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Category Archives: Roving Gambler


A Novel

Our Lady Of The Blues

Book VII

The Heart Of The Matter


R.E. Prindle

Clip 11

     The cop had pointed down Main to the bus station and told Dewey that he didn’t want to catch him on the road again.  Dewey had been stupified by the distance into Claremore.  He had also been conscious that they had been no other cars on the road.

     He was so turned around that, as in Berdoo, he didn’t know the right road.  Actually Main was the highway but as the highway took a left as it entered town from Tulsa Dewey had put his thumb out on a street to nowhere.  Fascinated by Claremore Saturday Night he didn’t even try to evaluate his situation.  Perhaps his thumb went out automatically as he stood there.  At any rate the kids noticed him.  He smiled when a car full of girls pulled up beside him.  One of those good looking Claremore chicks leaned out the window and breathed in what she thought was the most sultry of voices:  ‘Hey Sailor, want a ride?’

     She was sultry enough for Dewey but he knew he was being put on.  The dream of what might have been charmed Dewey so much that rather than hurt her feelings he played along.

     ‘Sure.’  He said reaching for the door.

     The girls pulled away rapidly as he knew they would.  At the same time the boys who had toyed with him on the highway noticed him.  The one shouted out:  ‘There’s the murderer.’  Dewey thought it best to step on down to the bus station.

page 1761.

     The bus station was also known as the Claremore Hotel.  The Hotel was a big ramshackle houselike affair.  The waiting room, sales office and checkin desk was like a big living room.  There were some half dozen men and women sitting around.  As in OK City some folks in Claremore considered the bus station and hotel a social gathering place.  They must have been looking for action because none of them subseqently got on the bus.

     Dewey stood silently while both sides looked each other over.  Then he walked over to buy a bus ticket to St. Louis where he could have been found the next morning if you looked quick.  The attendant who also owned the hotel ran a judicious eye over the Sailor.

     Dewey was running on adrenalin and he had that weary look about him.  His head was thick from lack of sleep.

     ‘I’ll take a ticket to St. Louis.’ Dewey said, incautiously opening his billfold in front of the hotelier to take out a twenty while revealing the sheaf of ten twenties.

     The eyes of the hotelier lit up.  Why should he not have all the money?  He looked at Dewey more closely.  It was apparent that Dewey had been on the road for days.  The exhaustion his excitement concealed from himself plainly showed.

     The hotelier put the ticket he had half withdrawn back into the drawer.

     ‘I’m afraid I can’t sell you a ticket.  We close this window at ten o’ clock.  It’s now eleven thirty.’  He said pointing to a clock on the wall over his shoulder.

     ‘What am I going to do?  I have to keep moving.  Get on that bus.’

page 1762

     ‘Here’s an idea.’  The hotelier said more slyly than he intended.  ‘This is a hotel, you know.  I’ve got rooms.  You look like you could use a good rest, shave and shower.  A room is only five dollars.  You’ve got plenty.  Why not stay for the night and catch the bus in the morning.  There’ll be another bus along.  There always is.’

     Dewey wasn’t going to lay over five minutes if he could help it besides a deja vu vision flashed through his mind of someone entering his room as he slept and stealing his money.  A deja vu is merely a mental projection of an interpretation of impressions.  The hotelier had merely been so obvious that Dewey’s subconscious had been able to ascertain the hotelier’s intentions and telegraph them to his conscious mind.  The projection had been so strong that it created not only a deja vu but a false memory.

     All his life Dewey would have a memory of the visual impression of laying asleep as a person entered his room and rifled his pockets.  He could see himself the next morning complaining to the hotelier.  He could see himself standing on the street without a dime in his pocket or a way home.  He saw no reason to make such a false memory a reality.

     The hotelier had a key in his hand pushing the registration book at Dewey while placing a pen in his hand.

     ‘No thanks.’  Dewey said.  ‘I’ll pay the driver.’

     The bus pulled in on time.  Dewey stepped up; the driver asked for his ticket.  Dewey explained why he didn’t have one and offered to pay cash.  The driver explained that he wasn’t authorized to accept cash telling him to go back into the hotel to get a ticket.  Dewey said this time that the ticket window closed at ten 0′ clock.

page 1763.

