille bedspreads and clothesline props<br />and just watching rain<br />Childhood excitements and Old man’s treasures<br />Little things that hold on to you and pull you back from today<br />Like sleep they renew<br />reflective perspective</span></div><div align="right"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span> </div><div align="right"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:78%;">-Jerry Wendt</span></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-37616474771411329762008-09-09T09:15:00.000-07:002008-09-09T09:20:11.713-07:00Days<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEn_59PdZ2J77K2DoBLhZJ0l0Dv6hP8i2VdeX1iQITq5Qg_gF6jmhZm48x7xnHuQ9EcmbsQPiECDhN0kvb1tPVCDKb91A_6rUlw4DRRxoJFag4tshkx4wbDjrAzzB4GBw5QyMm5o0Pns8/s1600-h/435.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5244056995364973074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEn_59PdZ2J77K2DoBLhZJ0l0Dv6hP8i2VdeX1iQITq5Qg_gF6jmhZm48x7xnHuQ9EcmbsQPiECDhN0kvb1tPVCDKb91A_6rUlw4DRRxoJFag4tshkx4wbDjrAzzB4GBw5QyMm5o0Pns8/s200/435.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>I love sunny days</div><br /><div>But I think more on rainy ones</div><br /><div>except when they are also cold</div><br /><div>Then I just want to sleep</div><br /><div></div><br />and let life pass me by.Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-31711853277635294772008-08-10T21:21:00.000-07:002008-08-10T21:28:29.429-07:00Balance<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAqPQkjjFWpE0PKAxP5KhGXBsS0HdH9Kcd-Tr0e_9jlwZ2mSILdDjSwFSds7bt5_1x5-gTxDnJLoMDVcu6oE53AEXINbS5DSVrdCGc02XZNeYFseXCeho9zW7_l1rB_Bps4MIqSdgntA/s1600-h/O3RxnsPlate5b.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5233111361867022946" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="210" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAqPQkjjFWpE0PKAxP5KhGXBsS0HdH9Kcd-Tr0e_9jlwZ2mSILdDjSwFSds7bt5_1x5-gTxDnJLoMDVcu6oE53AEXINbS5DSVrdCGc02XZNeYFseXCeho9zW7_l1rB_Bps4MIqSdgntA/s200/O3RxnsPlate5b.jpg" width="264" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-family:arial;">I learned a lesson today .</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Bad art is like moldy cheese. </span><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">You say nothing about it</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;">because you know some people</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;">will like it. </span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The Chinese believe that everything in life<br />needs a balance<br />I learned that<br />the balance for bad art is a good pizza</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">You’re on your own regarding the cheese<br /><br /></span><br /></div><br /><br /><div></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-82535644401216593892008-07-12T12:36:00.000-07:002009-01-24T14:50:19.378-08:00twelfth 'hood‘hood twelfth part<br />When Joey was recovering from his pneumonia he shared a hospital room with a guy who plays the piano in a jazz group who's hoping to make a life in making new music. Joey tells this guy that even if he's truly creative he's going to have to learn some other popular music and 'cover' some of the pop songs just to make some money; that people will not pay for unknown artists. You gotta pay your dues by playin live on the road and covering some music that people are already familiar with. Music unites other forms of expression and is re-produced for a lot of different reasons. I guess money is probably the biggest reason to ‘cover’ someone else because even a share of the recording can be worth big bucks. If its’ been covered, it has good roots.<br /><br />But I told Joey that sometimes it’s not the money.<br />Gary Carawan first introduced “we shall overcome” to the student non-violent coordinating committee in Atlanta in 1960. Pete Seeger got the credit for writing what was first sung as a blues ode in the cotton fields. It became the anthem of the civil rights movement, a song with good roots and covered by a lot of artists but, the folks who picked the cotton never got paid! This tendency to copy and cover folk and especially rhythm and blues found its way through to rock and roll.<br /><br />In my ‘hood there were only a couple of guys that knew about the origins of rock n’ roll in Chicago – Joey was one of those guys. Another was Carlo Orlandini who took me to a bar where ‘Howlin Wolf’ took the stage – a black man from Mississippi who could shudder your soul with a shout that is used by “rock” musicians around the world to this day. This bar was on Roosevelt Road and Damen Ave where Carlo risked my life though I didn’t know it. The three story apartment building housed a mid-fifties inner city juke joint that had live music on Saturday nights – and the place was packed with black men and women dressed up special<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-bUmaAD_DgTae22i7S2nEse2ISUduIRG1Nwetl79vakMLbUpeit8HAb5z2HSAyzjBHRGYmovyYwzW38_g5P3OfpzKkZgaa8Epu4xD1wD0WzwtqWXfresn9UfA1x-mlZ2VgC_izLaOgg/s1600-h/howling.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222214877074154482" style="WIDTH: 342px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 168px" height="152" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-bUmaAD_DgTae22i7S2nEse2ISUduIRG1Nwetl79vakMLbUpeit8HAb5z2HSAyzjBHRGYmovyYwzW38_g5P3OfpzKkZgaa8Epu4xD1wD0WzwtqWXfresn9UfA1x-mlZ2VgC_izLaOgg/s200/howling.jpg" width="342" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />ready for................... a long night out.<br />I was just in high school, youngest person in the joint, but the men in the bar were watchful over me ‘cause they could see I’m lovin’ the music they feel. The ‘Wolf’ made my blood curl with those electrified and amplified guitar riffs and the wail he let loose in nearly every song. He played one called ‘I Asked for Water’ and he made it sound like he was really dyin’ on stage.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhFbrqq9qp3LUN4LKOkI1OhBAnydCpnQEXaBL1IyZgdnUnwC7kDWOgAJAsqMb5k81sx0UL9PP0572A5xoVwpwefdgoyflCC_JNXnN11pEUMzrfAF-BzdACJvuZH91uCHePBP6SaQvLg_8/s1600-h/Howlin%2527_Wolf.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222215479386159314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhFbrqq9qp3LUN4LKOkI1OhBAnydCpnQEXaBL1IyZgdnUnwC7kDWOgAJAsqMb5k81sx0UL9PP0572A5xoVwpwefdgoyflCC_JNXnN11pEUMzrfAF-BzdACJvuZH91uCHePBP6SaQvLg_8/s200/Howlin%2527_Wolf.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em>“Oh I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline<br />That the troublenst 'WOO-HOO' woman </em><br /><em>that I ever seen<br />The church bell tollin’, hearse come drivin slow”<br /></em><span style="font-size:78%;">Wolf</span><br /><br />Years of searching for this song yielded a realization of blues and country roots to me. Songs from the delta and the fields and the mountains of Appalachia and the inner city streets were rarely written down. These musicians were not songwriters: they were storytellers. Tales passed to them over time by people unknown. In this way I’ve come to know more about cultures than I could ever know if their stories had not been put to music. The 'Wolf' song was not written down and I never found a recording of "I asked for Water" but when he sang it, I was living the music of my 'hood.<br /><br />Carlo, who was about nineteen, was drinkin wine while I had a bottle of Coke that I drank very slowly ‘cause I didn’t have money. During the ‘Wolf’s break, Carlo went outside and had a ‘meeting’ with two other guys – it didn’t take too long and besides, I had the ‘Wolf’ howlin to me. Right after Carlo came back in he said we had to leave. It’s okay ‘cause I got about forty rich minutes of west side blues. I wished Bobby and Dom and Joey were with me.<br /><br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222216249531709170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5QaSuLWGTOTDKPybD-R7n_ILuG4jcMS_MHPEqlRDvAXis_G4qRCtNZ76oDQoz661POiJC0m97LL63KOHgyNvCJ2K52rKmbE4kMYFx1tsfDqiF3lfkqncOw9jigXplab_5Y7j8Jug-xYY/s320/been-there-open.jpg" border="0" /><br />Joey knew that Chicago blues/rock came out of Mississippi during the late forties into the sixties; he knew about this guitar man by the name of Bo Diddley, the self-proclaimed “Father of Rock and Roll” who showed up on the streets with his ego blistering up from his own heat. Well, Bo walked right into one of the producers’ studios on south Michigan Ave.; they let him play on his square guitar and then they threw him and his black hat out the door saying they couldn’t understand him. Joey says Bo walked straight across the street to another studio called Chess Records run by some Jewish fellas and he did 37 takes and recorded a song he wrote called “I’m a Man”<br /><br /><em>I’m a man, made twenty one<br />You know baby, we have lots of fun<br />All you pretty women, stand in line<br />I’ll make love to you, for an hour’s time<br />I’m a man, I spell m-a-n …. man!<br /></em><span style="font-size:78%;">bo<br /></span><br />Bo later wrote a song called 'Mona' and The Rolling Stones covered it on their first album and I’m thinkin they met at Chess?<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">(Yes, the same Chess Records building at 2120 S. Michigan Ave. where Chuck Berry recorded Johnny B. Goode and the Stones, in 1964, recorded their only instrumental and titled it ‘2120’.)<br /></span><br />That record company that threw Bo onto the street was right about one thing; you gotta hear the poetry, the story in the song. First comes the verse – you shine a light to it and the words leap off the page and suddenly you see movement – the work now has physical space. It’s square, it’s round, it is red and yellow and morphs to glad and sad then ultimately shows its life as the poetry combines with the essentials of melody, harmony and rhythm to create tones and gives birth to new, until in that moment, never before heard combinations of word and sound, and only then it’s called<br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="color:#cc33cc;"><span style="font-size:180%;color:#996633;"><em>m u s i c</em></span> </span><br /></span><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222217749464920402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 515px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="213" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0t7-g6HYaA-RQ8Hyu6GpAiYQiDRPAta3Rcm4zjFiFNu8XnQScuV0MIn3OszuSMP8Ani0PLcbLnzl4Dg5Z8Ka0vi1YQgExtQ2co04-NxIz1YY_CjcRZh17SnQBXUOxF70sSf0iRBHRmYI/s320/mu790034865l.jpg" width="461" border="0" /><br />I remember ‘Louie, Louie’ reaching #1 and I can’t tell you why – maybe it was because the scene was so dry. Yes, it did have a good beat but you couldn’t understand the Richard Berry lyric as sung first by the Pharoahs, then the Kingsmen - when the song ended, you really didn't know what they had said – they’re worse than Bo!</p><p>I know folk music gives a lot to rock and roll but it isn’t their banjos or flat tuned guitars I’m talkin’ about; it’s their stories – their clarity, their meaning, their delivery – allowing repetition to somehow not sound boring. The stories in blues music is the heart rending verse of hard living, telling the story of survival through adversity in a tempo devised by magicians; country and western music’s got a million stories; jazz, not so much new stories as new styles of a story and gospel that shouts out their message in ‘world’ music. All of these are parts of what I’ve come to feel in my bones is so precious to me. Music moves me; it makes me glad all over; it makes me sad all over; love is better with it; hate is erased by it – I can dream with it, as it speaks to my spirit and I can work with it, it is my muse – it’s become one of the themes in my life.<br /><br />“back beat, you can’t lose it”<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1pE9Nx890QSYW3QSgzRRZs8aEROulRCrKDS6WhXzzB_QvTQ1YjvbdxXjRBa6-WEuOg5-N16nSRU1rMpPHZw4ES8gQCo-h8HMkgZc0JD7ipLZo2BV_cFMxhA8zpTN3oMD_eW6sbzCKkoA/s1600-h/MusicArt.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222333023963383938" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="160" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1pE9Nx890QSYW3QSgzRRZs8aEROulRCrKDS6WhXzzB_QvTQ1YjvbdxXjRBa6-WEuOg5-N16nSRU1rMpPHZw4ES8gQCo-h8HMkgZc0JD7ipLZo2BV_cFMxhA8zpTN3oMD_eW6sbzCKkoA/s320/MusicArt.jpg" width="660" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It was not far from my ‘hood; straight east on Roosevelt Road, right past St. Ignatius hi-school, about a mile and a half to Halsted Street where a right turn would place you onto the mecca of ‘near west side blues’ – <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222218487248602290" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPTPHyCgrJecWOeviEXRJx0dp7tH2xHuG5ru-AGgHP5pjNheFkc7X7F15nYF4KIBn1C4rQ_AY_k0GDSRefL9yiGsmx63abCFEAJnTgsVlAFG_Kh-Mndy7C2C2JaXRIENRqO6Fq2vPZzok/s320/maximg108.gif" border="0" /><br /></p><p>______Maxwell Street!<br /></p>Always considered part of my ‘near west side’ it’s different ‘cause it’s mostly all black with Jewish shop owners who always closed up before dark. I was never there after dark – only during the day did Joey and I go for the music.<br /><br />Albert King was there. Little Walter and his blues harmonica was there. Buddy Guy and Junior Wells (who later moved south side) all met nearly every Sunday morning to play in an empty prairie between Halsted and the ‘Hill Street Blues’ police station on Morgan Street. There was always a drum set with the two guitars and harmonica though I never knew who those drummers were. Albert would almost always start up with a few licks to establish the bass beat and Lil Walter worked the chords on his harmonica searching for the right pitch. Then Buddy kicked in with his free wheeling style blues on his Fender guitar and Bassmans amp. He’d take the center and enter some vocal humming in the first few bars. Buddy’s poetry started a little soft until he knew he was pitched; only then to explode to an ear shattering volume. All amped and electrified as Buddy’s gunslinger technique took the lead with his fierce intensity. Buddy has a reputation as the man whose music could not be captured in a studio - studios were confining and left little room for improv. Buddy would string together eight chords and they would never again play out the same way. His call is to perform! Who could record with him?<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkPCPSFUhR3u3AUSoo-KZZUpuZQ0eCMBpsG7P-NC37Zu0gEi1ukqmuac0TQEdIW8SfDOnla-0V5CFsTYSu_c9tQFsRMLccTWDOQ9lV_tfGmRiAUfs2XTdfIMfv_ozUNRFDD5JW9NiqkA/s1600-h/maximage001.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222326589292172274" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkPCPSFUhR3u3AUSoo-KZZUpuZQ0eCMBpsG7P-NC37Zu0gEi1ukqmuac0TQEdIW8SfDOnla-0V5CFsTYSu_c9tQFsRMLccTWDOQ9lV_tfGmRiAUfs2XTdfIMfv_ozUNRFDD5JW9NiqkA/s200/maximage001.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Luther Allison always showed up late for these jams as third guitar and he plugged in to play to the prisoners in ‘the Hill’ three blocks away! Luther would walk in playin<br /><br /><em>“gotta move from the ‘hood<br />move away from the ‘hood<br />do it now or<br />your life ain’t no good” </em><br /><br />There was never a lack of good guitar. There were sometimes four or five bands lookin for space to play and some good days you could find Robert Nighthawk and there was Sonny Boy Williams, Lightnin Hopkins and Daddy Stovepipe and local boys who would fill in and were lookin to learn from the masters.<br /><br /><br />The Master.<br />McKinley Morganfield.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga-AK2HxYjUfk3U0fjBOoJ1jz_YEeYEUCzVa4MwwP3946eMNphg6xmdrt9M4fGCS2Oam3c3pd3wG1SB3pfQkkhQUBV24cQIc7SYoGVqz-wEPVBNgZ8YF07mhlamIyEbcXub-RYgOB_M38/s1600-h/muddylaxi046.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222219798533649810" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga-AK2HxYjUfk3U0fjBOoJ1jz_YEeYEUCzVa4MwwP3946eMNphg6xmdrt9M4fGCS2Oam3c3pd3wG1SB3pfQkkhQUBV24cQIc7SYoGVqz-wEPVBNgZ8YF07mhlamIyEbcXub-RYgOB_M38/s320/muddylaxi046.jpg" border="0" /></a>AKA Muddy Waters.<br />– from Mississippi – with his electric guitar and his <em>“mojo workin”.</em><br />The man who played “the right notes”. I never got to see him, but later bought his records. Muddy recorded with Chess Records and gave Bob Dylan and an international magazine and a British rock and roll Band their greatest gift –<br /><em><span style="color:#cc0000;">a rolling stone</span></em><br />Anyone who wanted to learn the roots of blues/rock wanted to get next to him and learn from him – and he gave his wisdom, unselfishly, to many.<br /><br />One of them was John Lee Hooker who came up to Chicago by way of Mississippi and Memphis and he didn’t know Muddy very long, but in a Chess studio he listened hard to the clear, uninterrupted masters’ chords. Together they recorded<br /><em>“Big Leg Woman</em>”.<br /><br /><em>She so fine, she so mellow, the rest I can’t explain<br />Way my baby stacked up<br />‘nough to drive a cat insane<br />she got great big legs, so pleasing to the eye<br />the preacher walked by, said my, my, my</em><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Lonnie Johnson<br /></span><br />Joey and I did see John Lee workin’ those chords one Sunday morning. John Lee came to Chicago about 1955 by way of Detroit so he had to break into the scene and his gig with Muddy did it for him. This Sunday, however, he sat on an old wooden chair right outside some diner, makin' his music and his name known on Maxwell Street and he opens<br /><em>‘Boom Boom Boom Boom’</em><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3JvumgW_MJJKGC2GAkdOPJSFzkJfuV-DC7S0NzHSi8ZAUTBJC9I1lNbEGRgsUC9wu2o_3e-ilD1txd4Yli-iyudSsexUVHi4HwPwJQnUiT5eeuGVJ1gArQKcFjR_z6Pso-b3VtzMZMj0/s1600-h/maxbrewer14.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222335872234007874" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3JvumgW_MJJKGC2GAkdOPJSFzkJfuV-DC7S0NzHSi8ZAUTBJC9I1lNbEGRgsUC9wu2o_3e-ilD1txd4Yli-iyudSsexUVHi4HwPwJQnUiT5eeuGVJ1gArQKcFjR_z6Pso-b3VtzMZMj0/s200/maxbrewer14.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em>"i love the way you walk</em><br /><em>i likes the way you talk"</em><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">John Lee</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br />and the folk on the street gathered ‘round.<br />Albert King showed up and they jammed and finally they did 'Born Under a Bad Sign'</p><p><em>"bad luck and trouble's my only friend</em></p><p><em>I been down ever since I was ten</em></p><p><em>if it wasn't for bad luck</em></p><p><em>i'd have no luck at all"</em></p><p><span style="font-size:78%;">Booker T. Jones</span></p><p>I had the musical experience of my young life –<br />in the open air </p><p>it sounded and smelled like my city on the streets of my ‘hood.<br /><br />It is amazing how the music of these men from Mississippi turned Chicago and Chess Records into legends. As I’ve listened to this music from my ‘hood over the years, I’ve come to realize how much of their original music from Mississippi that was awakened by plugged in guitars and electrified amps and new found freedoms all served as the most fertile roots ever for today’s’ rock and roll. My ‘near west side’ inner city provided cover material for so many great rock musicians: the Stones and Clapton and Zeppelin.............. </p><br /><br /><p>makes me <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDRMNI28BOpWh3Iku-GMYPiO7Binquri022MCujA5n-sP3PV7RPSWMRU8EIbhyphenhyphenx5312TWPtWdQDHaac1ONRbkDi7YR7k1xmiovzYOjWztOoFzNbLH8vD-MT82MMAo57n2Ofodh-jPNFI/s1600-h/Music-Abstract-Design-386174.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222359242459361346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDRMNI28BOpWh3Iku-GMYPiO7Binquri022MCujA5n-sP3PV7RPSWMRU8EIbhyphenhyphenx5312TWPtWdQDHaac1ONRbkDi7YR7k1xmiovzYOjWztOoFzNbLH8vD-MT82MMAo57n2Ofodh-jPNFI/s200/Music-Abstract-Design-386174.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><br /><br /><br /><p><span style="color:#000000;"><em>"glad all over"</em></span><br /><br /></p><br /><br />It’s now September 26 and James Meredith will make his second attempt to open the doors at Ole Miss. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWkwAbV_wO-1N8rEir2wnrW89NoMgXS1wWW-Jujm6u3GzBcRiUy0GGZWz0aKRqtSOD7Xmg_0OPF9T9VxODbLL9T_7nZaoz_Lq5mGtVo-jnWeGWbLZgv1HEVA3BJMWKKykPvDPaF7A8QJ8/s1600-h/Negro%2520on%2520Campus72x3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5222360503308234450" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWkwAbV_wO-1N8rEir2wnrW89NoMgXS1wWW-Jujm6u3GzBcRiUy0GGZWz0aKRqtSOD7Xmg_0OPF9T9VxODbLL9T_7nZaoz_Lq5mGtVo-jnWeGWbLZgv1HEVA3BJMWKKykPvDPaF7A8QJ8/s200/Negro%2520on%2520Campus72x3.jpg" border="0" /></a>bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-86526220376532595702008-07-11T01:47:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:48.217-08:00Impatience<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl3mATOAaYh-0_60KgJfWoIBY_vjns-x9mLAde2K2M-21YWIm2HGKBiROVsSFfXf8-Js86YsfAlYegZC-GdrX6MQ7LfELiV_ftAh2NQw0vIvI2igMp_1M4YjWok3AYFK5_rPYsdcOpTfY/s1600-h/Life.