     ‘That’s news to me.’  The driver said getting out of the bus to check.

      ‘Hey, Bill.’  He said once inside.  ‘How come this sailor doesn’t have a ticket?  What’s this about closing the window at ten o’ clock?’

     ‘Oh, that guy, Bob.  He just doesn’t have the money.  He’s been hitchhiking.  The State Police brought him in and told him to get on the bus and keep moving.  I’d be happy to sell him a ticket.  He just doesn’t have the money.’

     The hotelier made a last effor to keep Dewey off the bus hoping to rent him a room.

     ‘He says he’ll sell you a ticket.’  Bob said getting in his bus.

    ‘Well, he wouldn’t and I’m not going to try again.  I’ll just pay you.’

     ‘I’m not allowed to take cash.’  Bob said closing the door in Dewey’s face.

     Dewey watched the tail lights disappear in the distance.

Bad Motorcycle With The Devil In The Seat

     As Ollie said to Stan:  ‘This is a fine kettle of fish you’ve got us in.’  Dewey put his hands on his hips watching the receding tail lights as he wondered what he was going to do next.  Hitching was impossible while he was not going to rent a room.

page 1764.

     The revelers of Claremore Saturday Night had all gone home with the exception of a few stragglers who gathered loosely around to watch the stange oddity of a sailor.  Dewey had been pacing up and down for a half hour or so when with a roar a big customized Harley Davidson crashed down the drag, chrome forks way out in front.  The rider pulled up in front of Dewey.

     The rider was a big burly guy with a face that looked like Iwo Jima after the Naval bombardment.   The guy must have been through a couple wars because nature never in the history of mankind had made a face that way.  He had a World War II German helmet on his head while the back of his jacket proclaimed that he was one of the Screamin’ Demons.

     He placed his size fourteen engineer’s boot neatly at the toe of Dewey’s shoe.  If Dewey hadn’t been so groggy he might have looked frightened but his reflexes were so delayed he was cool as a summer breeze.

     The biker stood surveying him for a minute or so with his mouth half open as though he were about to laugh.  Finally Dewey flipped his chin up by way of acknowledgment.

     ‘Hi.  I’m Rodeo Frank Danesworth.  I heard ya was in town.’

     Dewey took that to mean that someone had told Frank that there was a sailor lounging around on Main.

     ‘Hi.  Dewey Trueman, Frank.’  Dewey shouted over the burps and blats of the motorcycle of which Frank had apparently removed the muffler.  ‘Yeah. Passin’ through.’

page 1765.

     ‘Miss your bus?’  Frank asked giving the gas hand a couple of twists that created a roar that shook the ground beneath Dewey’s feet.

     ‘Guy in the hotel refused to sell me a ticket.  Said the window was closed.  Driver woudn’t take cash.  Here I am.’

     ‘Tell ya what.  If you want to ride on my hog I’ll take ya into Joplin where ya can buy a ticket.  How’s that?’

     A man standing in the heart of darkness with only one way out no matter how questionable ought to take the chance.  Rodeo Frank had a terrifying aspect but a terrifying aspect can conceal a heart of gold.  As Dewey always repeated:  There’s time enough to bid the devil good morning when you meet him.  He bit his lower lip as if ruminating.  Which he was.

     ‘The bus has got over a half hour head start.  Do you think you can overtake him?’

     ‘Put your hat in your pocket and hop on.’  Rodeo Frank replied making his hog sound like a 707 lifting off.

     Dewey placed his bag between he and Frank and got into the seat behind the Screamin’ Demon.

     Frank popped the clutch and with a slight rear the mean machine plunged down Main and the darkness at the edge of town.

     Frank was not a cautious rider.  If Dewey thought you were overdriving your headlights in a car the little headlight on the Harley was practically useless except as a signal for oncoming traffic of which there wasn’t any.  Frank ran his hog up to ninety miles an hour which was the same as driving blind.  Maybe Frank could see the road ahead of him but Dewey could see only where the asphalt joined the shoulder.

page 1766.

     The noise was deafening.  Mile after mile wore away.  There were no cars on the road coming or going.  After twenty minutes a huge semi passed rocking the bike while creating terror in Dewey’s heart.

     Then far in the distance the glow of tail lights could be discerned.

     ‘We got him now.’  Rodeo Frank roared.

     Frank closed with the bus rapidly.  As time to pass it approached the lights of sixteen wheeler came towards them in the other lane.  Dewey thought that Frank would slow down until the semi passed but Frank hadn’t earned that face by backing down.

     He goosed that hog up to a hundred.  He started around the bus just as the semi closed with it.  Eyes wide in terror Dewey made the mistake of shifting in his seat.  That loosened the tails of his raincoat allowing the wind to enter pulling the skirts loose where they streamed out behind him snapping in the wind.

     The enraged truck driver let loose with a deafening blast of his air horn as the din of the bike reverberated off the sides of the bus and semi.  In a space no more than five feet wide Rodeo Frank Danesworth let out an exultant scream of ‘yahoo’ which flew back past Dewey’s ears.  Dewey was just screaming in terror which fortunately did not carry forward over the speed and din of the three vehicles.

page 1767.

     An angry Bob driving the bus looked down to recognize Dewey as the bike sped past rapidly disappearing in the black of the night covering Joplin.

     Frank wheeled through the parking lot of the station stopping smartly in the front door.  I don’t mean in front of the door; I mean half in and half out.

     ‘How was the ride?’  Frank shouted as Dewey tremblingly climbed off, carefully trying to sense whether his pants were loaded or not.

     ‘That was terrific Frank.  You’re quite a rider.  How much do I owe you?’  Dewey asked politely knowing or at least hoping Rodeo Frank wouldn’t want anything.

     ‘Hey, I was glad to do it, pardner.  I was in the service myself.  Korea ’52.  Good luck Buddy.’  Frank said revving the bike wildly making the whole building shake as he backed his bike out.

     ‘Korea ’52.  Must have been where he got that face.’  Dewey thought as all eyes were riveted on him as he walked to the ticket counter.

     The Joplin station was never empty.  Joplin was a major crossroads; buses came in all night long.  The cons were thinned out but they sat and waited.

     One nudged the other:  ‘See that guy?  Remember him?’

     ‘No.  Who is he?’

     ‘Came through here summer last year.  He was real rude to some nice guys.  We should fix him.’

     ‘Think we oughta?  Know who that guy on the Harley was?’

page 1768.


     ‘That was Rodeo Frank Danesworth.  He’s with the Sccreamin’ Demons.  If this guy is a friend of Rodeo Frank’s I’m not messin’ with him.’

     ‘I’ll find out how well he knows him; might be a chance acquaintance.’

     Dewey was sitting on a bench reliving the passage between the bus and the Semi when the con approached him.

     Dewey recognized him from last summer too.  Not in the mood to talk Dewey replied in a curt manner that seemed as tough as Rodeo Frank looked:  ‘Back off.’

     Thinking Dewey was maybe that tough through his association with Frank the country con backed off.

     While he and his friend stood a ways off studying Dewey Bob wheeled his big Grey Dog into the station.

     Heaving a sigh of relief Dewey climbed aboard.

No Relief

     ‘Say, ain’t you the guy on that motorcycle that come near to scaring me to death back there?’

     ‘I don’t know.’  Dewey said trying to evade the issue.

     ‘There was only one bike out there from Claremore to here.’

     ‘Must have been us then.  We were out out there.  Me and ol’ Rodeo Frank Danesworth.’

     ‘He’s one of those Screamin’ Demons, ain’t he?’

     ‘If you can believe the logo on the back of his jacket.  I’m not one of them.  The guy was decent enough to get me to Joplin which is what you should have done in the first place.’

page 1769

     ‘Didn’t have a ticket.’

     ‘Well I do now so I’m going to sit down.’

     Dewey found an empty bench halfway back sliding into the window seat where he propped himself up to sleep into St. Louis.

     No sooner had he dozed off than he was awakened by a hot weight pressing against his left shoulder.  Opening his weary eyes he looked to determine the cause.  He found himself looking into a pair of bulging eyes.  He knew what they meant.

     Gathering his failing wits about him Dewey pushed the man back.

     ‘Get over in your half.’