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5221676082717949346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 272px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 294px" height="340" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl3mATOAaYh-0_60KgJfWoIBY_vjns-x9mLAde2K2M-21YWIm2HGKBiROVsSFfXf8-Js86YsfAlYegZC-GdrX6MQ7LfELiV_ftAh2NQw0vIvI2igMp_1M4YjWok3AYFK5_rPYsdcOpTfY/s400/Life.jpg" width="327" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="color:#333333;"><strong>I</strong></span><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;"><span style="color:#666666;"><span style="color:#333333;"><strong> like to smell grass.<br />Feel the touch of lips on mine.<br />Hear laughter.<br />And see just everything right now</strong>.<br />Because it all ends<br /></span><span style="color:#666666;">and you don’t get</span> to <span style="color:#c0c0c0;">know</span> </span><span style="color:#c0c0c0;"><span style="color:#cccccc;">when</span>.<br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;color:#999999;">-Jerry Wendt</span>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-5424243907575345032008-07-07T13:26:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:49.519-08:00BUSTED<a href="http://themumblingmuse.blogspot.com/2008/04/busted.html" target="_blank">Busted</a><br />A re-Write by Lou Stanek, based on an original story by Bob Kowalski and reviewed and panned by Jerry Wendt.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeCmyO8SKJk-jylJXG1N88yELSKav0eieVgxjyJy-5e340vwzyDHn_oOhsSBaCcIfx-vgwBhJu97B4nXBmZq6LFKKkwdXYmlZSq1gsGliCi4G0CCuC4JF3_QA8APbJYsmXCO6jgUWO8g/s1600-h/000Mexico+Dinner+032.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220372173572227906" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeCmyO8SKJk-jylJXG1N88yELSKav0eieVgxjyJy-5e340vwzyDHn_oOhsSBaCcIfx-vgwBhJu97B4nXBmZq6LFKKkwdXYmlZSq1gsGliCi4G0CCuC4JF3_QA8APbJYsmXCO6jgUWO8g/s200/000Mexico+Dinner+032.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0oBGHMJho6nmHJQ5IGfGO0IVHUwRElN9rgdsEx-vh-7OTfPdMMl7SE4hbJKgpFLChYIAdWtAH3FBy7JOI4O2WBvTihrHcewcMF1vqNEW7sOI1H7DP-pAzdpc6M4LZ8i0SCQBlwJQFiQ/s1600-h/000Mexico+Dinner+010.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220371848424913138" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0oBGHMJho6nmHJQ5IGfGO0IVHUwRElN9rgdsEx-vh-7OTfPdMMl7SE4hbJKgpFLChYIAdWtAH3FBy7JOI4O2WBvTihrHcewcMF1vqNEW7sOI1H7DP-pAzdpc6M4LZ8i0SCQBlwJQFiQ/s200/000Mexico+Dinner+010.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220372740010689650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Epv5MRPc2TfLfdL_RGGUMhsVR3RzCQEgsmRK6GamkPsh7DEedoV7G1g4TRuob7ZmoamBlyk7smbA7RN2D1JZp_7jz97KdKfVwyyc2tkwk9uuyP1H_M82AWqUA_LnP1q_lmdQk9qpmiU/s200/000Italy-+2005+139.jpg" border="0" /><br />They lurk all around the house. -- mechanisms, gadgets, contraptions, the devices of life, and there’s no escape from them. Every corner <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFB7_xaD11UbfqErj8FJA206CkTDeNi2H1-QCRYsp8RE1B4m_xi4yHME2eNjwy08_7I7r8D4I02M90AxCe299_v_4SbRm3UrrtKps0kl6xxlOD42wh6RoO3KI_wvOCJMNKVMAraRVEbAE/s1600-h/000audiophile-speakers_69.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220373388564266898" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFB7_xaD11UbfqErj8FJA206CkTDeNi2H1-QCRYsp8RE1B4m_xi4yHME2eNjwy08_7I7r8D4I02M90AxCe299_v_4SbRm3UrrtKps0kl6xxlOD42wh6RoO3KI_wvOCJMNKVMAraRVEbAE/s200/000audiophile-speakers_69.jpg" border="0" /></a>is infested with skulking, snickering inventions, calling to me, tempting me with their levers or wheels or bolts. Finally, I succumb. I’m a man. How can I resist? What danger can these intruders hold for a mature adult?<br />And that’s when they bust me.<br />It's not that I have multiple<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbZCziKL_uoGDBmPBz6_jEF3CxsGREYK5t7IhEwY0YYlALMbgcYinhh4zSz4AhjZWXx2UMD56ZxrS_hWwN6h07Z3ShZm0yI8A09pE8v0Gw-lYDtaqTtQqIxb3Q7ohyphenhyphenAIZWMgRT4chO_Qg/s1600-h/000yd654453.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220373699520639154" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbZCziKL_uoGDBmPBz6_jEF3CxsGREYK5t7IhEwY0YYlALMbgcYinhh4zSz4AhjZWXx2UMD56ZxrS_hWwN6h07Z3ShZm0yI8A09pE8v0Gw-lYDtaqTtQqIxb3Q7ohyphenhyphenAIZWMgRT4chO_Qg/s200/000yd654453.jpg" border="0" /></a> thumbs; it’s more like gas on the brain, or a shameful birth defect.!<br />My wife has this chair that turns into a ladder after its done being an ironing board.<br />I can't close it! After all the tinker toys and Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets that prepare boys to be men, I'm stymied by this low tech device of life that she went out of her way to find in a junk store called the Fuzzy Pig. This ironing board / bench / ladder / chair doesn't even have an electric cord, let alone a self powered logic chip… Not like her broken laptop computer that she hands me along with a hi-tech screwdriver, saying, "it probably just needs <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374072489280178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUsxFI_OMK7YhvdGJ49aEPcY1SrE7Fc60G4cMDShz5nWtlPS3S4Winc9GGVDSkVcvkcjkAmbzh5atjrlOMhhLLwfIZHX-Vn77n2DWlLD4E9I34QnhrPgGqRo-W_V3GGtYWq5pFcSg7-6s/s200/000Screw-driver-18-piece-in.jpg" border="0" />tightening".<br />She assumes that being born a guy equates to a genetic affinity for hand tools. She believes all it takes to "fix the fridge" is desire and "something in that tool room of yours.” “Just fix the humidity setting so the cheese doesn't turn green".............WHAT!!<br /><br />Like I don't care if the kids get dead from eating old<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi2P0AE9mYMaYl1NC_c780_UMKVa4IPAslikHI1iRdP8TclUMx8ZxaAh_-m6R2ZfsrHzbqeoTaTO46N080a8bbP6RLxckSBPYl1E4my4FAeudmhhQnaZqKgP0JRVqPAe7uJAbt_4H7Tas/s1600-h/000gc499101785207_0_ALB.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374382156477170" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi2P0AE9mYMaYl1NC_c780_UMKVa4IPAslikHI1iRdP8TclUMx8ZxaAh_-m6R2ZfsrHzbqeoTaTO46N080a8bbP6RLxckSBPYl1E4my4FAeudmhhQnaZqKgP0JRVqPAe7uJAbt_4H7Tas/s200/000gc499101785207_0_ALB.jpg" border="0" /></a> green cheese? What do I know about humidity? Has humidity become a device of life?<br />BUSTED, AGAIN!<br />Then, as if house things aren’t enough to baffle me, along comes “The Beast”, the ultimate device of life; the four-wheeled invention that replaced walking as a daily human activity. So many colors, so many shapes -- you can get one from Korea or England or Italy or France or Mexico or Germany or Brazil -- So many “beasts,” all with electronic ignitions and transaxle alignments and power windows. I don't even have power windows in my house. “Beast” ads promise glamour,<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-jtsGiwPT-KQC0shyphenhyphenRP8Pf0YcQAyQlmUYS1DYcDpxr0ax1Xif2ZUmE1DZvZ3Vz-x1r_11ZmArQnzTLrYVg1rIKD4uO5nCIU8AwovG6C-c2RweNvMn_BEgUZkt5Of7LxYu_F4paom1P8w/s1600-h/000HappyCarCartoon-2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220374695734977266" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-jtsGiwPT-KQC0shyphenhyphenRP8Pf0YcQAyQlmUYS1DYcDpxr0ax1Xif2ZUmE1DZvZ3Vz-x1r_11ZmArQnzTLrYVg1rIKD4uO5nCIU8AwovG6C-c2RweNvMn_BEgUZkt5Of7LxYu_F4paom1P8w/s200/000HappyCarCartoon-2.jpg" border="0" /></a> happy memories, individual expression , the realization of all our dreams! I buy one. Then comes reality. My “Beast” sits empty, quiet, - silent in an un-ignited state, patiently waiting for new ways to bust me. I often stare defiantly at the monster, then sigh and just give up The last time I successfully fixed anything on a car was when my father showed me where to pour the water into the radiator.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5jBSoqIGmG9Kwg7_-OzxTLKB5AIwoWpn2yr6TliUmKiwJ6pnIQ_OqYEl0TZVzUZE3xpKItRacTO1hIacGK_A_faW5_fYh2vyBkkRrf0PCv2SnGslPO2kQYiDH62Sj2IDPEJWw7ADcJs/s1600-h/00024.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220375133110356818" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5jBSoqIGmG9Kwg7_-OzxTLKB5AIwoWpn2yr6TliUmKiwJ6pnIQ_OqYEl0TZVzUZE3xpKItRacTO1hIacGK_A_faW5_fYh2vyBkkRrf0PCv2SnGslPO2kQYiDH62Sj2IDPEJWw7ADcJs/s200/00024.jpg" border="0" /></a> This device of life, warns me in writing that I may not even open the cap without a special instrument. AND, when "they of the instruments" do so, they pour in a pea-yellow-green liquid for which I pay twelve dollars a gallon. What, may I ask, was wrong with my dad’s tap water? This process, I can at least explain - though I am not actually allowed to do it without violating the warranty. But imagine how badly I get busted when my wife re-creates a sound and carefully explains where it comes from and all I can say - (dull-wittedly) - is "did you change the oil"?These encounters with the devices of life go on and on. They’re never-ending.. I thought it would be better now that my kids are grown. Instead, I have a dark notion that my granddaughters knows far more than I do about the devices of life, like the iPod and the<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220375751696079810" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLwfypc7bBKQvY7yfVdEdmTeav1PW1y9tFRKZbh0jh4RmpASchJz7DRjXL5Sy8_hi7RCXTW5SVChRdQr1pHX7Kd3DMnA9rYgCb1zdn6Gz-TlxpuGaodPaqMirmWSvHkuarwY9A_1-E9tg/s200/000gizmos3.jpg" border="0" />electronic servants her dad has installed in their “smart house”. She’s already relegating that hard won and time tested phrase, "Grandpa will fix it" to the dusty attic of dead platitudes to stand beside “Be good. Santa’s coming.” and “It won’t hurt a bit!” Meanwhile, she flashes me a<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220376232087171346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrPbbzt1slQtf9fMtwqTRU_ECGMrw6x_YSmZi2t-yi0TsdLj60boG7Xy_vqIQaQ7phsQylOlP7jN67dNu7gwFkbWgL8_CP0LP1s0as3rBtQaL2Qz6Hga76yFS1fazpJI1AvI9zC2jY5Fc/s200/000Nina's+6th+Birthday+Party+002.jpg" border="0" /> giant smile. She’s too polite to shout,<br /><br /># “BUSTED.”bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-39670353085664884132008-07-01T13:12:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:50.375-08:00'hood 11#<br /><div>'hood 11<br /><div>President Kennedy was not in a very good spot!<br />It’s a good thing he’s a young man and can handle stress.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwN6POTcsHcrgxPEUaw40iZb_lechK8pdlLQ3nETS_dkZ1d2IBUM36La18mhaHMOSSrkKd8EvgDTQGU4eyi3-tal-bEaESnnDyr9oMHI4MGkYJNVQD8WhuV2v1OziIvf6ISdnT5Ze_03M/s1600-h/John_F_Kennedy_Official_Portrait.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218141846620086450" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwN6POTcsHcrgxPEUaw40iZb_lechK8pdlLQ3nETS_dkZ1d2IBUM36La18mhaHMOSSrkKd8EvgDTQGU4eyi3-tal-bEaESnnDyr9oMHI4MGkYJNVQD8WhuV2v1OziIvf6ISdnT5Ze_03M/s200/John_F_Kennedy_Official_Portrait.jpg" border="0" /></a> It’s like this - he had three things to worry about that were happening outside the country. (foreign policy things) There was the failure of the Bay of Pigs that happened three months after he took office and it caused Fidel Castro to look more to the <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtHndrVit2FEoWobI1tvU1vOl5kUT7evvzTGELP6raYkqwMnuWJ-2GjATo-g8NgW6Ecto5xEKrolv3HnTSEyexa9baB4Fj0r273HNIYRfD74EnKox97gkE62wWQoXZjpK1TCkNnjSQBKQ/s1600-h/kruschev_castro.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218206564395987218" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtHndrVit2FEoWobI1tvU1vOl5kUT7evvzTGELP6raYkqwMnuWJ-2GjATo-g8NgW6Ecto5xEKrolv3HnTSEyexa9baB4Fj0r273HNIYRfD74EnKox97gkE62wWQoXZjpK1TCkNnjSQBKQ/s200/kruschev_castro.jpg" border="0" /></a>Soviet Union and Nikki as an ally to support his new revolutionary government. Castro called Bay of Pigs the first defeat of Yankee imperialism. Jack knew nothing of the amateur invasion that was funded, secretly, by the CIA, yet he had to eat the public outcry over its failure and lose face and influence over a new government in Cuba. Then the Berlin Wall got built beginning in August of 1961 and it became a symbolic and actual barrier in the Iron Curtain. Jack could only make some polite protests even though a treaty had been signed at Potsdam. The wall ended up being 96 miles long and had guard posts all along it to watch for East Germaners trying to cross. Then Jack took a beating in Vienna from Nikki over the secret war in Laos – we gave half the country to the communists and even that didn’t stop them from spreading their influence, and allied troops, to another country called Viet Nam and we already were getting in over our head there. Wi<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7b6X-W3u2g3nAHeaonGwye03w8e1zjMDnzzH8CVgAVNDeOaoljCiYtYPDnn2iYotJT2F3JY6ucr8KfPSi-lO_00x4ZAgltUMlJJE75XHMGJdWq5quPRA7jGvnUwwJv0ph7S91d4nvt4/s1600-h/viSVN1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218142711516302370" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7b6X-W3u2g3nAHeaonGwye03w8e1zjMDnzzH8CVgAVNDeOaoljCiYtYPDnn2iYotJT2F3JY6ucr8KfPSi-lO_00x4ZAgltUMlJJE75XHMGJdWq5quPRA7jGvnUwwJv0ph7S91d4nvt4/s200/viSVN1.jpg" border="0" /></a>th all this bad stuff happening in such a short period of time, Jack believed that another failure on the part of the United States to stop communist expansion would destroy our allies trust and damage his own reputation.<br /><br />Even small triumphs turned into shit; like the time – July 23rd 1962 – that Jack and the President of France were going to exchange the first Trans-Atlantic television broadcast. The technology people and politicians and a few of the Camelot celebrities were all on hand for a small incursion into their “New Frontier” and Jack was late. Seems that we could only broadcast when the Telstar satellite covered a certain range in order for the beam to reach both sides. Somebody in a responsible position gave the President the wrong time to be there. The French President was in place, expecting to see the U.S. President. Pols and techs were running around the U.S. offices tryin to do something, when finally a tech guy found a strong enough signal to send up to Telstar. It was the Chicago Cubs – they were playin the Philadelphia Phillies and the French delegation saw Tony Taylor fly out to George Altman. When Nikita Khrushchev found out he wasn’t invited to the party he was pissed off. That anger turned to glee<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218205443238030034" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRALu4a0-tLukqO60msiYIRW4Gv_3hQNfw8zr34LRM3DQfu2qMu6uZ3M7WbFjoP4tDlqI9_E9jlIx5eY1x1I9WkJX-JRmL-WkR67zJLHxun1edy0IMgX_CY0R8RQA6oY_PsXWyMCeCiiM/s200/knikitakruschev.jpg" border="0" /> when he found out that the President of France had to watch a baseball game – hell, they don’t even play baseball in France!<br /><em><br />A song afar fades in a dream<br />In this night that will end too soon</em><br />“<span style="font-size:78%;">Midnight in Moscow”<br /></span><br />Plus, the desegregation trauma <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTyaB1_U2RlkZNIQ24X83RKmpMzV4XZN1oVn76onJvz3VLULuC3awSBGyKGcy8kljd0PZY3xtpylxpMjCPNmDilsrEGzEvTaEKZ1bFdh2FbV9FrW8Tmug5ClIyg2T51l2VvlNsUaBcZ4/s1600-h/lr9999008841-l.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218143351453989314" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTyaB1_U2RlkZNIQ24X83RKmpMzV4XZN1oVn76onJvz3VLULuC3awSBGyKGcy8kljd0PZY3xtpylxpMjCPNmDilsrEGzEvTaEKZ1bFdh2FbV9FrW8Tmug5ClIyg2T51l2VvlNsUaBcZ4/s200/lr9999008841-l.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div>amongst our own people was growing. </div><div><br /># # # # # # # # # # ## # # # # ##</div><br /><div>Marie introduced me to a fellow named Jerry Buss who we walked with from the restaurant. He was known as an ‘activist’ on campus and he was preparing a document that would be copied and passed out to people who were against the U.S. getting involved in the wars in south east Asia. He had a lot of information that he said came from his brother who’s in the U.S. Air Force working directly for a general named Curtis LeMay and that sounded, to me, like a pretty reliable source.<br />Here’s what Jerry told me: that after the Laos agreement (I guess everyone at the table lied), the U.S. Air Force began helping the South Vietnam troops beginning in late 1961. There were different ‘actions’ going on in 1962; one was called ‘Farmgate’ – the U.S. was doing combat training and support missions for the North Viet Nam army; another one called ‘Mule Train’ was carrying and dropping supplies to strange named places like Pleiku; and ‘Ranch Hand’ where big C-123’s flying out of Laos began defoliation of roads and trails (like the Ho Chi Minh trail) using something called Agent Orange. Lastly, the Bell helicopters began missions in April, 1962; </div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218218573536469282" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-_c75PKAX7feQYq6ufDv1I5oBvD396KV3ZlO_HiTFKuwdgvQlv54odqe4kVyR3wQNYrBe9ZYZJrTZUBujz74RIuoV_r7ILPEFRUX5QWltr-zf3aAQWo6GRc8lXs0sd5ZoRZpKdDPk30/s200/heliben03.jpg" border="0" />they were dropping South Viet Nam soldiers into North Viet Nam. Two helicopters got shot down and after eight American soldiers died the general ordered our guys to shoot first!<br /><br />McNamara came back from Viet Nam in July and told Jack, “We are winning the war”. Jack became more determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He said now we have a problem with the way the world sees our power and Vietnam looks like the place to take a stand, so Jack increased the number of U.S. military in Vietnam from 800 to 16,300.<br /><br />Jerry Buss said it could only get worse unless something were to stop it now.<br /><br /><em>If I had a hammer<br />I’d hammer in the morning<br />I’d hammer in the evening<br />I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out warning<br /></em><span style="font-size:78%;">Peter, Paul & Mary</span><br /># # # # # # # # # # # # # #<br />It’s not that we were drinking or smoking dope – we should have been tired after the dinner and the walk under the stress of that fight at the no name and listening to Jerry Buss but we arrived at 85 Mount Vernon and set passions free onto each other. Our bodies engaged in an intense battle to keep up with the demands of our desires; I cannot recall a moment in time when I lost every point of reference to the purity and tenderness of making love; replaced with wanton carnal lust. I moved into her and our glow seemed red. Arms around each other again, it felt like this was the place I could live forever. I could both hear and feel her breath and it sounded searing as she raised her arms and moved that thick lowering lock of hair back toward and over her ear. I lay soft against her skin listening to the rhythm of our heart. I held inside her and the pulsing of her hips created a heightening of emotions sweeping into and through me that I passed on to her. Drained, we slept and when I awoke I stood; seeing her lying naked<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT2ThyphenhyphenX7p5YgKgseubi8Q9SAL9GPWOieaoEi94n40g1ef3dab4SOWJqP1yaY-FLrx62z0ns962MmNxVSR3e_jzRbE5v-ArZiewfuOJOE3Gnq8qotjl9WT6snCYNkcszj1mNhD9ubnggfU/s1600-h/mar494233049_8df8b9bed3_oxx.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218415083923966642" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT2ThyphenhyphenX7p5YgKgseubi8Q9SAL9GPWOieaoEi94n40g1ef3dab4SOWJqP1yaY-FLrx62z0ns962MmNxVSR3e_jzRbE5v-ArZiewfuOJOE3Gnq8qotjl9WT6snCYNkcszj1mNhD9ubnggfU/s200/mar494233049_8df8b9bed3_oxx.jpg" border="0" /></a> and wanting her again. It is plain to me that I desire to feel that connection again, but I wonder, unknowingly and naively, if we should – is there a rule for counting or other measure I should know of? </div><div>There were flowers in small vases on the sill of her lone window, finally fragrant to me though nearby all the time we loved. I had prayed the morning please not come, but was changed when she turned to me beaming like the first day we met. The bouquet of those flowers, emboldened by the sunrise, and wanting to adorn her body in some way - burst their petals to become as bright as her smile. </div><div>Marie says to me “I am a woman in love".</div><div></div><div>#</div><div><em>a woman in love, woman in love</em></div><div><em>I put my life in music</em></div><div><em>my heart is like a song</em></div><div><span style="font-size:78%;">Paul Baillargeon</span></div>bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-15238425252412864082008-06-25T16:13:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:50.897-08:00hood#3 At The Skylark<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnn8krtVX2STvEkio2gyw-mRqtmbe_PqC6exxyiEe_bBiSwACOt4gLVJEIKwajhvJGD07vqVun9V84JzbLndJlYL8BPxqZHHAnCwLSlqN6hifBORGzymv-atMCtT3qvgiwq87YJYwIWBI/s1600-h/dinerbank_prd.