     ‘My name’s Lyle.  I need some companionship.’

     ‘Not in my seat you don’t.  Get away from me.’

     ‘You don’t understand.’

     ‘That’s what you think.’

     ‘No you don’t.  See, I work in a top secret government project.  I spend three weeks at a time in rooms seven levels underground.  I work all alone one hundred feet below the surface.  I never see the sun.  I don’t have any companions.  Every third week I get out and then I just have to have some companionship.  This isn’t just for tonight.  I have a whole week off.’

     ‘They don’t have any buildings seven levels underground in Joplin.  There isn’t even any government in Joplin.’

     ‘You don’t know.  I do.  There are dozens of super secret installations all across the country.  I should know.  I work in one, don’t I?’

     ‘I don’t care if there’s a super secret installation every square mile.  Get back in your seat.’  Dewey said giving Lyle another shove.

     But Lyle needed companionship and was not to be so easily dissuaded.  He continued to pester Dewey until raising his voice in exasperation Dewey disturbed the other passengers.  they complained to Bob.

     Bob stopped the bus.  He walked back authoritatively to Dewey’s seat and said:  ‘Oh, you again.’

     ‘Why me again?  This guy won’t stay in his seat.  He wants mine.  Make him move.’

     ‘I’ll tell you what, Sailor.  Why don’t you move?  Here, come sit in this seat behind me or get off the bus.’

     Dewey didn’t want to do it but to resist the injustice meant that he would be thrown off the bus.  The lesser of the two evils was to accept the seat behind the driver.  He got up and moved.

     He now sat next to a little old lady who eyed him suspiciously.  Dewey felt the futility of trying to explain so he just shut up.

     There was a faint glow on the horizon.  He asked Bob how far to St. Louis.  Told it was about sixty miles he sat glumly having been forced to give up his sleep.  Rosy fingered Dawn illuminated St. Louis as the bus headed for the terminal.

page 1771.


East St. Louis Toodle-pp

     Dewey stumbled down out of the bus glad for the opportunity to leave Lyle behind him.  Having put off his weariness for three days he was not conscious that he had been up that long.  The trip had become a mania.  He should have taken the bus directly to the Valley but the notion of hitchin’ had become an idee fixe.  He couldn’t shake it.  His judgment had become a little cloudy and confused.

     Oklahoma would be the last State that would provide reasonable weather.  The route up through Missouri had been the transition into the cold of winter.  Northern Illinois, Indiana and Michigan were in the grip of a cold front of which Dewey had no knowledge because he hadn’t the foresight or interest to buy a paper and find out.  It couldn’t have mattered; facts couldn’t have influenced his fantasy anyway.

     Stuck in the bus station in St. Louis he didn’t know how to get to the highway anymore so he determined to buy a ticket to East St. Louis across the Mississippi to begin fresh from there.

     Dewey did not know that East St. Louis was a completely Black town- Little Africa.  Nor would the racial ethos of the nation allow the information to be published warning Whites for fear of antogonizing Blacks.  The Urban Aristocracy like to condemn Southern Whites as bigots.  They pretend that the North welcomes Blacks.  In fact when Blacks fled the South in numbers during and after the Great War their entry into the North had been deeply resented and stoutly resisted.

page 1772.

     While the North had no experience in disciplining Blacks they nevertheless tightly restricted Black residence to a certain area which they were only allowed to leave for certain purposes.  This caused a great deal of resentment among the Blacks which resulted in several extensive and bloody race riots in the years around 1920   You can read that ‘Race War.’

     One of the worst had been in East St. Louis where it became celebrated in song:  The East St. Louis Toodle-oo.  As a result the Blacks won the town.  Thus Dewey was preparing to get off the bus in what was in fact a Negro city state.  In the era of integration no Whites were allowed, day or night.  Whites were not only expected to get out of town by sundown, there was no excuse for them to be there during the day.

     Naturally in the American way this fact was not acknowledged in public nor spoken of openly as that would have been ‘racism.’

     America conceals this sort of secret well.  Dewey was unaware of what he was doing.

     ‘I’ll take a ticket to East St. Louis.’  He announced to the woman in the ticket booth.  She evinced some surprise at this destination.

page 1773.

     ‘Do you know where you’re going?’  She asked, taking his uniform into consideration.

     Dewey merely thought she was questioning his sense of direction.

     ‘Yeah, sure, of course I do.  Why?’

     ”It’s just that not too many ‘people’…’ She meant White people.  ‘…go to East St. Louis..’

     ‘Oh well, I’ve just got to get across the Mississippi.’  Dewey said nonchalantly.

     The ticket seller began a remonstration but then thought better of it, not wanting to appear ‘racist’ and justified herself with the thought that Dewey was on the lam and had to get out of Missouri.  She said no more.

     Not feeling too tiptop Dewey stepped off the bus in the little East St. Louis station.  The driver made an involuntary move to restrain him, throwing in arm in front of him looking at him as though he were a madman.  Dewey gave him a strange look and brushed past.  He was surprised to find that everyone was Black, even the ticket seller.  He’d never seen a Black in that position before.  He noted the looks of astonishment he received on their faces so he smiled politely but didn’t know what to make of it other than that few people got off the bus in East St. Louis.

     ‘Now I’ve got to find the highway.’  He grumbled to himself as wide eyes watched him leave the station while three youths got up to leave through the back.

     He stepped outside to find numerous highway signs.  It seemed that every highway in America converged on this station.  There were several.  Not having looked at a map while being very groggy Dewey had no idea which highway he needed.  Just as well.  He picked a number with a shield around it indicating a US route which required him to cross the street.

page 1774.

     Dewey’s appearance on Black Main Street snapped heads around.  Several pairs of Black eyes glared darts of hatred at him.  They were hungry for white meat.  While Dewey was studying the signs a big Black guy 6/3, 280 brushed by him forcing him from the sidewalk into the gutter.  ‘Better keep movin’ White Boy.  Don’t want your kind in my town.  Better be gone by sundown, if you know what I mean.’  The man said with barely stifled rage and hatred that not only implied but stated danger.

     All innocence, Dewey looked after the departing Black man.  ‘Wow!  Pretty aggressive, I’ve never heard of that before.’  Dewey said without too much concern, especially as the guy was three times his size.

     Tired and turned around Dewey stuck his thumb out on a East Bound highway.  The three Black youths who had circled around him from the bus station drifted up to stand uncertainly around behind him on the sidewalk eyeing him with obvious malicious intent.  Dewey’s little pearl handled Japanese knife would have been no match for their shivs which they fondled in their pockets as they worked up the nerve to attack.

     Dewey got lucky, very, very lucky.  It was the shortest wait for a ride he ever had.  As soon as the driver of the ’58 Chev saw him from a block away reading the situation very accurately he sped up then screeched to a stop in front of the sailor.  Flinging the door open he shouted:  ‘Get in, get in, hurry.’

     Dewey was aware that he was about to become dead meat as the youths edged slowly closer as Dewey inched out to middle of the street which is where he was when the driver stopped.  Dewey was not loath to leap in the car but he thought that a sudden movement would break the spell of the snake like weaving of the Blacks so he as casually as he could got in the car.

     ‘Push down that lock.  Hurry. Don’t waste time.’  The man appeared to be terrifed reaching past Dewey to slam down the lock post.  He was not a moment too soon because a black hand was already on the door handle.  It was possible that they might have pulled Dewey out.  The driver floored it nearly taking the Black’s hand off.

page 1775.

     ‘Are you crazy?’  The driver chastised him.  ‘What in hell are you doing hitchhiking there?  Did some bastard drop you off?  Man, this is East St. Louis, I don’t even like to drive through it.’

     ‘Well.’  Dewey began mystified.  “Im hitchiking home for Christmas and I just got off the bus from St. Louis.  It seemed the easiest way to get across the Big River.’

     ‘Wow, are you ever lucky I came along at the right time.’

     ‘Oh yeah?  Why’s that?  I mean, thanks for the ride but why am I luckier than that?’

     ‘You really didn’t know where you were?’

     ‘Yah.  East St. Louis.’

     ‘East St. Louis toodle-oo.  That’s where you you were.  White men don’t live long in East St. Louis.  That’s a Black town.  They hate White people.  They kill them.  Back in the twenties Blacks started to take over the town and they had one of the worst race riots the country has ever seen.  Bloody fighting in the streets.  Since then the Blacks have taken over and White man’s life isn’t worth a plugged nickel.’