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215982876548516642" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnn8krtVX2STvEkio2gyw-mRqtmbe_PqC6exxyiEe_bBiSwACOt4gLVJEIKwajhvJGD07vqVun9V84JzbLndJlYL8BPxqZHHAnCwLSlqN6hifBORGzymv-atMCtT3qvgiwq87YJYwIWBI/s320/dinerbank_prd.png" border="0" /></a><br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><a href="http://themumblingmuse.blogspot.com/2008/04/hood3-at-skylark.html">'hood#3 At The Skylark</a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOdpoK9BhweTMgnAEiCIEB52WcZcTvVEk1wpnWB1qjZFUFE_iG_XcmZ5LOMm5j58bhMGXRZoix5mnsztrrJY9pnqW7c4w1GWXrm4k6lmva4siXHIiNNRjyquH0_VRazi8hMTTw5kLY4R8/s1600-h/dinerbank_prd.gif"></a>Sunday mornings we ate at church – father Joey started very promptly at 10:00 and by 10:05 we’d given our order to Josie who was always our waitress (till she had her baby). Joey said Mass in place of Father Anthony and he would finish just as the eggs and pancakes hit the table. Sometimes we would need three booths, especially when the girls started coming. Bobby Seirs, one of us smooth 'Four Bloods' would never come to The Skylark until he heard the girls showed up and from then on he was a regular. Fact is, more girls came when they heard he was there. Bobby was probably the best looking guy in the ‘hood. He had that wavy hair and black leather jacket that looked just like Marlon Brandos jacket in the wild one motorcycle movie. Most of us guys surrounded Joey because most of the girls hung with Bobby were hoping for a date with him – or at least a good make out behind the casket company. There was a dark loading dock at the alley where if you wanted you could get down in the corner and not even a shadow could be seen of two people. I went there once with Marie but we didn’t stay ‘cause she’s got too much class and revolted at the thought of making love our first time at the back of some factory that made coffins – me, I wanted to stay</div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>i'm itchin like a man on a fuzzy tree</em></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>my hands are shaky, my knees are weak</em></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>i can't seem to stand on my own two feet</em></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>i'm all shook up</em></span></div><div></div><div>…… well; we continued our search.</div><br /><div>The Skylark was our church and Joey was our priest. Every Sunday he had something new to tell us attesting to the underlying truth that not all of us were there for the chicks. This particular Sunday's homily captivated Dominic because Joey’s pet fear about Sputniks in space was the topic. About a year after he was elected, John Kennedy had this meeting with Nikita Khrushchev about the two countries getting together on a space program. Well, the Russians were way ahead of us already and Nikita felt he shouldn’t be sharing space secrets. Now here’s the thing we didn’t know – and hardly anyone knew. After Nikita said nyet, Johns father, Joe Kennedy had a talk with Nikita’s father, Sergei Kruschev, and they came up with a strategy for putting pressure on Nikita. Shortly after the meeting in May of 1961, Congress got the message that “we should make it a national priority to land a man on the moon and return him to earth safely” and from that day forward JFK made a lot of speeches about a space program. We heard him say “No nation that expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space”. That’s how we came to have a “space race”. Nikita was pissed – he aimed some missiles at Cuba and JFK had to send up a militia. Nikita banged his shoe in protest and it was after that they began to talk about space again. How Joey ever found out about the Sergei meeting is still a mystery. Dominic reasoned it was probably alderman Marzullo.</div><div># # # # # # # # # #</div><div>Marie was brought up in a very open-minded home. Her mom always encouraged her to do whatever made her feel both right and good. Her dad would talk to me about the civil rights movement and the freedom riders (shit, I was gonna graduate high school this year and didn’t he know he was making me feel bad because I wasn’t going south to join the protests - and did that make me a lesser person in his eyes)? This thought hurt me because I hung on this mans' every word.</div><br /><div>Things were heating up again – John and his brother Bobby had Martin Luther King released from jail right after they got elected. JFK couldn’t do too much too quick because he figured that if he angered the Southern Democrats, the laws he wanted didn’t stand a chance in the Congress. Marie’s dad didn’t see it that way. He thought our new president was suddenly not supportive enough of civil rights activists. Me? When Marie came into the room I didn’t even know he was talking. It was Friday night and we were going to the dance at St. Michaels. She dressed in slacks and a white top and while revealing nothing, showed all of her beauty. She changed her hair every time we were going to dance. She would take its’ length all into one hand and put a rubber band around it and let it fall to a glorious shiny black pony tail. </div><div></div><div>The dances this year were bogus.</div><div></div><div>Every time Father Anthony could play something new, all he had was either Connie Francis or Ricky Nelson. The Twist by Chubby Checker and Runaway by Del Shannon were the only up-tempo songs of the year that hit the top of the charts. One of our favorites he still played was <em>'At The Hop'</em> by Danny and the Juniors and we’d really hit the floor for '<em>Do You Want to Dance'</em>. The rest of the new music for a couple of years was horrible; the only good thing about the dances at St. Michaels was slow-<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKi-UEyzg3kKy4vayFGFzu22NWSVr4CA3Ww4rWiRM_KTWHRNdkqaunANOrQn0fzj9sldHQ36Npx2DZSHEI6ive4e94MCwj0B8UoGkefcVXgq87o8jVUXebiNet6II-U1HOdONzUiorig/s1600-h/dancing_couple_feet.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215978361279206402" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKi-UEyzg3kKy4vayFGFzu22NWSVr4CA3Ww4rWiRM_KTWHRNdkqaunANOrQn0fzj9sldHQ36Npx2DZSHEI6ive4e94MCwj0B8UoGkefcVXgq87o8jVUXebiNet6II-U1HOdONzUiorig/s320/dancing_couple_feet.jpg" border="0" /></a>dancing with Marie. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hGpkUdm69fGChkf9QAUaf15xLBVy7B6rQZtCxkR3j6x3UFjkRGn34VPoW974S0qpzLmq4Hjmx-VTYO58U-rbdB13oPwqHhxnKSh6F2muMmUmG8u0SJpnNVj_vI9ASoohTCTNFWKRG7E/s1600-h/dancing_couple_feet.jpg"></a>Some good ones for holding each other were <em>'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow'</em> by the Shirelles and '<em>Are You</em> <em>Lonesome Tonight'</em>, by The King and almost anything by Sam Cooke – but please, NOT '<em>Cathy’s Clown'</em> or '<em>Theme from a Summer</em> <em>Place'</em>. So much crap was coming out that had a symphony orchestra playing a sound THEY called rock n' roll - they didn't even have one guitar!</div><br /><div>Marie told me that all last year she had bought only one album (Elvis is Back) and two 45’s because music became submissive (I knew we were meant for each other)!</div><div>To think that <em>Heart Break Hotel</em> came out in ’56 and it took five years to get <em>Dirty Dirty Feeling</em> and <em>It Feels So Right</em> on an album. The 45 releases of these songs went nowhere because most radio stations wouldn’t play ‘em and the stores wouldn’t stock ‘em. And Father Anthony couldn’t play 'em cause he couldn't find where to buy 'em.</div><div>de-moralizing</div><div>We were seventeen and seniors and had all this heavy shit to think about not the least of which was where are we going to college. We really didn’t want to talk about it and later on we found that it was best thing we could have done. Yes, JFK was making lots of speeches and many of us were inspired and thought this was what real leadership was about. I think a good example would be the speech that motivated Nikita. JFK said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard”. The hardest things had nothing to do with the science of space and rockets - and real leadership had just been released from jail. The hardest thing was all about doing the right thing for “our fellow man”. That was one of Marie's dad's favorite phrases. We could see on the TV that the right things weren’t happening, yet it was so hard to know how to make it right. Marie’s dad was all behind the student sit-ins that began in 1960.</div><div>We saw students of all races marching and as they’d turn the corner, likely to be faced down by police commissioners and their cop cronies (who had dogs). After harassing the freedom riders during the day, the cops would abandon their posts so that those guys in white covering could have their turn. Yes, Mississippi was burning and the fed wasn’t doing the right thing either. JFK’s brother Bobby wiretapped Martin Luther King in ’61 in one of the only times he and the FBI guy J. Edgar Hoover ever talked.</div><br /><div>What the fuck was goin on?</div><br /><div>This was a ball of confusion wound as tight as that gordian knot. Hoover couldn’t find any Communist ties to Martin Luther King and it wasn’t till after Alabama that they stopped tapping his phone. But in 1961 came the first big time movement in Albany, Georgia? The Albany Movement hit the lunch counters, the libraries, the train stations; this was about much more than votes, this was about doing the right thing in so many ways. MLK was there, alright, but he left after one day. Marie's dad called ML every name in the book for abandoning Georgia and leaving the young people in the student non-violent coordinating community to take the heat: right when he could’ve helped. Her dad was really mad.</div><div></div># # # # # # # # # # # #<br /><div>Bobby Siers was hurt; badly – they took him to the hospital in an ambulance and there were three police cars in front of The Skylark. Joey and me were running across Cermak Road and we saw about twenty people already were there and more were coming. When I saw the blood on the sidewalk and heard the cops and my friends yelling at each other and saw Dominic get hit with a baton I was ready to jump in but Joey grabbed me right around my shoulders and turned me around. I bit hard my lip to focus my mind which was in rage right now, mostly because of Bobby’s blood.</div><div></div><div>Is he dead?</div><div></div><div>The Skylark regularly closed at ten p m because the neighborhood wanted all the kids home by curfew and the owner knew that cooperating with the men of the ’hood was the right thing to do. It was ten-twenty.<br />Bobby and Carm and Sandy were leaving for the casket company when three guys moved into their path. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFywoBUMgE5uDd191_1ByrbZEirPFapFDWcm-v6Ukkc-_pcOX_t3ieAFBvbrncjy47OorB2T3ZXT4Pi_Pd31moV-Mp_tmnck3-GgUUMsUMICrUaWf_GqG4aGjjQxpRBW7NsnPQeIPsM8/s1600-h/fightingl011b.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215979463462460898" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFywoBUMgE5uDd191_1ByrbZEirPFapFDWcm-v6Ukkc-_pcOX_t3ieAFBvbrncjy47OorB2T3ZXT4Pi_Pd31moV-Mp_tmnck3-GgUUMsUMICrUaWf_GqG4aGjjQxpRBW7NsnPQeIPsM8/s200/fightingl011b.jpg" border="0" /></a>Both girls shouted out at them while Bobby kept his eyes moving from their eyes to their hands then one came flashing out silver slashing sharp toward his face catching his rising arm slitting his leather. He raised his leg and kicked right at the guy with the blade and another guy grabbed his retreating ankle and pulled Bobby down. That was it – stabbed three times. The bright lights from The Skylark preserved the red stain right next to where Carm held him on her lap while Sandy went back in to get help. Now Dominic was downed when he tried to go through the police line to care for his blood brother and only the fierce threatening looks from the cops kept the rest of us from jumping in. Out of the crowd came Carlo and he grabbed Tony Castellano and they peeled away in his 57 Chevy. The police were now putting up some rope and trying to disperse a growing crowd. Tomasino pushed his way to the sergeant and looked right at him and said “lay off, I’ll get everyone away”. You didn’t cross TEE, he was the man and his payback was swift and certain.</div><div># # # # # #</div><div>I know today that no other love is found as easily as Marie and I found ours. There was this one song called <em>'At Last'</em> by Etta James that talks about a love that has finally come – it was a lot like ours in one way; we still wait for the sexual expression of our love. Etta savors her newfound love and we get it when she says “life is like a song”. Her joy and our anticipation in harmony. </div><div></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh66uCuYo3aC25hL41tv9Ztbqc1IGSd7-iL7MwuCVl7iCgnh5kXQ2S-z0f_g4Uj5fiXh4gIduuNjqJUbdnQ7u98alg8xmy_Y3aSQPXlBxT-I7xvMRT1oQ7gJZZPHynI8KqESNvuZC6hKz4/s1600-h/bloodPolice%2520at%2520Quest.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215980294200904274" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 621px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px" height="213" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh66uCuYo3aC25hL41tv9Ztbqc1IGSd7-iL7MwuCVl7iCgnh5kXQ2S-z0f_g4Uj5fiXh4gIduuNjqJUbdnQ7u98alg8xmy_Y3aSQPXlBxT-I7xvMRT1oQ7gJZZPHynI8KqESNvuZC6hKz4/s320/bloodPolice%2520at%2520Quest.jpg" width="517" border="0" /></a></div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><br /><div></div><div>Bad blood flowed as red rivers in America - north and south.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-42133516051976648982008-06-25T14:12:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:51.220-08:00'hood, another partDominic was ecstatic.<br />John F. Kennedy got elected<br />and The King <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9JAOapYtv8Ht9BT17X_E6bInFRDX9wiID_7jO2QO4eL7tdSkBbNDmSDpUsCnOMcNQUI3NTZ9xYnHxYO-Y6DVE1yTPj3hE21ZLFzFPoUF7S1_nh8EPoPJOGIkX6xEp9l-J-O3v2QqvXg/s1600-h/Elvis%2520Presley.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215931122462533698" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9JAOapYtv8Ht9BT17X_E6bInFRDX9wiID_7jO2QO4eL7tdSkBbNDmSDpUsCnOMcNQUI3NTZ9xYnHxYO-Y6DVE1yTPj3hE21ZLFzFPoUF7S1_nh8EPoPJOGIkX6xEp9l-J-O3v2QqvXg/s320/Elvis%2520Presley.jpg" border="0" /></a>came back from Germany.<br />My life was confusion; a compass spiraling in directions I couldn’t control and didn’t understand. These were days and months of a sixteen-year-old lifetime dragging to sixteen and a half. The roots of my restless period are found in a Billboard release of the “Top Five”. Pat Boone was rated # 1 and Elvis was second and I was in free fall; ultimately saved by Marie and 'Satisfaction' with a lot of pain and smiles in between.<br />Marie was soft; her breast pressed my breast, her hair lay on my face and I breathed in her gentle intensity. This moment promising to extinguish our uncertainty and timidity, holding firm we did not falter. I longed for this instant, though not knowing where next to go, her delicate strong hand stroking my neck and falling to my shoulder while she pulled me to her. There was no confusion in this embrace and we reeled with heightening intensity seeking the next moment. It came upon release to witness the excitement in each other’s eyes. Fixed, we didn’t move; we learned and cherished how this felt while we began to breathe again. I knew and she wanted what was to come next and I reached out with my hand to her chest, onto her breastbone, from clavicle onto the side of her breasts. Our eyes vulnerable as I felt the woman’s body at her round shoulders, following her lines across her rounded breasts, down to her hip onto her belly and up to her eyes – its sultry touch came to define beauty.<br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>Now if you love me, please don't tease</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>if I can hold them, let me squeeze</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>You leave me aaahhhhhhhh</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>Breathless! </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><em>Jerry Lee Lewis</em></span><br /><br />The next period, 16 ¼, rocked me when Billboard proclaimed “Volare” the song of the year and Elvis was #2, again. A fuckin step backwards and all the whiteman DJ’s were ecstatic that the devil and his swivel were confronting demise and his end was near. Who knows, "Doggie in the Window " might make a comeback. But we weren’t giving up and the next Top 100 sent its own shockwave when "Wooly Bully " scandalized our parents and General Motors pulled their ads. It’s all right because Phillip Morris was singing for our side and Dave Clark hi-jacked Bandstand from Philadelphia to take it on the road as American with Beach Boys and Bobby Darin – both a little lame and tame but heading in the right direction. Joey, our street priest, knew all along that this was temporary -<br />then Elvis recorded <strong>'I’m Back'</strong><br />He unleashed the fullness of his talents and Joey reminded us that the Top Ten meant only that - the first ten. All we needed to do was read further down the list to find Little Richard who <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qzjSxXt0A5XraRoL0bk7CqT6mSioHgvHHJ5l8P-zSXcmCMdT8mcT3BQIV4UwyUuLtLXrcoJnCvKtzePKVthpf-9zCJ4qd74z8Du9CnB9J4dPmMP60ZaYlh988fL5bnVwxgM8yzQgyAs/s1600-h/guitar_gibson.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215933895284368610" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qzjSxXt0A5XraRoL0bk7CqT6mSioHgvHHJ5l8P-zSXcmCMdT8mcT3BQIV4UwyUuLtLXrcoJnCvKtzePKVthpf-9zCJ4qd74z8Du9CnB9J4dPmMP60ZaYlh988fL5bnVwxgM8yzQgyAs/s200/guitar_gibson.jpg" border="0" /></a>blew the lid off the fifties and the rythyms of Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly and Fats Domino and the everlasting <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44gNJ6PPMqFygAzLZKrmtuNaWaEtFdQMGbXHJARTYjTsYFqXJjTpWNA8duuDXVmLpxJ2t3iFcfn8NF7GtAffCIvxHy4NNi7Oydz1yxK39f4N2UIGoe-uZOXBAjbvFPDkcdfw4MEvnBx0/s1600-h/guitar_gibson.jpg"></a>Chuck Berry and Roy Orbison and the Devil himselfJerry Lee Lewis who married his fourteen year old cousin.<br />“Great Balls of Fire”<br />and Joey, always educating us, pursuing balance, reminded us of our enemies – Pat Boone who actually released a recording of Blue Suede Shoes (and the payola stations played it)! Tony Diono threw his transistor radio at a brick wall and stomped on it ‘til Pat died. The other demons were Tab Hunter and Brenda Lee. Tony destroyed his entire album collection the day she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a tune called “I’m Sorry”. Fuck, she, and they, should be!There was another movement that Joey was trying to get some focus on. His cousin from Minnesota told him about a young rock n’ roller named Zimmerman who traded in his electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustic. Seems he was attracted to the folk music of Seeger and Guthrie; further influenced by three writers called beatniks. One of ‘em was a guy named Ginsberg who wrote some really rebellious poetry (and some of it was pretty dirty too ‘cause his book got banned a few years back ) and the only place you could buy it was London or San Franciso. Later, Joey got a copy – it was called “Howl” - and we figured out “beatnik” meant “on the beat”. Their movement lasted into the coffe house times but their music didn’t match rock n’ roll and I figured that three writers do not a movement make!Unless they’re songwriters - and Zimmerman was.<br />Times….times….times….<br /><br />Marie made a difference. We were searchers of our days and nights and found each others fondness on the street and in our hands. I loved her; she was soft. We helped each other deal with our bodies touching and we felt a flame in the boldness of each encounter. I leaned into her and we moved till our lips met slowly yet softly with certainty; breathing harder as we pressed. Her strong rounded shoulders rolled downward to full breasts that, as I cupped them, served as a chalice for beads of her perspiration. I would drink from those pools and become thirsty for her love, only to suffer of our passions; our nest exposed.<br />Dead<br />Crashed<br />Cedar Lake<br />Holly, Bopper, Valens in cold wind; pioneers, gone.<br />Buddy and his band were the first white people to play at the Apollo Theater in Harlem since the big band era. Buddy said, “if it weren’t for Elvis, none of us would be here”. Now he’s not here but Elvis is - Buddy had a #1 a couple years back called<br />'that’ll be the day'.<br />It was one of the songs his band did on tour in Liverpool, England at a club where two guys named John Lennon and Paul McCartney were in the audience.