     ‘Aw, they wouldn’t have killed me, would they?’  Dewey asked incredulously.

     ‘Listen another five minutes and those three Black guys near you would have sliced you to pieces right there on the street.  Didn’t you see them?  Next thing you’d be body surfing down the Mississippi to New Orleans.’

     ‘Wow.  Driftwood on the river.’  Dewey said, thinking back to the hatred on the face of the guy who had shoved him into the gutter but still incredulous unable to believe that such a thing could be true in his own country.

page 1776.

     ‘Uh huh.  Discrimination may be a terrible thing but it cuts both ways.  Black guys may be charming and OK when they’re outnumbered in a White environment or one on one but a White guy in where he’s outnumbered and discrimination takes on a whole new meaning.  Shoot man, you might as well have been standing in the middle of the South Side of Chicago.

     Or one of those white hoboes who got in the freight car car with those eight Black guys.  Ever hear of that?’

     Dewey racked his nearly addled brain:  ‘You mean the Scotsboro Boys?’

     ‘Yes.  You don’t think they weren’t really guilty do you just because some Commies and Liberals decided to go to bat for them to embarrass the Southerners, do you?’

     ‘Jeez, I don’t know.  I just thought maybe they were and maybe they weren’t.’

     ‘Well, think about it.  You were dead meat back there among all Blacks.  Now, picture a White woman and two White Boys getting into a box car and finding eight Black guys there.

     I’m not saying she was a virgin but how much proof has been offered that she was a prostitute as the Commies claim.  Even if she was that doesn’t make it ‘all right’ for the Black guys to rape her.

     Eight guys to two with a White woman involved and hatred shooting out of the yes of both Blacks and Whites?  Come on, those Black guys saw their opportunity and took it.  Innocent my ass.  I don’t think the first judgment was a miscarriage of justice but I think the second one was.

page 1777.

     I mean…’  The driver couldn’t get over it.  ‘…you don’t know how lucky you are that I came along at that moment.’

     Dewey didn’t realize how lucky he was but he took the driver’s word for it as he watched him shiver and shake in his stead.

     Dewey began to muse on this as he carried on a desultory conversation.   Then looking out the window he saw a sign on the highway that read:  Louisville, 160 miles.  Turning to the driver he said:  ‘Louisville?  Louisville? Is that the same Louisville as in Kentucky?’

     ‘Yes, that’s where I thought you were going.’

     ‘Oh well, you know what?  I’m going the wrong way.  I’m trying to get to Michigan.  I don’t mean to be a nuisance but could you stop and let me out?’

     ‘Oh sure.’  Said the driver who was a genuinely decent man.

     Dewey hopped out crossing to the other side of the highway.

     Once again he didn’t have to wait very long.  A blue and yellow ’55 Buick pulled over.

    ‘How far you goin?’  Dewey asked as he climbed in.

     ‘Chicago.’  Said Black Jack David Drainsfield who was driving.

Black Jack David Came Down From The Hills

…rather drink muddy water

and sleep in a hollow log,

Than hang around Mobile

And be treated like a dirty dog.


Ain’t I A Dog?

-Ronnie Self

page 1778.

     ‘Great.’  Thought Dewey.  ‘I’ll ride right through East St. Louis.’

     ‘Hi.’  The driver said amiably almost apologetically.  ‘I’m Black Jack David Drainsfield and the lady in the back seat with you is Dixie Darlin’ and this is my wife up front, Dixie Belle.  We’re traveling from Mobile to Chicago and you’re welcome to ride with us.’

     ‘Thank you very much Black Jack Davy.  I’m Dewey Trueman and I’m on my way from California to Michigan on Christmas leave.  Your lift is very much appreciated.’  Dewey replied in kind amazed at the florid politeness of Drainsfield while looking curiously at the Dixie Darlin’ and the Dixie Belle.’

     As can be told from their monikers the trio was having a difficult task adapting to the rigors of getting on in the world.  When one’s own name seems to be be an inadequate entree into one’s world one adopts a pseudonym that one imagines adds luster to one’s person.  It was on that basis that David Hirsh renamed himself Yehouda Yisraeli which might be translated something like the Quintessential Jew of Israel.  The trait is quite common in Jewish circles where one finds such names as Israel Israelson.  One young Jewish lady in the US in the early nineteenth century named herself Suzy American and actually functioned under that name.

page 1779

     Dewey too was under pressure to escape into an alternate identity but his were were all so grandiose that he lacked the chutzpah to adopt them.  One which would later be used by Peter Fonda in the movie ‘Easy Rider’ was based on the comic book character Captain America.  One has to credit the Rovin’ Gambler with the good sense not to fall into that trap.  Even in the movie Easy Rider Fonda as Capt. America cut a laughable figure.

     As it wa Dewey knew the sources of the name Black Jack David, Dixie Darlin’ and Dixie Belle so he knew immediately their psychological history.  All three names came from songs.  Black Jack David or Davy depending on the version was the hero of an old Scottish ballad.  David comes down from the hills feelin’ so gay and merry.  There, although he is a pauper who can offer his beloved nothing but a pallet on the ground, he meets, woos and wins the wife of the Lord of the Manor on nothing but his manly vigor.  Dewey knew Drainsfield’s whole history in that moniker.

     The two women took their pseudonyms from a hillbilly song called Dixie Darlin’:  ‘She’s my Dixie Darlin’; She’s my Dixie Belle.’  So, Dewey knowing who he was with relaxed.  Not of hillbilly origins himself he had an aunt who married one of the hill folks who had migrated to Michigan to work in the auto plants.  That aunt had doted on Dewey so through his Uncle Paul he was acquainted with the mental rhythms of Hillbillies not to mention the fact that his early eyars had been lived with his ear glued to every Hillbilly radio station in the Midwest.

page 1780

     Those were a considerable number because the great Midwestern basin in the US has no mountainous obstruction for over an area of a couple thousand miles wide and a couple thousand in depth.  At night signals from the super powerful Mexican stations run by Americans in such places as the legendary Del Rio, Texas that had a signal big enough to beam to Mars and maybe Jupiter came in crystal clear.  The great hillbilly stations in Tennessee, Shreveport, Louisiana, Waterloo, Iowa, WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia and WCKY in Cincinatti, Ohio were all favorite stations.  The CKY obviously stands for Cincinatti/Kentucky.

     Dewey was with his people.

     ‘Comin’ up from Mobile, huh?’


     ‘How long have you lived down there?’

     ‘Only a couple years.  How’d you know I wasn’t from there?’

     ‘Well, you call yourself  Black Jack David and Davy came down from the hills feelin’ so gay and merry so I assume you’re from the hills somewhere.’

    ‘The Smokies.  Yeah, it got too hard to make a livin’ up there so my folks moved down to Mobile trying to better themselves.’

     ‘How’d they do?  Got a new car anyway.’

     ‘Tsha.  No thanks to them.  Got this in Chicago.  Man, people in Mobile treat hill folk like dirty dogs.  I wasn’t going to stand for that.  Not me and not my wife and not my sister.’

page 1781.

     ‘No, sir.’  Dixie Darlin’ who playing solitaire with funny looking cards on the seat beside Dewey piped up.  ‘Not no way.  I’m better than them curs anyway.  I’d a left without him.  I ain’t no White Trash.  I don’t care what they say.’

     Much is made of the migration of the Southern Negro to the North but there were actually two streams of internal migration following the Drinking Gourd to ‘freedom.’  Of the two peoples the most despised were the men and women known down South as Poor White Trash.

     Except for the fact that they were White the Hillbillies were as culturally different if not more so than the Blacks.  Even in their home country they were an odd lot.  The immigrants who accupied the hill regions of Amrica were what is known as Scotch-Irish or the Border people of England and Scotland.  Rob Roy types.  They were a quarrelsome, feuding, illiterate lot on their arrival on these shores.  Their customs and attitudes were markedly different from the Puritans who occupied New England, the Cavaliers of Virginia and Midlands Quakers who took up a midland location in America in Pennsylvania.