<br /><br />my day to be lost, a whole generation’s worth<br /><br />The charts are so lying. I don’t have the money to gig the rank of a song by buying it but Allen Freed and other DJ’s are committed to rock n’ roll and the radio is free to me – it’s become my toy! Somehow Bossa nova jumped across the network airwaves, appealing to jazz people who found no musical fulfillment in their local coffee house. Joey told me about Ipanema type love music and Marie and I tried it but Bossa died quickly of dispassion because the coffee house poetry just does not mesh with Bossa rhythms. I knew the back beat could support the poetry – I could feel it – why couldn’t the 'hood hear it?<br /><br />Times….times….times….<br />and Zimmerman switched<br />but this time he had a following and his people were not happy. After all, Joni Mitchel didn’t sell out to the back beat rhythms that were too loud for the confined spaces!<br />An anthem hit the streets that made the distinction clear – if it’s too loud, you’re too old! Coffee houses were meant for delicate strumming and extended storytelling. Rock and roll never let up and the newer electric gear filled open spaces with newer, very raw sounds that came from blues and country and gospel and a lotta folk lyrics – except for the “roll” part which meant sex!<br /><br />We were good kids. We did all the right shit for our parents (which began to fall apart the night when Bobby Siers and me went to a black party on Christmas Eve instead of Midnite Mass). Good grades and all. Marie and I were hot for each other. Like there was that night where we sat in the shadows on the entry stoop of an old Methodist church that didn’t make it in our neighborhood and our hands were at places we’d never been before. We kissed so hard that our lips swelled the next day. We lay on the stoop, our bodies hotter than the summer nights swelter that came on us and eventually even our fingertips dripped. Still, there was nowhere to go.<br /><br />He sang those songs because beautiful people began to die and we were lost. Where would we be going without his words.<br /><br />"Times………<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhloVlSoXefWuWybnB1Fyzlwn_JSvytF0DG0RSQ6qOcnrOb4Rdv1Kq9Sgy6nmm_IZPvZf3YYSfT_DinDO53QhfHoTzGaiOIvodJQFMeYPPomMjHD1O32iMTpM8ZE4RsbmljaSkL8LQv8w/s1600-h/Faces.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215935388976021250" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhloVlSoXefWuWybnB1Fyzlwn_JSvytF0DG0RSQ6qOcnrOb4Rdv1Kq9Sgy6nmm_IZPvZf3YYSfT_DinDO53QhfHoTzGaiOIvodJQFMeYPPomMjHD1O32iMTpM8ZE4RsbmljaSkL8LQv8w/s200/Faces.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />they are a' changin"bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-13081636000052297482008-06-25T13:40:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:51.958-08:00'hood, one part‘ hood<br />During the early years of Elvis and Little Richard but before the Beatles, we grew up in an area in central Chicago searching for its’ <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrI_tpNW19Bj_I_NLEIyfNBIs_PG2c75MxUY8FuXx1yPVcECbYDx2TU3NJggNlB56MsPjcpFvEIcOfgGkgJ_pYMeWpIbc6xfNxpsQoVl8MXOGOH3mxc8hdnLABK8eq08Lc4CjXiCtwpDk/s1600-h/chicago-50.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215922280193137106" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrI_tpNW19Bj_I_NLEIyfNBIs_PG2c75MxUY8FuXx1yPVcECbYDx2TU3NJggNlB56MsPjcpFvEIcOfgGkgJ_pYMeWpIbc6xfNxpsQoVl8MXOGOH3mxc8hdnLABK8eq08Lc4CjXiCtwpDk/s200/chicago-50.jpg" border="0" /></a>own identity. Like when someone asked you what part of Chicago were you from, you didn't have an easy answer like Lincoln Park or Rogers Park or Uptown or even Bridgeport where the Mayor lived throughout his five elections and our lifetime. We lived in the harmless sounding "near west side" – surrounded by produce terminals, the sanitary drainage canal and railroad tracks to either side.<br />Mayor Daley didn't campaign in our neighborhood because it wasn't necessary. Vito Marzullo, the alderman and boss of our 25th ward, got out the vote always in numbers far greater than registered voters. Vito, in his latter years as dean of the city council, was invited to Harvard University where he lectured on practical politics; such as empowering the precinct captains with the delivery of garbage cans or handing out jobs - like being the pick and shovel man on a curb and gutter crew.<br />One of my blood brothers was Dominic - he is Italian and I am Lithuanian, (most of us were one or the other) - well, he had his sights on becoming part of the Daley machine when he got out of the Army. He was in about the same time as Elvis but he never saw him. Dom got an honorable discharge and became an assistant precinct captain, which meant he would also have a job working for the city - except on election days when he was a chauffeur to the polling places.<br />He had a real passion for this calling and he would assist people in pulling the levers on the voting machine. Of course, Dominic swore he was doing no wrong and most of the people in the neighborhood felt exactly the same way. All through our young lives we knew the President was a Republican and everything else was Democratic. Dominic was inspired to work hard this campaign because one of our blood brothers Joey Margiola told him he was having trouble sleeping ever since the Russians put "the Sputnik" into space. Joey did all kinds of cerebral thinking and we had a lot of faith in him because he would read magazines all the time and he read a lot of books, too. So, in 1960 Vito and the Democratic machine and guys like Dominic got out the vote to elect John F. Kennedy and the rest of the country helped them do it.<br />But this 'near west side' thing was the real challenge for us; you see, the voters constantly turned out 88% Democratic (the other 18% Republican) so we never made the news as a "key" precinct; therefore, we never got named. There was a local newspaper that ran a banner proclaiming the area "The Heart of Chicago" except nobody outside the neighborhood ever read it and so, like if you were at a dance on the North Side and said you were from the "Heart of Chicago" it didn't help.<br /><br />I think the only place in the city you could find other people from "the Heart" was Twelfth Street beach in the summertime. The sand beach wasn't the greatest, but it was big, and the waves <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK1KJerXhm773z8q5D0teBc2euXU1METX3E3m3OtHbSVMjFyixq-C8vA649pnOTVObMs2rofoaIp3vQgb6_4ona0zbKxSqzBuwNpGwLqRYr-SIE8lA7ZjOYzJ3V5X-ItyMmSPlbSh3drU/s1600-h/beach_span.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215923068039672354" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK1KJerXhm773z8q5D0teBc2euXU1METX3E3m3OtHbSVMjFyixq-C8vA649pnOTVObMs2rofoaIp3vQgb6_4ona0zbKxSqzBuwNpGwLqRYr-SIE8lA7ZjOYzJ3V5X-ItyMmSPlbSh3drU/s200/beach_span.jpg" border="0" /></a>carried little grimy-bits that stayed on you when you got out. It has a large grassy hill and meadow between Miegs field and the Planetarium – a great spot for getting sun and watching the girls. We could just put some cocoa butter on and soak up the rays or we could do something masculine like throw a softball around and onto the blanket of some good looking babe so we could check her out.<br /><br />Every year this chick named Sandy was there and she had the darkest suntan and the greatest knockers we'd ever seen and a radio that played all the 'right' songs. She was slim, tall, blonde and dark from the sun and cocoa butter mix and she was forever sixteen. Bobby Siers worked hard at being as brown and would go out early in the morning to get a perfect spot on the hill, maximizing the angles of the sun and its rays. Joey would throw a ball onto Sandy’s blanket so Bobby Siers – the last of the ‘Four Bloods’, - could go over and hold his arm next to hers. He never quite made her color and would walk away with the ball and humming the song from her radio would say to us "Wait till next week and I'll ask her for a date".<br /><br />Cooling Bobby down was easy at Twelfth Street beach by walking out to "the rocks" to dive into the chilly waters of Lake Michigan and swim out far enough to make the lifeguards uneasy. It's for sure they had no desire to swim out to the cold waters and eventually we would honor their frantic whistling and head back. But, Joey and Bobby and Dominic and me and this other guy named Chuck would go to the other side of the Planetarium where there were no lifeguards and we could swim straight west to the Aquarium.<br />Then one time out Chuck said we had no balls if we didn't try for the breakwater. It looked kind of far to the rest of us but Chuck said we could do it. I didn't always trust his judgement but I never doubted his courage. When we were thirteen he broke his arm as I ran over him with a bicycle. He never held it against me so I figured this was a guy who wouldn't let me drown. So, we swam to the breakwater that formed a harbor for the boats anchored across from Buckingham Fountain. Their white sails sparkled like diamonds in the bright sun. My eyes watered, the diamonds got bigger and I promised myself a handful.<br />It was a lot tougher swim than we had imagined; struggling against an unknown current, we finally reached the breakwater and when the grime next to the concrete filled our hands we felt it to be quite slimy - not at all like the rough cut of a diamond. We climbed, exhausted, onto the concrete lifesaver while our stubbornness, courage and strength faded. We waited; ….to signal for help from one of the passing boats.<br />As they helped us into their boat, they at first thought we capsized and that we swam to the breakwater for safety. Joey told them we had no boat and just needed help ashore and we could see a concern come over their faces as if they had just picked up a band of pirates.<br />Nobody I knew in "the Heart" had a sailboat, so this was my first time in one. I coveted both it and the pretty, young ladies aboard breaking two commandments at the same time. Joe was watching me check out one of the chicks and said to me "It's for sure you're going to burn in hell".<br /><br />For all we knew Hell was being manufactured right in our neighborhood in an abandoned<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215923586046680706" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyj06BUX2Zc_qCjUW5o12g55SzqcxGR6XG3Ns0CXJPN6vmFNWSxL6S2NZh2Qd6hKpSuaKKpGvGlN_GKhRvqr-Rfb6IFu-0mg_MIqkyHWhCHNzIhttm-cqtDTTG2jyXTmNItL6oVJFIWcw/s200/trolcorn02.jpg" border="0" /> trolley car facility on 24th street. From the early nineteen hundreds to the early fifties electric cables criss-crossed the city powering what we called streetcars cars that ran on tracks down the middle of our streets. This sprawling barn was for maintenance and repair of those cars for the southwest side of Chicago’s transportation system. We saw the tracks paved over with asphalt and the car barns were slowly converted to accommodate buses. The last trolley rolled out on the flatbed of a truck – the tracks were gone when it left. By 1959 the barn was downsized even for bus maintenance and nobody knew what was going on inside. The Chicago Daily News ran a story about how the hottest temperature ever recorded was generated below the ground right there in that old brick and steel barn. It was time for Vito to act! His heat, however, was saved for us.<br />Presiding at a nervous community meeting, the classy, portly and bespectacled Vito Marzullo, speaking broken English, accused us of overreacting and standing in the way of progress. Johnny Torino asked, "Please tell us what is really going on"?<br />Vito said, "You woudn' unnestan; so I'm a no tella you to make lies".<br />"But are we in danger? What about our drinking water? What about our children", Johnny asked?<br />Vito started to turn red and shook three fingers right at Johnny and said, "Whenna you come to me an you ask me "Alderman, is everything O.K.", an I say "yes", …. don' ask me nomore. You got da annsr".<br />He walked away from the makeshift podium, right out of the building. In two days, the cars that came for years stopped coming and I saw four trucks pull out one night at about two thirty and head straight toward Western Avenue.<br />Hell came and went - it didn't feel any different when it was gone.<br />Dominic told us that it was the alderman had listened to us and took swift action to make the neighborhood safe for the children. People started to talk about the whole deal and figured if Vito couldn't tell us what was going on how could he have done something about it. Cerebral Joey tried to tell Dominic to cool his rhetoric, but Dom said it would get votes for Kennedy. They didn't need that story to get the vote but Dom continued to make a hero of Vito Marzullo. It was a good story at Harvard - told from "the heart".<br /><em>A nod to Stuart Dybeck - who lived and grew in a parallel universe</em>bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-5824626984542951852008-06-12T07:14:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:53.119-08:00'hood 10Guys in the ‘hood got their first suit when you graduated from grammar school. Most suits didn’t fit; on purpose. The pants were long (we had to pull‘em up) and the shoulders always drooped. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDuduuTp04mbnqu-jayca5aTay5xolrVA7mi7RsRG01AlCe4gaqUGKdI-U2IGMvHZKhcyjpcbmqt9rlTWzZqJ6ZXkmyGH9FyVoOFucd1b3mItQEtFFznhnZNkSWuNH6vjt3m6kxtpNDZs/s1600-h/herringbone.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210998896382347346" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDuduuTp04mbnqu-jayca5aTay5xolrVA7mi7RsRG01AlCe4gaqUGKdI-U2IGMvHZKhcyjpcbmqt9rlTWzZqJ6ZXkmyGH9FyVoOFucd1b3mItQEtFFznhnZNkSWuNH6vjt3m6kxtpNDZs/s200/herringbone.jpg" border="0" /></a>You had time to grow into it because you were a ‘growing boy’ and for those of us who didn’t grow fast enough we would roll up the cuffs over the wrist. Rolling up the pant cuffs really did look bad, so you didn’t do it. Probably wouldn’t wear it again till next spring at weddings or on Easter. Certainly you weren’t going to wear it to high school.<br />There were three schools to go to. The serious boy Catholics went to St. Rita and the serious girl Catholics went to Maria. The rest of us poor heathen went to Tech along with people from other neighborhoods with different nationalities and races and religions. My experiences at Tech were to prepare me for my adult life, said my mom. The old man told me it would teach me how to get a job. I knew kids who went to college and I asked my dad about it and he wondered out loud if any of the hoodlums in this ‘hood ever made it through high school. How could he know? He wasn’t around all that much and mom relied on us kids a lot for a lot of different things. The old man worked a good job at the factory but never came home till late –could be he's hungry. It’s not like he had hobbies; he didn’t go to the bowling ally and he didn’t go to the clubs where the men would sit out and tell stories – and he didn’t drink, either. Where was he? After a while, I didn’t care.<br /><br />I actually did get a job the first summer after grammar school – cleaning the butcher's basement at the end of every day; six days a week. While there was blood to be easily wiped up, the other……..forget about it! It only took about an hour and a half. You know, when ya got a job, your ma is always on ya to learn how to save some money and your old man is lookin for you to start buyin your own shoes. This second hand bike came up for sale and I wanted it - thinking I would save street car money to and from the beach. Dad said I went to the beach too much. Who was gonna pay for all the school supplies for Tech? Bobby Siers wasn’t workin and I’ll bet he’d have pencils when time came!<br /><br />Sure enough, it was the first day of high school, registration day, and I had not yet worn that suit and I had to buy my own pencils and I never rode that bicycle. Joey and Bobby Siers and Dom and me all walked together straight down 24th street through other neighborhoods; across Western, across Washtenaw, across California until Tech loomed up in front of us. This building held three thousand students and the population was very diverse. There were a lot of people here. A lot of different people here.<br /># # # # # # # # # #<br /><br />Kids in Little Rock, Arkansas were registering right at the same time. There were only nine colored kids wanting to sign up at Central High – nine brave kids – but the white people of Little Rock wouldn’t let them register at Central High; they had to go to their own school. They’ve been trying to get into Central for a couple years now. In 1954 there was a Brown vs. Education Board case in the Supreme Court that said “separate but equal” was not good enough anymore and the Board people of Little Rock had to follow the law and said these “Little Rock nine” could go to Central High with “all deliberate speed”. But, on this first day, the Governor, Mr. Orval Faubus sends the National Guard to surround the school because some angry white people from around the state were coming to Little Rock and he needed to keep them and the kids away! That NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall gets a federal judge to tell the governor to let the students in to classes in accordance with Supreme Court law and the governor spits.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPlmodvGrssgMGfcH5Rfe-70SqwdY2KeRPsQIMm8fkGzWgBTsuUqXac5Ae5KzQylGbpmdkS744yY3GEnKPJ_96j6mWfy6eCt0vQxHn7A_SO_jcVNcYfQvgNF_3EOPyYojBcXW9E_3Q96g/s1600-h/central2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210999745212948978" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPlmodvGrssgMGfcH5Rfe-70SqwdY2KeRPsQIMm8fkGzWgBTsuUqXac5Ae5KzQylGbpmdkS744yY3GEnKPJ_96j6mWfy6eCt0vQxHn7A_SO_jcVNcYfQvgNF_3EOPyYojBcXW9E_3Q96g/s200/central2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Her name is Elizabeth Eckford and this was her first day of high school. Just like me; first day.<br />She took a bus; I walked with the guys. When she got off the bus, she saw something was wrong. She was a lone Negro student – all others there were white. Mobs of people screamed and tussling Guardsmen surrounded her as she looked to the faraway entrance of the magnificent castle-like school. Why are you here, people yelled? Did they call you? She knows she’s to go to this school on this day and begins to walk up the long stairs. Blocked by the mob, she turns to get back on the bus and someone spits on her. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjprJBCZfZqQvBHdeHvBAsHuGaTHUR6jmZWtcYCPSolniVcxULOKXxgRzMEKggK-JKHYGpKJIB3j7ct1L0EXtYYGjH2paDR_z45bfjDa7O3gD0cSAQv4MCmokl-0cjVATy23xgWjOYgENg/s1600-h/central3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211000391192157138" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjprJBCZfZqQvBHdeHvBAsHuGaTHUR6jmZWtcYCPSolniVcxULOKXxgRzMEKggK-JKHYGpKJIB3j7ct1L0EXtYYGjH2paDR_z45bfjDa7O3gD0cSAQv4MCmokl-0cjVATy23xgWjOYgENg/s200/central3.jpg" border="0" /></a>She keeps goin’ to the bus – all this happening ‘cause her family's too poor to have a telephone. I’ll remember this story every time someone tells me about the different ways of being rich. Elizabeth is wealthy!<br /><br />President Eisenhower federalizes the National Guard. Now, how smart is that? Not too much I guess because after days of rioting they go home and he has to call in the 101st Airborne Division and Gov. Faubus calls them “an Army of occupation”. They sure looked like one: airborne troops in helicopters with M-1 rifles and bayonets. The mob of people were yelling “two, four, six, eight, we ain’t gonna <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJIqPbZzp44bBagtPdrH19rjTjMpjbSema8rSFf0sS8wbRcde9Du6Ad3T0KphzR-KW19EHVnlx6rPNG7Dw1d3RLAn57lzYk5FZnj1sQha_uspMF22V_ydqDwNUjj3VvYu72Ki2DKiITMw/s1600-h/BE024723-Standard.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211004675302464274" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJIqPbZzp44bBagtPdrH19rjTjMpjbSema8rSFf0sS8wbRcde9Du6Ad3T0KphzR-KW19EHVnlx6rPNG7Dw1d3RLAn57lzYk5FZnj1sQha_uspMF22V_ydqDwNUjj3VvYu72Ki2DKiITMw/s200/BE024723-Standard.jpg" border="0" /></a>integrate” and threw bricks and stones and bottles at the soldiers. So the next Monday, the start of regular classes, the ‘Little Rock nine’ come together and the 101st Airborne gets them through the front entrance. The mob went crazy and beat some colored reporters while mothers screamed to their children “Come out! Don’t stay in there with them colored people” and before noontime the ‘nine’ were going out the rear entrance.<br /><br />Then things got worse.<br />An editor of the Arkansas Gazette described what was going on, “Easy to explain in one sentence. The police have been routed, the mob is in the streets and we’re close to a reign of terror”.<br /><br />Ike was on TV explaining why the U.S. Army invaded Little Rock. I wished some could come to Tech tomorrow. For now, I had to go find Joey.<br /><br /># # # # # # #<br /><br />I found him at the club goin face to face with Dom over whose man did the hotter music. It was classic Elvis vs. Jerry Lee stuff with the current frenzy being who had the most explosive opening – was it the King and his <em>“Hound Dog”</em> or was it the Killer with “Great Balls of Fire”?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSjRWmHAWAeP8TSEff2jZarCYoDjc8EHVT_ETCKFVk1pPUyTQJlBNWoToWmdNEnwnud8Ij0bS5CFWlhWx8QwS0jzFxDPqiMULE2fRNc0JyucdxU5Prc9u8pmU17eqDO61_dNCly7gywI/s1600-h/elvis-young.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211137617348815154" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSjRWmHAWAeP8TSEff2jZarCYoDjc8EHVT_ETCKFVk1pPUyTQJlBNWoToWmdNEnwnud8Ij0bS5CFWlhWx8QwS0jzFxDPqiMULE2fRNc0JyucdxU5Prc9u8pmU17eqDO61_dNCly7gywI/s200/elvis-young.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Joey was selling the Kings act as two minutes of intense, malicious glee and Dom saw the Killer as a wild white singer with a pumpin’ piano.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNC_SL2dQn1TmjhPxZgXGvLCRY6lIQtqRLm6J8IuuWQA7XViTyPmsaqI6Yjpf4d4TYnRhwnq_ewOTZCSYfPs0f1GnXG_VjzfasscniB7XfHlmgRwJn9sYDvZ2uMDCe-6P1BLgWQ8AOSxU/s1600-h/JerryLeeLewis.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211138405027085730" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNC_SL2dQn1TmjhPxZgXGvLCRY6lIQtqRLm6J8IuuWQA7XViTyPmsaqI6Yjpf4d4TYnRhwnq_ewOTZCSYfPs0f1GnXG_VjzfasscniB7XfHlmgRwJn9sYDvZ2uMDCe-6P1BLgWQ8AOSxU/s200/JerryLeeLewis.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />And it went on with ones’ song outshining the others’.<br />From “Heartbreak Hotel” sliding up the fret board to “Whole Lotta Shakin Goin’ On” bangin down the key board. It was <em>“All Shook Up”</em> and <em>“Little Sister” </em>standing tall to Killers masterpiece, “<em>Breathless”</em> which, as performed by Jerry Lee doin <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjymM-1N7KIvtj5IEof-GZA0EVYwKOYq2tgOdK1bL-wa-3FixHLj25T9HwW82RhZoTR6P8STAfO-9PGzvCksdlK-A4471kGgRw4gPmbRi28CxgvxBE-EWiUhA7CHmI9oP493b3uOWRQJBU/s1600-h/jerryLeeLewis-2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211001640023787954" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjymM-1N7KIvtj5IEof-GZA0EVYwKOYq2tgOdK1bL-wa-3FixHLj25T9HwW82RhZoTR6P8STAfO-9PGzvCksdlK-A4471kGgRw4gPmbRi28CxgvxBE-EWiUhA7CHmI9oP493b3uOWRQJBU/s200/jerryLeeLewis-2.jpg" border="0" /></a>the stool kick-out while his elbows banged the ivory, got Dick Clark in trouble for havin Jerry Lee as the headliner for his prime-time bandstand.<br /><br /><em>“Breathless”</em> is pure power rock filled with certainty and sexuality while exuding white country drawl in the black mans soul shout. Rock and roll was not ready for “live” Jerry Lee.<br />When Jerry Lee does <em>“High School Confidential”</em> he orders his woman to get her dancing shoes on before the juke box blows a fuse. The music stops; he sings; sweating through his thick golden mass of hair he hammers the keyboard and the song is so fast it stuns people as his voice is crying out ‘heartbreak’.<br />This is not sock hop music and little girls better get off the streets.<br />He was so hot; his voice will never die!<br />Jerry was blackballed on radio because he married his thirteen year old cousin and I think Buddy Holly wrote a song about it. Joey had a stacked deck though; the Elvis <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXIl8PbWQlDgTrCDW4gPwxwBH691RkK63Q2Bbho7u6H4CFiIowhSRk1g__z-dQgIyhIaODKMIUQ3KRl_iEmJ_OX3xlfKO-2-uCUFYybpadUBcORs3Ovlnwr2dbTnf6jpbpX8XGU8XG8as/s1600-h/ELVIS.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211002824282418354" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXIl8PbWQlDgTrCDW4gPwxwBH691RkK63Q2Bbho7u6H4CFiIowhSRk1g__z-dQgIyhIaODKMIUQ3KRl_iEmJ_OX3xlfKO-2-uCUFYybpadUBcORs3Ovlnwr2dbTnf6jpbpX8XGU8XG8as/s200/ELVIS.gif" border="0" /></a>song list simply outlasted the Killer's collection. Dom couldn't win against Elvis. I took Joey aside to talk about tomorrow.<br /><br /># # # # # #<br /><br />We walked up the steps at Tech and there were some of the ‘older guys’ from the ‘hood hangin out in front of the school along with a lot of other white people we didn’t know. There was two cops. There were about 50 colored guys. We stared; Bobby grabbed me by the arm and we went inside where there was a small group of mixed guys and girls talking real loud about Little Rock. I kinda knew what was happening down there and I could see anger in kids’ faces and knew for sure this was going to be a rough day. The bell rang for kids to go to class and only about half went. One cop came around the corner and a guy told him to go fuck himself. He left. Then this black kid steps up and asks who are you gonna stop from goin to school today.<br /><br />Stupid fuckin Dom shouts out to not even ask because all of us are going to the same school, like it or not.<br />Well my names ‘juice’ and I want to know who is gonna watch my back, then this hillbilly lookin guy from Washtenaw jumps out and runs right at him – he steps back and trips him to the ground. The white kid’s on the sidewalk and ‘juice’ goes right down on him and thumps his head on the concrete and he bleeds immediately. Screams go up, yelling starts but nobody else moves. The hillbilly kicks at ‘juice’ right in the groin and rolls him over. Just like that the bleeding hillbilly is on top and he’s punching away with both fists. Still nobody moves while they’re both now rolling down the stairs not letting the other get up until they hit bottom. ‘juice’ makes it up first, swings across but hillbilly ducks leavin ‘juice’ wide open to a shot right in his gut. He goes down and the white boy stands over him. ‘juice’ sits up and says we’re done.<br /><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211009519973478194" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0Kl1KpRGStdXB_LBnhIDNocjuiTKlMuG7QvjVp4ptx-1OfJjRFn4TPFpLkv5joNsz4xZ9GTUlzhl2Gd_X8YuuWdhbJ90rrOMykKknbUYdIbz3iHHaYCBw81qsefb3zkmIYAmjZ3djDg/s320/800px-Little_Rock_Nine_protest.jpg" border="0" /><br />Elizabeth Eckford and eight others have more to do.bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-59132221586628688202008-06-08T17:36:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:54.195-08:00'hood ninerThe law was clear. Ole Miss had to accept him – Bobby had to enforce the law.<br />James Meredith presented his case to the state and federal government, he simply asking them and then the fifth circuit court ordering them, to implement the law. James wrote a letter to the U.S. Dept of Justice on February 21st, 1961. He ask for their help using their power and influence to insure compliance with the law. In another letter to Thurgood Marshall, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBD0nSteen_Y6In1GUyiAWfVaulQz6mi_GjX7ljrBl-ev_D6MSIhWHh6lOoToCbDTac1J36RxHv8KYfMXaE163wVEtNC1Rt5A9eAfxRwa-q_MeIEKwbPwyY0xMviuFwh7qlN1I7hWf5zk/s1600-h/mer+thur+mshl01271r.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209675666433195810" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBD0nSteen_Y6In1GUyiAWfVaulQz6mi_GjX7ljrBl-ev_D6MSIhWHh6lOoToCbDTac1J36RxHv8KYfMXaE163wVEtNC1Rt5A9eAfxRwa-q_MeIEKwbPwyY0xMviuFwh7qlN1I7hWf5zk/s200/mer+thur+mshl01271r.jpg" border="0" /></a>who was the head of the NAACP, he asked for help because “I anticipate encountering some difficulties”.<br /><br />What the hell was Bobby waiting for? Was he not the head of the department of justice? Why was it taking him and Jack a so long to be brave! Not until August 31st 1962 did the case get to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and in ten short days, finally, on September 10th 1962 the Supreme Court ordered Ole Miss to admit James Meredith.<br /><br />Governor of Mississippi Ross Barnett declares: "There is no case in history where the Caucasian race has survived social integration. We will not drink from the cup of genocide. ... <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpxEoxUqNL5saoSeXbAlBAUCPA6wOTA7LaKATZdkNYTi7PBGEySe8jSGcb3Z5WLwPukzzn9Ieels1qA3Aw-2eWv11Mhn06M1Rydgqaw0u5QcmXpkNk3BHrGhEK11FbbKATChkWLCxsg1A/s1600-h/schoolintegration5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209931906314248930" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpxEoxUqNL5saoSeXbAlBAUCPA6wOTA7LaKATZdkNYTi7PBGEySe8jSGcb3Z5WLwPukzzn9Ieels1qA3Aw-2eWv11Mhn06M1Rydgqaw0u5QcmXpkNk3BHrGhEK11FbbKATChkWLCxsg1A/s200/schoolintegration5.jpg" border="0" /></a>We must either submit to the unlawful dictates of the Federal government or stand up like men and tell them never! No school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor”.<br /><br /><br />* * * * * *<br /><br /><div></div><div>Marie and I finally made it to the no name restaurant where the food was served family style and in heaps. We had to wait a little bit until the next seating and when she excused herself I picked up a paper at the door called <em>New Musical Express</em> from London and on the front page at the bottom was a small headline and article about a new group from Liverpool called The Beatles. They just signed a record contract with Parlophone Records for a song called <em>“Love Me</em> <em>Do”.</em> I had to wonder who are these guys and where do they come from (musically) and are they any good at what they do? Maybe that’s an irrelevant question because lotsa people think Pat Boone is good - he just charted again with an awful <em>“Speedy Gonzales”</em> followed by <em>“Monster Mash”</em> by Bobby Pickett. I must admit that the monster hit of 1962 is Seegers’ <em>“If I had a Hammer”</em> by Peter, Paul and Mary and it was at least good lyrics. I got a buddy back home who I’m sure is ecstatic ‘cause his folk music now rules; except for the teeny boppers who made <em>Mashed Potatoes</em> a #1 song – you had to hear it to believe it!<br />Here’s the thing, I can look back over the entire past two years and I’ve watched my heroes fade away. The 1962 charts had a couple of Elvis songs – slower tempos – and even a Chubby Checker song called<em> “Slow Twistin”</em> but where’s Little Richard, where’s Chuck Berry, where are all the original rockers whose roots have provided me with the diversity I can “feel”. And that’s it – I can only define a back beat – emphasis on 2 – 4 in a 4/4 bar. I know the music schools, here, Northwestern, Chicago teach and study classical music and some jazz and maybe that’s the way they should be. They’re training people for and subsidized by symphonic expressions. These are people who write books and have lectures and discussion groups about a single piece of music. </div><div>I care about the “rockabilly” music of Fred Maddox and the hard driving <em>“Freight Train Boogie”</em> by the Delmore Brothers of 1946. Their music is “untamed”. Is the best I can say is that I ‘feel’ its rhythms and can relate to the youthful, relevant poetry in its lyrics? Beethoven was filled with passion, but he refined it to the expressions of his era. Maybe that’s it; our great writers haven’t yet arrived. </div><br /><div>maybe it’s our era that needs defining<br /></div><div>Still in my hand is the music news from London; announcing a Carnegie Hall concert organized by Pete Seeger for September 22nd. </div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEias2wFquvSFx74WzRKtSGG5OVDY4d72ssHVwDCLofct89Mb679VRfR6TFoix_Vwj6qmvCnsxa9S7Hg6FEVNIWvkUMXKvA1GWQFI_53mLFET4nUZiwhlf-kxsuPvoZsmkG0iBj-89GN2pE/s1600-h/Guitar-Player-Giclee-Print-C11862779.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210711301971905586" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEias2wFquvSFx74WzRKtSGG5OVDY4d72ssHVwDCLofct89Mb679VRfR6TFoix_Vwj6qmvCnsxa9S7Hg6FEVNIWvkUMXKvA1GWQFI_53mLFET4nUZiwhlf-kxsuPvoZsmkG0iBj-89GN2pE/s200/Guitar-Player-Giclee-Print-C11862779.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>A new folksong writer by the name of Bob Dylan will be premiering a new song called <em>'A Hard Rains a' gonna Fall'.</em></div><br />* * * * * *<br /><div>It’s September 13th and on statewide TV and radio, Governor Ross Barnett declares to the people of Mississippi “We will not surrender to the evil and illegal forces of tyranny”. Bobby hears about it and calls him immediately but can’t reach him because he’s too busy getting his back slapped by his redneck buddies while tryin to not spill his bourbon whiskey. So he finds Jack and they are trying hard to figure this out. <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209928467234670386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdB8HEGYRKRwcrd76hq0dZYzNf6jfIWDSVniXrIgY0A8aIb0CaYz3x5Uylb6AydhyX1IsVZd3x9WAHdY2JiSrS3N9fA0_gov8c1MUWz4vPF9_RprmuKQjouEchIuU-9pqGKuJC-koBbZU/s320/merjfk_rfk.jpg" border="0" />Jack had talked to Governor Barnett two days before about the ruling and though the stand-off had a Civil War flavor he came away convinced that all Barnett wanted was a way to save face with the people of Mississippi; of course, integration was going to happen but ole Ross wasn’t going to make it look easy. The voters in his state would be after his ass. He needs an out! With all of his high-minded speeches about principles vs. expediency and moral degradation and the flowers of Southern womanhood, what he really needed was some cover so he could get re-elected. So on the 15th Bobby calls him up - during the next few days they exchange six or eight phone calls trying to come up with a scheme acceptable to both sides.<br />Then the Mississippi legislature jumps in with a measure supporting the Governor with a vote of confidence. The next day, the state circuit court tried James in abstentia and found him guilty of ‘moral turpitude’ and fined him one hundred dollars. Well now, the legislature quickly enacted a law forbidding anyone with a criminal offense admission to its’ state universities. James is determined to smash these barriers to his race. He readies himself and with U.S. Marshals surrounding him, <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209929381000717618" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCSgECt_Fgm2nL8pSYkVeHhkq6SmzK-sO-1A-tBrJHqvwR9WL3YK0_z60OYSLBaUtUFqY6u94HQGVII87LNEniRZyHZnMUau-6kHOs8FW98TOA_-uiY5JkpodE-OSYZLDc5WZIw0rvHhI/s200/mered3da3134e85866-71-1.jpg" border="0" />he walks to the Lyceum Building to make his first attempt to register at Ole Miss in Oxford.<br />Ross Barnett, as self-appointed registrar, looks James in the eyes, personally blocks his way and says “No”. They stand a few moments; James looks to the marshals, but they are only there to protect him. They were purposely un-armed. James walks away, with them, and a growing crowd yells out some pretty nasty stuff. </div><br /><br /><br /><p>This was the opening salvo of what forever will be known as ‘The Battle of Oxford Mississippi” –<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcytjhf2UzhV0Z9eMqts82RtuOeVLpx0ifVc0SL-0L_a4mueXG68TdH377uX87sRRnZpEQCa1d8nnuWMCbH7e8731mJmzxuJo1JqOke_zj7E7C0RWTm1PHoBR15E823CeQg2WotfHIceQ/s1600-h/oxford.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210707094073652402" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcytjhf2UzhV0Z9eMqts82RtuOeVLpx0ifVc0SL-0L_a4mueXG68TdH377uX87sRRnZpEQCa1d8nnuWMCbH7e8731mJmzxuJo1JqOke_zj7E7C0RWTm1PHoBR15E823CeQg2WotfHIceQ/s200/oxford.jpg" border="0" /></a>the last great battle of the civil war:</p><br /><p>September 20th 1962. </p><br /><br />* * * * * *<br /><p></p><br /><p><br />We at last were seated and though it seemed a long wait, there was only a moment before platters of food were sliding across the twelve foot wooden tables where hungry people showed no hesitation filling their plate. We sat across and watched each move made from fingertips to napkin to goblet to lips to eye to eye. A dissonant voice cut short our gazing as I jerked my body around to see right next to me a tall black man grab another at the collar, raise a fist in the air…….then bite his lip as he dropped the younger man to the floor. People rose up all around but there was no touching – just hard stares. The black man scooped up his books and on the way out spewed out “Pray you were as strong as Mr. James Meredith. God is watchin over him – not you” and threw a copy of the Northeastern News that carried a headline about Ole Miss. It landed right at the side of his head and pages sprayed into the air. Marie grabbed my arm as a couple guys were helping the young man to his feet and he said he was gonna get his black ass. She pulled me harder –<br /></p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209676428160214850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPRAkXEZlLorXHTydLYCss7rWwUwDOYsx2bR5PTbBM4hymUh4XX5V9CpwaTp9oQXYIZAjEUDiw9OUEuv65gQP0HCL1hpVYbsvm9edlnNFVQSVHHmZ71QcUu5mwRTMGFDMfLck_x1zyio4/s320/dejavutimewarp.jpg" border="0" /><br />I’ve been here before.bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-64631299288528949762008-06-08T12:56:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:54.309-08:00Wonder in a backyard garage<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwWHiDO6AzP9BmSBBNrwFgDlrWw7DQN-7R5fu_GT7LBjo-hkCiiuOz4fAWIaDLzhk04n4XIQHcwFnKiQZHhpzbzq-zyi-QaJugNFrFQd8YcNOk9I376Wi20V9YPu6ptJ7Ju7ssNUchAJg/s1600-h/DSCF0167.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209611430989981554" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwWHiDO6AzP9BmSBBNrwFgDlrWw7DQN-7R5fu_GT7LBjo-hkCiiuOz4fAWIaDLzhk04n4XIQHcwFnKiQZHhpzbzq-zyi-QaJugNFrFQd8YcNOk9I376Wi20V9YPu6ptJ7Ju7ssNUchAJg/s400/DSCF0167.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="justify">The rain is relentless. It forced us from our riverside picnic to the home of Jaime, father of the newly 5 years old daughter Fani’s birthday party. The tres leche cake is on a small portable table hastily set up next to the newly-wiped-from-outdoor-dirt chairs on a porch attached to the garage. Mowers, ladders, and extra household flotsam have all been unceremoniously purged from the garage to make room for a dry dance floor. It is Hispanic family , and extended family, and a few close friends; like me. Some have ventured forth in brief intermissions of the deluge, but return to our close backyard refuge as the drops become sheets again. The dancing has to be restrained because there are so many in this small space. Everyone is in a good mood. The rain is just a part of the day.</div><br /><div align="justify"><br />From a side door, enter a few very young children. They briefly watch the adults Bachata, Mambo, and Swing. Everyone is in motion. A boy of about 4 is rapt in his attention. His eyes are wide. His legs begin to flex in time to the music. He makes attempt to move immature muscles in ways new to him. He actually gets a little hip action going. A five year old girl in a flouncy sundress and maryjanes impulsively grabs his hand; first, as if to lead him; but then as a partner on this strangely gyrating floor. She, too, begins a sycopation. Could it be called flirtatious? The boy does not pull back or resist. She has him now she begins a twisting in time to the heavy beat. Soon, the adults notice. The two holding hands together, moving in time to the music. There is a great delight and a "come see this" tug is passed from blouse to shirt, and adults gather; more and more; until the garage entrance is backed up to the rain line outside with gawkers, all trying to see this handing off: this bridge between generations. The continuity of Life.</div><br /><div align="justify"><br />One father tries to insert his own son into this mix. That child is having none of this, and , throwing his hands in a swipe, walks away. "How dare you !" is the conveyance. Now, our host introduces his feted daughter into this dance of sweet innocence. By the legs and shoulders, he sits her down onto the concrete next to our dancers. Our originating girl frowns, pushes the new suitor away , and takes "her" boyfriend by the hand and exits, leaving Birthday girl Fani bewildered. She runs and holds to her father’s leg. </div><br /><div align="justify"><br />The adults disperse; the show is over. I sit in my chair, just watching the rain and a solitary couple on the garage dance floor. Our little girl appears again at the side door. She sees the audience has departed and drags her smaller partner back onto their stage. She has not had her fill. They start again. She has found her man; she has protected him, and now she claims his limbs again as her own, to move with her to the music. Two more songs and our little younger soldier is getting weak in the knees. He falters, and plop sits as his joints buckle. Our little siren takes him under the armpits and pulls him to his feet, making sure he can stand on his own, and gives him a quick buss on the cheek before she heads off to some new adventure. I wonder if they will ever dance together again.</div><br /><div align="justify"><br />How could you not be filled with emotion at being able to witness the wonder of humanity in purest form. This was the beginning of love, of protection, and of celebration. All in a small garage on a rainy afternoon.<br /></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-56661839843279740142008-06-02T10:58:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:55.099-08:00'hood #8It was a lingering walk back to 85 Mount Vernon and we talked of many things; the strengths of her voice, husky, yet clear and decisive made everything she had to say to me even more attractive. She asked about my browned skin and I told her it was only my arms and face, that working on a farm under a roasting sun makes you stay covered even if it made you warmer so I took the advice from Brother Bernard when he told me to keep my shirt on. I asked her about the note. What would she tell me of her dad's feelings about me? She deflected the real purpose of the question by telling me that Bobby was the only guy she trusted to get the note to me. I let it go and pulled her into me by her shoulder <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6gixY2bL9G8EpW3AxIrj1CRqTUHCx53oja5tmyw5_HWPpAOgqXfv9UfY_jIjQ1aRoStl9lsZ9erDnMgnE0zkjr9wOplk6Kypb28H6jDk37PlqaL1PWx4DayDCu3VdcH34ylY73KLeU4/s1600-h/CB103802.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207349806295870754" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6gixY2bL9G8EpW3AxIrj1CRqTUHCx53oja5tmyw5_HWPpAOgqXfv9UfY_jIjQ1aRoStl9lsZ9erDnMgnE0zkjr9wOplk6Kypb28H6jDk37PlqaL1PWx4DayDCu3VdcH34ylY73KLeU4/s200/CB103802.jpg" border="0" /></a>and savored the smells in her hair before kissing her full on the lips for a lasting minute – until someone walked past and gave us “a’ hem”. We chuckled knowing he couldn’t know how long it’s been.<br />I told her about the anti-war protestors (she immediately corrected me saying they’re called war-protesters); I didn't want to bring up the confusion with"peace protestors". The big protests on this campus were for Civil Rights, and there were people on campus who had participated in some of the freedom rides focusing on de-segregation of facilities all up and down Route 40. Marie told me about Michael and his girl friend named Penny who went to Swarthmore. Seems she was a big player in the Route 40 freedom rides. South of Boston, down the waters edge past New York City in Maryland, east of Baltimore is a little city called Cambridge where she joined their second ride into this city of segregated lunch counters, schools, churches and movie houses – but worst was lack of health care – if you needed a hospital, you also needed a car to take you 200 miles to Johns Hopkins where black doctors don’t have hospital privileges; but, at least, you are not turned away!<br />Penny and other students were on their way back to schools like Morgan, Howard, Lincoln and Bryn Mawr; all beaten, whites more so than the blacks. Not enough gains this summer and the ranks were thinning. Penny talked about how she had taken strength from the songs they sung.<br /><br /><em>"And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone If your time to you is worth savin' "<br /></em><span style="font-size:78%;">Bob Dylan</span><br /><br />The stories Marie told me reminded me of Joey’s stories and both Cairo and Cambridge seemed to have predictable futures for a shrinking population, lack of customers for its’ stores and factories moving out of town with the new wave of corporations being formed creating more unemployment and even homeless people.<br />Both these cities represent an upheaval from old ways and pursuit of a new way of life. No longer was it acceptable to refuse a child to go to school. No longer was it acceptable to turn people away at the hospital front door. A man should be able to work if he can do the work and pray to his God wherever that may be. Many men and their families would have a home if they could live in a de-segregated society. These two small cities and others across America will be asked to be un-afraid of the future and trust to be asked for by their new leader. He had the foot soldiers, now he needed that support from every town and city across America including the capitol city on the Potomac River.<br /><br /><em>For the times they are a-changin’</em><br /><br /><br />Right turn onto the steps of 78 Mount Vernon and, she unlocks the outside door and goes up a flight of stairs into a hallway with three doorways – one for her front apartment and entry to a living room, the two rear doorstwo for two big bedrooms, each with its’ own bathroom, bed and desk and sofa and closets. Nice!<br /><br /><em>A shoulder to lie on, a body to embrace</em><br /><br />Entering the room I felt a glow coming from<br />my inner self while I simply closed my eyes to breathe in the scents of my love. She asked for the duffel bag I carried and flung it into the corner. She goes to a radio and says she found a good station that had a good mix of “modern” music and flicks it on and The Righteous Brothers come forth as if on cue. She curls an arm across the small of my back, looks into my eyes and I want to read it as “nothings changed”. She rests her cheek on the muscles just below my collarbone and we begin to dance, a slow, swaying dance. We kiss softly and my hands fall onto her until our lips are simply rubbing and a small moan comes from her depths. I pull her hips closer into me and the swaying motion of our hips presses her harder against me and passionate pleasure slowly washes over us. We kiss harder now, as we dance and sway, our hearts race as we touch and hug and feel each other. The song slowly fades. She leaves me to go into the bathroom telling me to “get under the covers” and I’m momentarily asking someone who isn’t there what I’m supposed to do? Marie appears in a short white slip and I could already see her erected nipples to be a sign of how eager she is for the coming. I open the covers for her and wrap one arm around her, gazing into her eyes and I <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Rig7HGeA1-swX6OvY_2uey3Dm8sYL0qvVbzdvDbhGE2L12npVSn5Xx60yHPTb5Lwt-Cx5YJ6tVZJG2GoMIN52e7VsxiGhLHjJQXwElMSNeT8EgBeanC_QvAiC_2lgyCEr5ImIKvqYfc/s1600-h/Marie2296452785_9a1959ddb6_o.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207353710421142834" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Rig7HGeA1-swX6OvY_2uey3Dm8sYL0qvVbzdvDbhGE2L12npVSn5Xx60yHPTb5Lwt-Cx5YJ6tVZJG2GoMIN52e7VsxiGhLHjJQXwElMSNeT8EgBeanC_QvAiC_2lgyCEr5ImIKvqYfc/s200/Marie2296452785_9a1959ddb6_o.jpg" border="0" /></a>know we love each other.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Spent and exhilarated, exhausted and excited,<br /><br />we lie hugging, warm and softly whispering private love-things to each other and we eventually fall asleep like this.<br /><br /># # # # # # # # #<br /><br />If the Potomac River is what gave Washington its’ bright reflections, it also made the darness much thicker. Here was Jack, trying to do a balancing act with Nikki and suddenly he found himself on a high wire without a net. Jack came back from Geneva a beaten man. Nikki was sure he had withered Jack down to a pansy; so he started sending missiles to Cuba in April to prevent an invasion by the Americans. At first he only sent surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface cruise missiles for the purpose of defending Cuba, but Jack had ticked him off back in ’61 by installing nuclear IRBM’s in Turkey; just 16 minutes away from Moscow. Nikki was gonna take one more step – in May he decided Cuba needed nuclear missiles and by July nearly 60 ships filled the ports and here’s how they found out. The head of the CIA was on his honeymoon and the French Intelligence Agency tells him about the Soviet missiles. So the Director of CIA finds a satellite-telephone and calls Jack from Paris. Well, Jack and Bobby and Rusk and McNamara have a meeting and they figure Nikki wouldn’t do that – mostly because the mid-term elections were coming and he didn’t want to influence them in any way (could it be he was afraid of Republicans). Well, it’s the end of August already so they do a fly-over and all they see<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWnuQw7jh21BN_rU3XCpHjppxt2T49Uuk-6dax7Vzk-COyPStg3WcmaVBPGhavgywXsL1l34xTL3yrV75cKVTNrfqR2viulmHRrSyS54vSb-MZ3LhTA65wGoEJD3jLXCtRHiI5e1nOdA/s1600-h/misslesilopic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207363000435404130" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWnuQw7jh21BN_rU3XCpHjppxt2T49Uuk-6dax7Vzk-COyPStg3WcmaVBPGhavgywXsL1l34xTL3yrV75cKVTNrfqR2viulmHRrSyS54vSb-MZ3LhTA65wGoEJD3jLXCtRHiI5e1nOdA/s200/misslesilopic.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />is the surface-to-air defensive missiles and, besides that, the Soviet ambassador said “nyet” to the existence or intent of offensive missiles. Jack goes to Congress and says everything’s O.K.;<br /><br />Nikki had prevailed, again, for a little while.<br /><br /><br />He drank some vodka and went on a second honeymoon.<br /><br /><br />I awoke because my body was on fire! I put my face into her hair and at the end of this long day she was still fresh. Marie slept and I went to shower, thinking twice before soaping her off me; no denying I needed this shower – last being a thousand miles and two days ago. I fixed my eyes on her resting body and knew I couldn’t leave – especially now; we had shared each other deeply; yes, as so many have shared each other; all, they knew, in a special way. This was our first times and we were impassioned while those firing spots in our brain took us upwards to unseen and unknown places before bursting into rousing moments as finale leads to prelude. She awakened and turned to me opening her eyes and arms. As I sat onto the bed in my wet towel she rose up and stripped it from right under me praying I not wet the bed where WE will sleep tonight. But now she was hungry and flew into and out of the shower, her hair rolling in glistening curls to her shoulders. When her hair wasn’t wet, it had a fullness pulled higher by those curls; of course I’ve seen this many times at 12th street beach and would watch again the slow rising of her hair. I didn’t know where we were eating and I asked about how I should dress. She immediately asked where did I get those blue jeans and said it would be neat to wear them anywhere 'cause nobody on this campus was wearing them. So I reached into my second hand duffel bag to get my second hand blue jeans to slip over my old gym shoes that didn’t hold onto the gym floor any more. She told me I looked good; must be the shirt she bought me.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />James Meredith rebuked,<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207354831407607106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTdXwwDOpM1mXvFhvIKC95-EyW7tD0HptIEmMYfjfQ3bgsDJXUMAJD5vRHXWvQCptrypcqKY5LFY9Kq9w6zupD_ErSa8Gy71tJ8yCMji86BTayYG2DjXhnC3ma0Ctf7w_YlINqGrwhCgY/s200/meredith.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />again<br /><br />for the last time.bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-60429011539458789902008-05-23T08:38:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:55.808-08:00'hood, the seventhThe Fenway area has some university buildings but Back Bay is where most of Northeastern is and I found myself walking along Boylston Street eyeing the upscale stores and markets. The walk from the Greyhound terminal was quite long – though I felt very much at home in the neighborhoods I passed through. People were already coming out of their houses and sitting on the sidewalks and on the front porch to escape the hot, close air of late August in the city. All the images of back home were here; little girls chalking the sidewalk, three guys smoking Lucky Strikes, grandma sitting with a flyswatter, a push-cart with iced lemonade and a row of seated old-timers re-telling stories. Across the street was a fire hydrant wide open, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimWhy-WAhMy7EIMEFxnILfIEu_067aXNfmKrTISaQNtR20x7khghZCBLQDYiL2aqV23uEl_4nPHVi39GeOqKxoIUGQWi-Jko9iT6olNaeToqIf7tuXMNRzQOz8CSN2OMvDVVoQe180P_Y/s1600-h/heatwave_hmed_7p_h2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203598789007478018" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimWhy-WAhMy7EIMEFxnILfIEu_067aXNfmKrTISaQNtR20x7khghZCBLQDYiL2aqV23uEl_4nPHVi39GeOqKxoIUGQWi-Jko9iT6olNaeToqIf7tuXMNRzQOz8CSN2OMvDVVoQe180P_Y/s200/heatwave_hmed_7p_h2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />spraying the street and any kids or cars brave enough to do a water crossing. There was a store I had to go into because the sign on the outside proclaimed it to be <strong>“The Best Italian</strong> <strong>Food Store in America”.</strong> The first thing I saw through the opened door was a wheel of white cheese rolling across a counter to the cutting area where a small woman, dressed in black, urged the young roller boy to be careful while cutting a wedge for her. The odors were of olives and garlic and baking bread and brewing finely ground Italian coffee while my eyes were feasting on the salamis and prosciutto and red peppers. They made me a sandwich and I ate it while walking through this ‘hood, a soothing familiarity to its streets and sidewalks.<br />Boylston Street had no carry out sandwich shops although they did have some fancy names on their restaurants like The Radius, Legal Sea Foods and finally an Italian place called Tamasso Trattoria. I kept an eye open at every crossing until I would find Mount Vernon Street; there I would be on the last leg of my journey to Maries Boston home.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDtl5S8LHCpp2ZEWu9kE1rDkKPKt5CbdGSLt__Nw0NdNAQsvFqJp0CUiDqA8ozFKqIziBveYOyQrnMbDyw5LZW5-wDnAGJMuFA6v7e0hUG8cd9SJcYXk7cZlGV2bFgETahxBwxu-NPK1Q/s1600-h/back+bay2nd_Harrison_Gray_Otis_House.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203614452753206642" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDtl5S8LHCpp2ZEWu9kE1rDkKPKt5CbdGSLt__Nw0NdNAQsvFqJp0CUiDqA8ozFKqIziBveYOyQrnMbDyw5LZW5-wDnAGJMuFA6v7e0hUG8cd9SJcYXk7cZlGV2bFgETahxBwxu-NPK1Q/s200/back+bay2nd_Harrison_Gray_Otis_House.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />78 Mount Vernon Street<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Isn’t that a bitch when nobody’s home!<br /><br />So now I gotta ask somebody where the school is but I just start walkin west until I hit a street called Massachusetts Avenue. We don’t have an Illinois Avenue back home so it struck me that Boston must be the state capitol to have a street named like that. Left turn, and I find myself in front of the Cranston Theatre that has signs on the sidewalk and the building for a “Music Concert featuring Paul Revere and the Raiders”. I’ve heard of these guys! They got a record out called <em>‘Louie, Louie’</em> and the song made it to #1 except it wasn’t theirs that made it. It was another group called The Kingsmen that hit the top of the charts. The big story about this song is that the governor of Indiana banned sales of the record and no playing of it on the radio because of “indecent lyrics” (nobody could understand what they were saying anyhow). The other weird stuff about this song was that it was recorded right about the same time by both bands right in Portland, Oregon. So what the hell was Paul Revere and the Raiders doing in Boston? Go figure. That governor was just another example of the discrimination and suppression surrounding the release of anything rock and roll.<br />Soon other stations weren’t playing any hard beat (was it that payola thing again) and the charts fell to a Bobby Vinton song called ‘<em>The</em> <em>Flying Nun”</em> or<br />"The Sky High Nun" or something like that - boy did that make me wanna puke! Here at the Cranston Theatre in Boston and far from Indiana there was a song list topped with ‘<em>Louie, Louie’ </em>followed by the flip side called <em>‘All Night Long’</em> and a cover of Elvis’s <em>‘All Shook Up’</em>.<br />I wondered what you could get on the radio in this city – did they dare do any Smokey Robinson<em> ‘Shop Around’</em> which, in the record stores became a million seller, but never made it to #1 on the charts. One of my all time non-favorites made it the top though – Connie Francis (gag) singing<em> ‘Don’t Ever Break the Heart that Loves</em> <em>You’</em>. Nice idea but shit rhythm!<br />The hardest workin man in show business - James Brown - did his first show at the Apollo a couple of months ago<br />(co-incidentally it was on the same day they found Marilyn Monroe dead from an overdose) and I think the backlash from his Negro spiritual up-beat tempo was ferocious because all these novelty songs hit the airwaves all at once; the two worst ones were<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEcD6SWpTZlwLrT1S7xbuAXvlYDiqmO6L6n7dWKktFa-eZyx0ivoUvolW4dqDWVgOEmEKVw6kx5I6w42m3cqKzz67s2d-3QzlcEP5c_qaKX1GYvi59t-JLJbHFtYZfGNXDboJGJeKQaZ0/s1600-h/bikiyellow-740062.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203599909993942306" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEcD6SWpTZlwLrT1S7xbuAXvlYDiqmO6L6n7dWKktFa-eZyx0ivoUvolW4dqDWVgOEmEKVw6kx5I6w42m3cqKzz67s2d-3QzlcEP5c_qaKX1GYvi59t-JLJbHFtYZfGNXDboJGJeKQaZ0/s200/bikiyellow-740062.jpg" border="0" /></a><em>‘Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’</em> and the other from a guy who was now also on television – Mitch Miller scored a #1 with a song called ‘<em>Calcutta’</em> and then, along with his bubble machine and on national television, he had a guy with fake sideburns sing ‘<em>Don’t Be Cruel’.</em> Yes, please, don’t be!<br /><em>“I’m Cryin”</em> to quote Roy Orbison, a rockabilly guy from Elvis’s part of town.<br /># # # # # # # #<br /><br />I’m still on Massachusetts Avenue and there are a ton of directional signs to university buildings and I see an arrow to the library so I figure I’ll start there. There’s some commotion up ahead and as I get closer I see about 50 college kids walking in a circle, holding up a few signs saying “Stop the War in South East Asia”. I didn’t know who was fighting there but I could’ve guessed it was us because one sign said “U.S.A. leave Viet Nam Today”.<br /><br />Marie came to Northeastern because she was always interested in things happening all over the world and this school had a program called “International Studies” and was supposed to be the best. If I could ask one of these guys where that building is I could save some time and I needed to because it was nearing dusk. There’s a fellow whose not walking in that circle so I go to him and ask about the international studies building. He tells me there is no ‘one’ building for that so if I was looking for someone I should try either the student union or the library. Okay, thank you, and then he says, “Are those blue jeans that you’re wearing? We don’t see them much here in the city. Nice”, (Thank you, Brother Bernard)!<br />I see the sign that says ‘student union’ so I turn to see a two story building with glass walls and big glass doors – almost like a downtown building. Inside you can see the entrance to a cafeteria and a bookstore and a bowling alley and there’s a staircase up to what the sign calls “Study Lounge”. Walking around, I get some nice feelings with the atmosphere; good lookin people all focused on reading and quiet talking, but I don’t see Marie so I look for the road that says “Library”.<br /><br />My heart beats faster as I just stand to see her again; up there, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgZI53QllOZkKnG-zaYCYRKxLK0obCtbYocV1cEwQGg8xddnaQ-D_GXlRa9O1XHn9Fl-W4oP3lwqGqEGYgU_pKpcqPwKCJiaIgD7XSXUWKfsr65vh1PgAlJlImyZCVQHwVJMJSr9-zEno/s1600-h/Marie+at+school.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203600382440344882" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgZI53QllOZkKnG-zaYCYRKxLK0obCtbYocV1cEwQGg8xddnaQ-D_GXlRa9O1XHn9Fl-W4oP3lwqGqEGYgU_pKpcqPwKCJiaIgD7XSXUWKfsr65vh1PgAlJlImyZCVQHwVJMJSr9-zEno/s320/Marie+at+school.jpg" border="0" /></a>sitting with a book on a windows' ledge! It’s her; it's my Marie, it’s not someone else. I get a little choked and I’ve never had my eyes get moist when I was happy but I am and I gotta wipe my eyes. I swallow hard and how I hoped she would look out to see me; didn’t happen so I went in and climbed the stone stairs to the second floor. When I trotted around a corner, we were fifty feet from each other. I slowed to stroll to her and her eye caught movement.<br />She closed her book, opened her arms; I shed tears onto her shoulder.<br /><br /><em>Baby, to know you is to love you</em><br /><em>You smile when I see your face</em><br /><em>'Cause there ain't no one on this earthBaby, </em><br /><em>could ever, ever take your place</em><br /><em><span style="font-size:78%;">B.B. King/Linda Ronstadt</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:78%;"></span></em><br />Dusk had come and campus lamp posts came on to cast clouded shadows. We stopped under one of the lights and spoke of how we both got here and I learned she, too, was in pain while we were apart. Yet, our hands now in hand stirring our hearts and a relief to know we were well, lifted our spirits as we hugged firmly and kissed softly on the streets of Boston.<br /><br /><em>Whenever I’m with him<br />Something inside<br />Starts to burnin’<br />And I’m filleed with desire<br />Could this be the devil in me<br />O is this the way lov’s supposed to be<br />Just Like a heatwave</em><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Martha and the Vandellas</span><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203602856341507426" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 412px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 165px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="165" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDNcDgsw6FyLSXuoLSwZxVHexC0sua2nCGfpYFbyzDi7C7D8E5nLjG8Q9lV47XVWsj6nC1tnsAkpQB5DrZwVXk9t0ES05UYSVq2Z-H1qNONBORsxob-ud8-G4VNkUnSs6s8khCuSJGkWk/s320/heatwave-w.jpg" width="290" border="0" /><br />_________It’s hot in Oxford, Mississippi!bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-37711825286182578502008-05-16T12:16:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:56.073-08:00All<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWjlV2vt3RS-z3yA2OZh7t1PFSl8Xcv-RGlbp_9J_q4tIm-66CVbl5pfxgnN5mMxDmstUGq38BSQI5qUv3Y-chV7H5VH9U5VRNcTo5uVvy_v4luhliRUfNOmiKXGcO2Tgr5_9cQLyA0zc/s1600-h/All.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201059612766992962" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWjlV2vt3RS-z3yA2OZh7t1PFSl8Xcv-RGlbp_9J_q4tIm-66CVbl5pfxgnN5mMxDmstUGq38BSQI5qUv3Y-chV7H5VH9U5VRNcTo5uVvy_v4luhliRUfNOmiKXGcO2Tgr5_9cQLyA0zc/s400/All.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiyXtPScJwHUg_vHPcamF4Qh8MP4ZMhvnwV12XS9n3XeItAUxQPDoQF-M78kpz4YNY4iwiR5VOF7y7ylhIkjCy52YM4hyAdivEwI6sAm3DSvQm6aCe4FXQlGlvi1pnRz9R1QKF_doz7ik/s1600-h/All.jpg"></a><br /><br /><div></div></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-15930174198788687032008-05-16T07:30:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:56.201-08:00A New Day<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTkcwDixoBbMbYdaEQO-a2IjhORu21Or3sxZWlUZ_CbGGBtbUtGBJnAk0CCGX2rAaKBwiJLDxJ9tx1T5HDWzRFa57-sTwq7jYrP4IM5ZvRwEsGcuVU3X3hQVhHhoWO5lfi_WY7LQowpCo/s1600-h/Texting-MaleHand-01%5B1%5D.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200983042090039842" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTkcwDixoBbMbYdaEQO-a2IjhORu21Or3sxZWlUZ_CbGGBtbUtGBJnAk0CCGX2rAaKBwiJLDxJ9tx1T5HDWzRFa57-sTwq7jYrP4IM5ZvRwEsGcuVU3X3hQVhHhoWO5lfi_WY7LQowpCo/s200/Texting-MaleHand-01%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />BTW LOL HRU 2 much 411 MVBF OMG 7734<br />drowning in the dust of technology<br />like a Dino in la Brea<br />I surface for a breath of air<br />"Hello, how are you?"<br />And he smiles at me<br />with no pixels in between.<br />Maybe I can try to swim<br />a little longer.<br />CU Latr.<br /><br /><div align="right"><span style="font-size:78%;">-jerry wendt</span></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-87145944332544780712008-05-16T06:41:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:56.424-08:00Fear<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDm3U0ctXHKb7wP3e8h-TdMMtBvXG9vYPFroFnUIgxKvW-7eM2v93PaQ0k3k-anu83Dd1b95VEBNXj_5rqdaLmKldCFwbcw5pFGjYj-QkQezany66D0ROHBHM5yKjNQBl2qUuWCnkwfzQ/s1600-h/cage.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200973318284081682" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDm3U0ctXHKb7wP3e8h-TdMMtBvXG9vYPFroFnUIgxKvW-7eM2v93PaQ0k3k-anu83Dd1b95VEBNXj_5rqdaLmKldCFwbcw5pFGjYj-QkQezany66D0ROHBHM5yKjNQBl2qUuWCnkwfzQ/s200/cage.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="left"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj4CxXD2ToYvz-HRsdYMLGIfycdjexl_AOz-LAAlfNr3vIoFNOof4bpoSG7bmBrX74wPg804lmSIEPwickXVKv3jOFoTh0KFhrVOVz6-WRaFS1OkeZrSa0KI3IcsmYummYlJt9kPuKcdg/s1600-h/cage.jpg"></a><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">The outside always tries to change the inside.<br />More often with caress than spear.<br />With age we build a fortress to keep it out.<br />But a fortress is also a cage<br />that keeps us in.<br />And the color of life fades<br />Like a leaf in its time<br />Purpose to diversion<br />Passion to comfort<br />and we think we already know "who done it"<br />and the "who" is I.<br />Inside out.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;">And at the top of a far away hill a fat lady sings</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Life is messy when you live it right."</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Can you hear her</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;">over the wind</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;">outside?</span></div><div> </div><div align="right"><span style="font-size:78%;">-jerry wendt</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span> </div></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-17690014092535811622008-05-14T06:51:00.001-07:002008-11-12T23:25:57.131-08:00'hood sixBobby gave me bus fare to Boston.<br /><br />So it happens while I’m working with the Brothers in the hay fields that Joey got his wish. That Sputnik satellite now has competition courtesy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ZP7twauCFavpUV9nAC_arQQqnnBfMLc-llfKRaUmk4oGCujmfmn1jKq9mpl4rPuLXuZwZEfGTmcbdafEbw_ySFf2iBm_0CJTpLCU_6qbT1cp9OwN_vN8PXx6kT6OtmjSrBSG7eK7vKY/s1600-h/telstar.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200235554820647202" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ZP7twauCFavpUV9nAC_arQQqnnBfMLc-llfKRaUmk4oGCujmfmn1jKq9mpl4rPuLXuZwZEfGTmcbdafEbw_ySFf2iBm_0CJTpLCU_6qbT1cp9OwN_vN8PXx6kT6OtmjSrBSG7eK7vKY/s200/telstar.gif" border="0" /></a> of American Telephone and Telegraph Company and NASA; they call it Telstar and they send signals to it and it sends phone calls to your phone. So JFK and Kruschev each had ‘1’ in the satellite race but Nikki was up one cosmonaut. The U.S. almost got creamed two years ago when Nikki sent two rockets to Mars but both missions failed. There was a rumor that the martians on Mars sabotaged what looked like an invasion, so in 1961 he sent up two more rockets but this time to Venus; they failed, too. I’m pretty sure we told a lotta lies to Nikki about what else this Telstar could do ‘cause AT&T designed it, built it and paid for the launch and he got real paranoid about who was in control. Industry and military were now working together and that created a new found fear of the U.S.A. for Nikki.<br />Dominic, of course, told everyone that the Alderman helped JFK get the satellite up; I think he was going a little too far with his stories – maybe the whack to the side of his head from D is makin him nuts.<br /># # # # # # # # #<br />It’s over a thousand miles to Boston and all I knew was she was at the school and living in the Back Bay area.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVpMVLSGskKrCXY8DaGaPn0HIjwdLaJLX8M8mY-hpmPb-VCrU8iA6TWcwnJdvJzn06fGrCJd5_6rH8YH8sCCI-B9XHjsa1hb-X2OC4TcrJDHQkO81i53bCLmNWB65RH_KSSZrg2_UQlG0/s1600-h/Back_Bay1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200232806041577714" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVpMVLSGskKrCXY8DaGaPn0HIjwdLaJLX8M8mY-hpmPb-VCrU8iA6TWcwnJdvJzn06fGrCJd5_6rH8YH8sCCI-B9XHjsa1hb-X2OC4TcrJDHQkO81i53bCLmNWB65RH_KSSZrg2_UQlG0/s200/Back_Bay1.jpg" border="0" /></a> Boston is kinda like my ‘hood because almost everyone in Bean Town (something about beans baked in molasses) is either Italian or Irish and they live on opposite sides of a river. Being on a bus for two days gives you a lot of downtime and my mind really needed some peace. Marie’s father disappointed me – hurt me, bad – when Marie went off while I was on the farm. He told me he would keep me informed of stuff – instead, his daughter left for school and he told me nothing.<br /><br />Marie gave a slip of paper to Bobby and I asked him over and over if there was a message from her but no; just an address. Her dad must have told her to not talk to me or something. We didn't talk while I was on the farm but I know she missed me as hard as I missed her.<br /><br /><em>‘breakin up is hard to do’ </em><br /><em><br /></em>And who am I? A searcher; out of the ‘hood and in pain because either I've changed or at least I've changed the way I see the ‘hood and my life. Like basketball with guys from the ‘hood or at Marillac house or on the high school team was important to me ‘cause it’s the kind of sport where you learn trust. Making a basket by yourself counts no more (maybe even less to the game) than if you make a good pass to a streaking team mate and he lays it in for an easy shot. When I played ball, I never asked who was playing with me – only that he pass the ball and then everyone looks good. Yeah, there was occasional hot-dogging, but that usually happened when there’s a blow out or when your girl is lookin at you or when some opponent is ‘in your face’. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEjadLjBUF6oFmOcX5LKHNiqguYMrJP3PImboquqyuL1sXHiqI9XbvdDNxl4EmzJaJ3gDnrMXOASJu_kxe3S2EZHntgCwhJS0Bt2Y81lx5IjOLeL4tn4UNZzFOQMI-koC562sVZB1J-0I/s1600-h/basketball%2520players%2520silhouette.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200258343917119794" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEjadLjBUF6oFmOcX5LKHNiqguYMrJP3PImboquqyuL1sXHiqI9XbvdDNxl4EmzJaJ3gDnrMXOASJu_kxe3S2EZHntgCwhJS0Bt2Y81lx5IjOLeL4tn4UNZzFOQMI-koC562sVZB1J-0I/s200/basketball%2520players%2520silhouette.gif" border="0" /></a>But this is a game where all five cylinders gotta be tuned up and tuned in – it takes five guys to win at hoops; and you’re always lookin for the open man.<br /><br />the open man – who can he trust?<br /><br />He works the hardest to break away and uses his shrewdness to stay loose until that moment of discovery - then the ball doesn't come<br />...... and he changes into the man he’ll be for the rest of his life.<br /><br />‘juice’ and Tee were not playing ball. The game had changed – I could see it – but I could not recognize the playing field. I don't know the rules. Theirs was a game I chose not to play. I would give it up. I ran to the open spaces.<br />gutless<br /><br />or <em>“..…............a time to grow</em>”<br /><br />What else would I be forced to choose?<br />where else would I come up short<br />Lot’s was coming.<br /><br />Joey was so sick from the pneumonia that he came close to dying; so close that out of town relatives came to see him before he went away. A cousin came up from Cairo in Southern Illinois that he was very close to until they were like thirteen and he had to move ‘cause his father opened a bakery down there. I always thought of Cairo as a south city in a north state and sure enough the stories he told Joey made it true.<br />His cousin was away for three years and changed a lot. He even talked different; but the biggest thing was the way he felt about the Negroes who lived in the south. He said that the white people always felt they needed to help them out – like people who couldn't help themselves - but always kept them to the other side of town and they couldn't eat at the same places and the kids went to different schools and even had to use different bathrooms. But things were changing across the south just the opposite of the way Joey’s cousin changed. It’s not like MLK cared about the problems in Cairo – he had to stay in Atlanta and Chicago and Birmingham and jail. Cairo people were experiencing local freedom movements just like many small cities all through the south. Couldn't be a TV cameraman or newspaper reporter in every town so, the quiet, small town uprisings that supported the national movement were un-reported and un-important to the world compared to Supreme Court rulings and newsreels of tear gas and police dogs and crowds of angry and confused people. These small town protests represented a sea change to the whole of America; the anger and now defiance of those so long suppressed was obvious. MLKing needed that support the same way he needed John and Bobby.<br />Joey’s cousin saw his dad separate himself from the other white men who did stuff like dress in white outfits and burn crosses. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy-7_YphPnsiW3_TFzIn-sRqmGdfcJgZVb7g9hHKIrm-IC6XCXgEZ_JDaGyuukZ5z0xXRi1OLMTtWWxUOPJL2h0zbFWL0jPY7QZvuzT3lPnD0ZmeLDCifMPFQEmvEggqORqrnKTWt-O00/s1600-h/mered2343585505_37e4f21ea4_o.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200233703689742594" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy-7_YphPnsiW3_TFzIn-sRqmGdfcJgZVb7g9hHKIrm-IC6XCXgEZ_JDaGyuukZ5z0xXRi1OLMTtWWxUOPJL2h0zbFWL0jPY7QZvuzT3lPnD0ZmeLDCifMPFQEmvEggqORqrnKTWt-O00/s200/mered2343585505_37e4f21ea4_o.gif" border="0" /></a>They were not going to let Negroes change their lives. His cousin told him about the time a small group of Negroes marched down the main street when a pick-up truck turned a corner and came right at them. Every one of them moved except for a thirteen year old girl who stood defiantly in front of her enemy and got knocked down.<br /><br />but what were the white people so afraid of?<br /><br />I think we still ask those questions; as did our fathers and will our sons.<br /> # # # # # # # # #<br />The Greyhound drops me at the centre city terminal. I've got no clue where I am or what a Back Bay looks like. What I do have is a slip of paper that says 85 Mount Vernon Street. I've got a return ticket for the bus and not much cash, so I don’t know if I should take a cab or not. I ask one of those porters and he flashes me a grin and says “Very nice neighborhood, it is”. Yeah, but how much does it cost to get there? “Well”, he says, “a man who lives up there on Beacon Hill shouldn't’ worry ‘bout that too much”.<br />You know I just walked away from him a little pissed because he just thought I was being a smart ass rich kid or something and I looked for another person to help me. Where's that open man?<br /><br />who I can trust<br />and I caught myself<br />‘don’t ask a negro’!<br /><br />…..............fathers and will our sons<br /><br /># # # # # # # # #<br /><br />Tee and ‘juice’ had to meet one day and it was at night right under the viaduct of the railroad tracks that seperated our 'hood by a thousand miles. Cars were lined up at either end as the two eye-balled each other for what seemed like a life's time. These two men were here because Bobby couldn't help but get turned on by one of the prettiest black ladies at our school. He was good-lookin himself and they liked to laugh together so it all seemed to have the right reasons any guy and girl would get together…..except.<br />That night at the Christmas Eve party, they clutched each other right in a hallway where everybody there saw them with their faces pressed together. If ‘juice’ had been there himself, he might have had someway to cool off the now over-heating situation. Well, he wasn't there and now he was in front of Tee, each looking to protect their kind. Born under the same sun – in the same way – by a man and woman – to sustain and nourish the growth of their kind. These were the men of the ’hood.<br /><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200234236265687314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="147" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKVu87l57knc2771PCpiEFl4RSGfD1xUXv9jr9rSeSOg3uH0mioB3U1OpvFl5wz-ix5X-IoymTKQjuLoSVZsxHl8Y4gjhaXMKZBIsVRuhRXIj99aU5x6Nn_3LoD1f7TKyMd-ovsSgefaE/s200/men+LM.gif" width="382" border="0" /><br />Darryl’s dad breaks the headlights and the long shadow of a tall man fell at Tee’s feet. “Stop” was the word that rang out and reverberated against the concrete walls of the overpass. Tee’s first reaction was to intensify his readiness for a confrontation. ‘juice’ didn't take his eyes off of Tee, relying on other men for back-up. Dominic stepped forward, totally mis-reading the tall man’s intent. Dom was a boy from the ‘hood, full of swagger and everyone went on-guard with his second step. He didn't know what he was getting in to.<br />‘juice’ said to Tee “Are you gonna take care of that boy”.<br />Tee stepped back and risked his life when turning away, but somehow he knew this was not a time to hate or a time to kill. Dominic’s vision of satisfaction meant all out gang war at a time when relations were already mean-spirited. Men needed to reign in the boys and with one short jab, Dom went down with a bleeding face. Darryl’s father came between ‘juice’ and Tee and the defiant stare yielded to Tee’s revelation of their manhood.<br />was Tee goin soft<br />or was Tee in change<br />“<em>A time to cast away stones</em>”bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-74955391813825324592008-05-07T06:57:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:25:57.270-08:00Rungless ladder<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghW2jtM06ejH0if96f5mg48-tw_1dB_gdAqB3oaxS6pORYZbg9JWPdzEv4s6NPRWTWK4IaFUz1sNM1F4oQFOwtekzuGG72FUO6UudJqeqlgwSzxY3J5ipDaKfDkhdOTJBK7368cXXKVdk/s1600-h/dec4_joviel_ttl.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197637110799809234" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghW2jtM06ejH0if96f5mg48-tw_1dB_gdAqB3oaxS6pORYZbg9JWPdzEv4s6NPRWTWK4IaFUz1sNM1F4oQFOwtekzuGG72FUO6UudJqeqlgwSzxY3J5ipDaKfDkhdOTJBK7368cXXKVdk/s400/dec4_joviel_ttl.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_rxvKd9L_BY7bz8nmMJmnHlOIuPI7uugR6YSPeDI1mypCKBq601hytrqt7UZaBMvl0YHPOfUvYD7KNuB3iRHw6IfBnYTtqvGwoHYJKukBIIYlLdfeRPr7U6TaRwBXVqdeYoeoNqLXZE/s1600-h/dec4_joviel_ttl.jpg"></a></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div> </div><div>.</div><div>.</div><div><br /> </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div align="left">I am climbing a rungless ladder.<br />Knowing not how to gauge the stride up<br />or down.<br />I can see well<br />to the left and right,<br />but it’s hard to see the ground<br />because I am in the way,<br />and the sky is clouded</div><div>so I do not know how far there is to go yet.<br />Only that I am between up<br />and down.<br />And I have not yet<br />completed the journey.<br />But, I am able to pause<br />and look around<br />and enjoy the<br />vantage.<br />The beauty beheld gives reason<br />for the climb.</div><div></div><div align="right"><span style="font-size:78%;">-Jerry Wendt 2008</span></div>Jerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02423263109750463681noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-17121918235439521912008-05-06T09:45:00.001-07:002008-11-12T23:25:58.350-08:00'hood, the Fifth<em>To everything </em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpuXNdFy53946vbYSUCEYOiUnZXyeIX3_GZKsh4OxDWraTclpjfbSYVBRAm4qfrelsyKUQ9SAh5t-oGschQBxkuzhkULuFpssHpho1V7_n8-Se6XiNzzRE6nLUmNcOWOoMhbvxhwjshxQ/s1600-h/Daisies.gif"><em><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197307183567639346" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 310px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 241px" height="200" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpuXNdFy53946vbYSUCEYOiUnZXyeIX3_GZKsh4OxDWraTclpjfbSYVBRAm4qfrelsyKUQ9SAh5t-oGschQBxkuzhkULuFpssHpho1V7_n8-Se6XiNzzRE6nLUmNcOWOoMhbvxhwjshxQ/s200/Daisies.gif" width="250" border="0" /></em></a><em><br />there is a season<br />and a time for every purpose….<br />….a time to kill<br />…. a time to die<br />…. a time to love<br />…. a time to hate</em><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Pete Seeger</span><br /><br /><span style="color:#cccccc;">Civil War inLaos</span> <div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color:#cccccc;">(The Secret War)</span><br />Brother Bernard gently touched my arm and shook me until I peeked out from my swollen eyelids. “Good morning” he said softly and I smiled at him and admitted to aching all over. “It’s time for breakfast; big day ahead. I’ll see you in ten minutes” and he left me alone in my soreness.<br />I’d arrived at the farm just yesterday, courtesy of Marie’s uncle in the monastery. The room was kinda small with just a bed and dresser and chair and cross on the wall. There were clean towels, too. So I had this WWII duffle bag from her dad and didn’t unpack anything because I sat to think about whether I was staying. I missed her already, not because I hadn’t seen her – shit, it was just this morning that they put me on the train and sent me off. We both had tears. I missed her because the plan I agreed to was to stay here for several weeks and I already thought about breaking that promise at least 4 times. Her dad gave me his word to keep me up to date with happenings in the ‘hood. He never did promise me Marie.<br />I had to eat because I only had breakfast and now it was three o’clock and Brother Bernard led me through a maze from my room, past the chapel and to the kitchen. It was the biggest kitchen I’d ever seen and there were pots and pans on three stoves that I could see. The smells were fresh from long tables of newly picked and cleaned vegetables and then there was the hot soup and hot bread. Three men in robes were chopping and peeling and stirring and greeted me with silent smiles. Brother Bernard asked me if I liked peas and carrots (I really didn’t) and handed me about four bunches of carrots and a peeler after I nodded that I did.<br />There was no wasted time or motion in these rooms. We ate, in silence, and the dining room was cleaned in moments. I was taken outside and handed a pair of big rubber boots that reached almost to my knees. It was time to earn my keep. We headed straight to the barn where a wagon of baled hay was resting at the bottom of a conveyor belt. Someone gave me one of those hooks with a wood handle and pointed up the ladder to the topside door of the silo. So I went up. Inside it smelled both fresh and musty at the same time; a little weird up my nose. A motor started outside and the belt began whirring into the silo door. The first bale was on its way and the Brother next to me stuck a hook into it and pulled it back. Behind him, another very large Brother heaved it up to another who dropped it atop those sent up earlier in the day. Before I could turn around, another bale was on its way to the very large Brother and he, again, heaved it up. The Brother next to me said “Your turn” and I guessed I had to hook the next bale and send it towards the growing stack of hay bales. It felt good to do it right! Every five minutes we took a very short break so the stacker Brothers could move up a row and I was impressed as hell with the distance Big Brother could heave those bales. All the while we’re in there is a dust cloud from the bales being thrown around and my nose is filling up. After about four breaks to move the rows, Brother Bernard called up to send me down; so out and down I went hoping for a lighter duty. Seems one of the older Brothers needed to go back to that castle-like home and I was to replace him. Oughta be easy, he’s about seventy.<br />and a bale dropped at my feet<br />Loading it onto the conveyor, I wondered how many wagons they had like this.<br />How long would I be here?<br /><em></em></div><div><em>“i can’t stop loving you”<br /></em><span style="font-size:78%;">Ray Charles<br /># # # # # # # # # #</span></div><div>How many buses did they have to ride? Not so many, after all. If a Negro wanted to ride on the inter-state highway system in a public bus, he could do it this summer. The Kennedy’s – both of them – convinced the Inter-State Commerce Commission to rule that segregated facilities were against the law. Only 400 people had to go to jail - some took a beating - to get it done. Was it worth it? Well, these riders forced Jack and Bobby to take a stand against segregation. Then, up sprang another organization called COFO that was supposed to co-ordinate the activities of about six other groups focusing again on voter registration. Either I didn’t “get it” or they just had too many people all trying to do the same thing at different speeds and pulling in different directions. They needed a leader; COFOs guy was weak and King and Abernathy got arrested in July and stayed in jail thru August. The movement needed a jump start. </div><div> </div><div>A break came just at the right time. </div><div><br />One man stood up.<br />Field work during the Mississippi summers drained water from a person as a sponge gripped tight would drip its water. His brow wet as a sponge, James worked with his strong back to help his Choctaw Nation to their quota. The number grew slightly every year as he re-called but this year it was such a big increase that more people were asked to help at the Nation even if they had moved on. He had only left twice in his lifetime: once to serve in the air force for nine years and the second time to go to school at Jackson State University. Twice before denied by Ole Miss, he did apply a third time and worked in the fields while awaiting a new and correct response. He needed a “Dear Mr. Meredith” letter with a better ending.<br />How long would he have to wait? </div><div><br /># # # # # # # # #</div><div><br />My body got into the Brothers routine by the end of the day and on that third night at the monestary, after the days work, I lay on my bed exhausted yet thought about Bobby and those holes he has in his body.<br /><br />It was just six days ago that me and him went to Martha’s for some beers. Martha almost always let Bobby and me into her tavern 'cause we pushed her out of a snow bank once and havin' a few beers on her was "thank you". Things were changing, the winds were blowing and we were desperate to feel the direction. High school graduates, our horizons now were broader than just tomorrow - we heard a sound coming and it was scary; but tonite we just needed a coupla beers and some laughs. Good times – I was tired after two pints of beer. I went home. Bobby went lookin for Carm and Sandy. He found ‘em at the Skylark.<br />I remember seeing the bloodied sidewalk and I remember that Joey saved me from myself – and I remember what Darryl’s father told me about ‘juice’ savin my life. If that was true, how could I be hating him right now? He didn’t do Bobby! 'juices' word is why I’m on this farm – but I don’t know who I’m more afraid of; Tee or ‘juice’.<br />I shouldn’t be afraid of either of these guys – I know them and they know me – but they don’t know each other and now that they hate each other – who am I?</div><div><br /><em>“Oh my love my darling I've hungered for your touch”<br /></em><br />Marie is </div><div>safe</div><div>hoping the best for me.<br />Joey would help me.<br />I could always count on Dom<br /><br /><em>"When I need love<br />I hold out my hand and I touch love<br /></em></div><div><em><br /><br /></em></div><div><em>I never knew there was so much love</em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Tvho9Uyoe1UDhgP48jcFdFNf3kfMHklN1uMPgS3puIYs3plYaSg514Up8jeWd3l0MbeEXSQ1tbk6pZeOZ4R_xtNU0nv_EIC55b-EYkFsttPGqjEsNJ-njiOXDpeN8e9tbutsWkHugXw/s1600-h/hug.jpg"><em><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197308862899852098" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Tvho9Uyoe1UDhgP48jcFdFNf3kfMHklN1uMPgS3puIYs3plYaSg514Up8jeWd3l0MbeEXSQ1tbk6pZeOZ4R_xtNU0nv_EIC55b-EYkFsttPGqjEsNJ-njiOXDpeN8e9tbutsWkHugXw/s200/hug.jpg" border="0" /></em></a><em><br /></em></div><div><em><br /><br /><br /></em></div><div><em>Keeping me warm night and day</em></div><div><em><br /><br /></em></div><div><em>Miles and miles of empty space<br />in between us<br /></em></div><div><em>a telephone can’t take<br />the place of your smile<br /></em></div><div><em>But you know I wont be hiding forever<br />It’s cold out, but hold out and do like I do”</em><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Righteous Brothers<br /></span><br />The ‘hood was un-certain to me for the first time in my life.<br />Joey didn’t see me.<br />Marie went away to some school called Northeastern in Boston.<br />I found out only when her dad picked me up to take me back to the ‘hood and treated it like a piece of news; like about Bobby or the fight between ‘juice’ and Tee or Joey’s pneumonia.<br />dis-belief<br />bewilderment<br />the confusion returned<br />heartbreak<br /><br /><em>“He told that you’re leavin´I can´t believe it´s true<br /></em></div><div><em><br /></em></div><div><em>Girl there´s just no livin´<br />If I’m away from you<br /></em></div><div><em><br /></em></div><div><em>Don´t take your love away from me<br />Breakin´ up is hard to do<br /></em></div><div><em><br /></em></div><div><em>Remember when ya held me tight<br />and ya kissed me all through the night<br /></em></div><div><em></em> </div><div><em>I think of all that we´ve been through </em></div><div><em><br /></em></div><div><em>They say it’s hard to do<br />now I know, I know that it´s true”<br /></em></div><div><em>breakin' up is hard to do</em><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Neil Sedaka<br /></span><br />I was headed to<br />Northeastern<br />to find Marie</div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197723458791155794" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHaDKh6AN8TmFzi6NOtIP_plEkI4hHQDyBMLvhUYiA8FAPcbzezZZquxTdkSHgaLqBSvXqkCiB2G1DHICD8_CixOiaQJ8DKqJFTagvEgM-aBju2n-9pHwR96B24YPEcZfqt9T5izvRGuA/s200/bornusa.jpg" border="0" /> then to Northwestern </div><div><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwzqTNPq2Lk3DGz1blFGoTO-GM9Hu3wmHuUeCuhAOx3N_YJU5R28TR_oqrfRz3diLSpHp_gPL7RFUxXXeUe-cSEWMbTjxiyT3qhIqoZKaAkorItIcLeg1nmpCXFBP8lEQVU2TX1KkFYBg/s1600-h/mered3da3134e85866-71-1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197311160707355474" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwzqTNPq2Lk3DGz1blFGoTO-GM9Hu3wmHuUeCuhAOx3N_YJU5R28TR_oqrfRz3diLSpHp_gPL7RFUxXXeUe-cSEWMbTjxiyT3qhIqoZKaAkorItIcLeg1nmpCXFBP8lEQVU2TX1KkFYBg/s200/mered3da3134e85866-71-1.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />James Meredith was headed</div><div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />to Ole Miss </div></div>bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5802204235331965027.post-71185488951550204842008-04-28T12:24:00.001-07:002008-11-12T23:25:58.992-08:00'hood four<div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194878108978811682" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfIdpqAKy2l1EHZoCma2r_6XcqhVT079jB-1Y-LuglQ70KuKer068kIwxaolmWi0x0ppygQR2jaylsn2F_5JXdTQXy__-NpwON0kFMmRw_ah4EgVolSWHGAtj0QRYVU-_apOE8CtZ65T4/s200/bob.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:85%;">“Come gather around people wherever you roam </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">And admit that the waters around you have grown </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">If your time to you is worth savin' </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone </span></em><br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">For the times they are a-changin' . . .”</span></em><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Bob Dylan</span><br /><br />We graduated. Tomasino waited for the high school boy-gangs to break up before pulling his men together. Bobby Siers was on the mend – TEE’s wound was not, yet. Our 'hood was more than just guys and girls who knew each other; we were family, protected by our fathers until they left us. Even though graduation elevated us to be “older guys” – TEE and his were “men”. People who lived outside the ‘hood were not in the family and fair game to retribution. Bobby told TEE that he didn’t know any of the three attackers – which I think made him angry. Bobby was trying to man-up by saying he didn’t want and need his help. Of course, some thought we should just let it be but that’s not in our genes or TEE’s way of living in peace. He needed payback.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_IF40W4XUjli8DhhS1SBxFj12Q4W-3ZlspPsADJtE7OyhkT7bhtMCs7Qi4L4is7fxXJ0E24e5skBlnAMG01XADOMSkZwNPejRe8x5uvR0YyeYAT_0W6ip1ojCYPfXhk-3J5C-RoblGJM/s1600-h/Freedom_Riders.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194383109702980322" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="229" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_IF40W4XUjli8DhhS1SBxFj12Q4W-3ZlspPsADJtE7OyhkT7bhtMCs7Qi4L4is7fxXJ0E24e5skBlnAMG01XADOMSkZwNPejRe8x5uvR0YyeYAT_0W6ip1ojCYPfXhk-3J5C-RoblGJM/s320/Freedom_Riders.jpg" width="273" border="0" /></a><br />Revenge was never<br />the motive of Eugene</div><div>“Bull” Conner</div><div></div><div>it was preservation </div><div>- of a way of life.<br /><br /><br />Bull figured that the folks of Birmingham needed protection so he watched over them while they fire-bombed the Greyhound bus and the mob beat the freedom riders until they left – bloodied and bruised – and that was the end of the ”freedom ride”. The ride started in the spring from D.C. and got to South Carolina where the riders suffered their first beating - someone needed to piss and went into a “white only” bathroom. Martin Luther King did not participate in the ride, but generously granted a dinner with the riders and cautioned a reporter “You will never make it through Alabama”. Well, I guess you could call him prophetic; Marie’s dad called him something else.<br /># # # # # # # # # # # # # #<br />Joey fed my growing awareness between music and what was happening down in the south. Seems that I too quickly rejected the importance of coffee house music when I learned that Pete Seeger folk-guy re-wrote a song popular in the tobacco fields and called it <em>“We shall Overcome”.</em> The student non-violent committee adopted it and Joan Baez recorded it and it became the anthem for their movement. Marie’s father bought the record. The more I read about Seeger, I realized he had some other big hits <em>“Turn</em> <em>Turn Turn”</em> (later recorded by one of my to be favorite bands The Byrds) and <em>“If I had a Hammer”</em> recorded by (and bought by Marie’s father) a trio called Peter, Paul and Mary. It was about danger and warnings and freedoms. These were not popular songs in the ‘hood and we didn’t sing ‘em on our streets but many roadways came alive to the tune of “<em>we shall overcome some day</em>”. These were not songs about kisses and lovers – these were songs about social justice and brothers and sisters.<br /># # # # # # # # # # # # # #<br />Rock and roll only appeared to be dead and the established adult radio stations were releived. Whenever it was that rock and roll started, it is clear that racial tension was knotted to it and both were rising. This musical form combined the elements of black and white and it was no co-incidence that my music provoked such strong reactions all across America. The connection was, in fact, so fundamental in my being that with the downfall of the back-beat rhythm I became miserable. Marie tried to pull me out of it but didn’t she understand that I became worse-off seeing that my soul mate didn’t hurt like me?<br />I re-called how good it felt back in the late-fifties when a new record came out every week and our energy would invade the soda shops and pool halls and street corners. We had our own <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqG5TeFiKZI1_3S7JOoXlH8re3TGwthEwvwzZGMRCmrm7jZvwJtAWL6oVIGUN6nzkN2O0Vvr4B0O0e8I5RuST5fcIdbNJJaSZy5IcmQuJLNvVwbgWp0dziOZ9tSZ2wpmnBOazHZ18oea4/s1600-h/Musical_notes1x.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216015696276972114" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqG5TeFiKZI1_3S7JOoXlH8re3TGwthEwvwzZGMRCmrm7jZvwJtAWL6oVIGUN6nzkN2O0Vvr4B0O0e8I5RuST5fcIdbNJJaSZy5IcmQuJLNvVwbgWp0dziOZ9tSZ2wpmnBOazHZ18oea4/s200/Musical_notes1x.jpg" border="0" /></a>quartet that spent hours singing last weeks tunes while learning <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrN2S0PCSLsa8bRHAyLucMwZAJH6esjjmX2R25hHnl65rmsz_rsXm43iwnwYJh0VkfBEw93tHGsCQufqbVITj4tvvhtJS6Vh87QigNzGhsvuaHCnA_SA-Pjrq1H53YS1zUniB2MoiXfjA/s1600-h/music-notes.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216015219151158514" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrN2S0PCSLsa8bRHAyLucMwZAJH6esjjmX2R25hHnl65rmsz_rsXm43iwnwYJh0VkfBEw93tHGsCQufqbVITj4tvvhtJS6Vh87QigNzGhsvuaHCnA_SA-Pjrq1H53YS1zUniB2MoiXfjA/s200/music-notes.gif" border="0" /></a>the newest; we would ask them to croon for special occasions like when you asked a girl to go steady and kids in the ‘hood came to hear the proposal – not so much for what she would say because she always said “yes”. It was the song – and I heard the call. There was musical excitement in the restless streets and passion in my soul. There was no social or political theme then – only energy. Maybe it’s a good thing that it lasted only two years because it began to take over every movie (<em>Jailhouse Rock</em>) and every dance (<em>All Shook Up</em>) and the airwaves (<em>That’ll be the Day</em> and <em>Hound Dog</em> and <em>Peggy Sue</em> and <em>Long Tall Sally</em> and <em>Maybellene</em>) - and me.<br /><br />BUT, along came Perry Como and <em>“Catch a Falling Star” </em>and Kay Starr with her <em>“Rock and Roll Waltz”</em> and it seemed like it was Elvis versus the world. I can’t tell what happened; confusion gripped me - suddenly I could feel what was about to happen – she didn’t.<br /># # # ## # # # # # # # # #<br /><em>“Summertime”</em> is a song of the South – this summer the livin’ would not be easy.<br />The “freedom riders” would not just go away. The second interstate ride began in Nashville; destination, Birmingham. The seven men and three women had a date with Eugene Connor and “Bull” was prompt. Stopped at the city limits, all ten were arrested for violation of segregation laws. They were put in jail and it hit the news. The Presidents brother, Bobby, got on the phone with the governor of Alabama and several calls later a bus and driver were dispatched, under protection of state troopers, to Birmingham. Bus at the station and prisoners to be released from jail, the troopers went home. The ten riders had only a short walk to the Greyhound – between them a large white mob that beat them badly; some left with permanent injuries. The police finally showed up, with an injunction for the beaten to cease any rides to freedom. Like a bird on the wire, MLK called down from Chicago and had the riders go to the Rev. Abernathy’s church. He got there, a bit later, and gave a speech outside the church and god blessed him with a mob greater than the one that beat the ten riders. Reverand King ducked into the church; called Bobby Kennedy asking for government help and the National Guard tear gas photos propelled him to new heights of prominence. It was the first time he ever heard that song <em>“We Shall Overcome”.</em> Yes, the riders limped home while ML went off to make more speeches and the summer of 1962 had just begun.<br /><br />TEE found out!<br />Time to make his move on those who have harmed us.<br />It wasn’t till Bobby Siers got out of the hospital that I found out I knew these guys – at least two of them. Bobby warned me that they were the black guys at the Christmas Eve party we went to. One of them was on the second string varsity basketball team and I would always play with these guys in summer league at Marillac House. Once this big guy named “juice” gave me a shot right in the center of my chest and knocked me down flat because I stripped the ball away from him. I looked up at him, saw him grinning and he said “nice move, get up – your ball”. Summer ball didn’t need referees; it had its’ own rules and more so in the last couple years those rules included not crossing each others turf. I guess when Bobby and me went to that party, we crossed some line and now I realize that the only reason I was spared a knife attack was that I played ball. I had to ask Bobby if he told TEE about any of this and Bobby told me he had to 'cause TEE was gettin rough. That's how TEE fond out and was he going to get my ass, too?<br />And what about Darryl? I had to warn him. I left Bobby’s house and went looking for Marie. I knew she’d be O.K. with me talking to her dad about doin the right thing. ‘How’ to let Darryl know; ‘should’ was never the question.<br /><br />Marie’s dad looked straight into my eyes and asked for Darryl’s address – I didn’t know it but I knew where he lived and I could point it out to him. He took me to his car telling Marie to wait in the house until we got back. We didn’t speak except for me saying some directions and “that’s his house”. He got out of the car. I was scared shitless he would ask me to go with him – I was hoping he could. At the doorway, he turned to look at me before he knocked and waved to me to come. I had to piss. On my way up the stairs he knocked on the door and quickly a slightly built but tall black man opened up. So here it was, two “men” lookin to forget about what happened past and needing to talk about what should happen next. They talked, without me hearing, and then the black man called to me;<br />“You need to go away for a while and you better go fast. If this TEE guy gets anybody, they’ll be comin after you. And you best thank "juice" that you're not dead already". Marie’s dad nodded that this man was right. Now we had to leave, without thanks, because the black father needed to care for his son.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgznvcC1uFKZmViafUY0UOYuH0gFZBu-WnkVUpTGBa5ZMS7KW7bYJyZDP73SSEryM1tYm2_f0WR2Uyg8W-OsTXv3-65za9x7Yat-EkHtkKIpZSkP-Cc9n0fuEcgDaB-R2PmY1M_APaNvkg/s1600-h/fightmoon%2520light%2520poetry_filtered.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194723850933408530" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="174" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgznvcC1uFKZmViafUY0UOYuH0gFZBu-WnkVUpTGBa5ZMS7KW7bYJyZDP73SSEryM1tYm2_f0WR2Uyg8W-OsTXv3-65za9x7Yat-EkHtkKIpZSkP-Cc9n0fuEcgDaB-R2PmY1M_APaNvkg/s200/fightmoon%2520light%2520poetry_filtered.jpg" width="618" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><em></em><br /><br /><em></em><br /><br /><em>“a time for peace, I swear it's not too late,"<br /></em><span style="font-size:78%;">Pete Seeger</span></div></div>bobKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00998041902991770148noreply@blogger.com0