     Isolated in the hills their culture was reinforced by their insularity.  While immigrants flowed into the midstates and the Northeast thence West to Michigan and Chicago to create the smarmy culture of the North they bypassed the Eastern mountain spine of America.  Thus the Hill Folk developed in a pure unblended fashion which made them stranger than any blending immigrant group.

     Not given to learning on the Border they sought little education in their hills.  Thus, in addition to their singularity they became a synonym for ignorant bumptiousness.  The Urban Aristocracy degraded them below the Negro in social status.

page 1782.

     It is said that the Hatfield-McCoy feud of Kentucky gave them this obnoxious character.  It may be true that the most celebrated feud in history tainted the entire people but I doubt it.

     Making their living the coal mines all down the line added more to their character than the Hatfields and McCoys.

     No.  Immigrants slandered them more than any legendary feud.

     The nature of immigration into the United States is purposely misunderstood and misrepresented by the Urban Aristocracy for their own ends.  They are willing to sacrifice the hill people to their goal.  You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet; just hope they are not your eggs and somebody else doesn’t end up with the omelet.

     Emigration is never easy whether from East Europe to West Europe of from North to South in Europe.  Sicilian migrant laborers in Northern Europe during the nineteenth century were treated no differently than in the US.  Eastern European migrants to West Europe were often expelled and sent back to where they came from.  Such cultural clashes were unwanted by the native peoples.

     Immigrants and first generation offspring made up half of the US population during 1900 to 1950.  When they arrived they were often treated worse than the Negroes; certainly cruelly exploited economically.  They were stripped of their language while their customs were treated contemptuously.

page 1783.

     This was to be expected.  Nowhere else in the world would they have been treated differently of perhaps as well.  After all the majority prospered immediately and certainly within twenty years of their arrival.  Once acclimated they were treated with a respect that would not have been accorded their social castes, which were nearly all proletarian, in their homelands.

     Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the US is that of liberty here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Many of the immigrants were as well as or better educated than most Americans.  It galled them for Americans to adobt superior attitudes while treating them as stupid or ignorant simply because they spoke with foreign accents.

     They looked around for someone else to belittle while justifying themselves.  There was always the Negro but they were unsatisfactory simply because they were Negroes.  Looking further afield they found the Hillbillies who, they felt, fit their needs admirably.  So they pointed the Hill people out as evidence that Americans weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

     Great agitators arose.  Among them was a vindictive, demented but effective person name H.L. Mencken.

     Now, in 1914 the Great War came along.  The War interdicted immigration more effectively than the legislation which followed the war in 1920 and 1924.

     Once again the Urban Aristocracy misrepresents the unity of America during the war.  It is true that Anglo-Americans had the ascendancy which allowed them to bring America in on the side of the Allies.  They controlled the newspapers but opinion was more evenly divided than that.  The Central Powers always counted on their people to influence American policy in ways in which they proved unable.

page 1784.

     At the time of the war there were millions of German and Austro-Hungarian immigrants in the United States.  In addition the Irish favored the Central Powers because both peoples were fighting the English.  The Jews favored the Central Powers over the Allies because the Powers were fighting the Jews’ arch enemy the Russians.  The Jews did not become pro-Ally until after the Bolshevik Revolution at which point they rushed millions of dolars in loans in aid of what they believed was their cause.

     All of these peoples acted as foreign nationals and not as American citizens.

     The people of the Central Powers who had emigrated to the United States were treated as disloyal citizens.  All things German were castigated.  Germans were treated in a manner that made the treatment of the Japanese in World War II look mild.

     The War ended.  H.L. Mencken was a German who deeply resented the way he and other Germans had been treated during the War.  Muzzled by wartime censors, when the struggle was over he went on a psychological rampage, castigating America, Americans, the Anglo-Saxon race and all it’s ideals.

     Allied with a journalist of the Jews, George Jean Nathan, he created the then influential magazine, The American Mercury.  The alliance with the Jews was important.  In the pre-Hitler days the Jews proudly carried the banner of German culture as well as their own.  They had hailed the German victory in Russia as one of their own.

page 1785.

     Mencken himself adopted and popularized many Yiddish words and phrases which were in fact neologisms to his goyish readers.  Yiddish was still thought of by the Jews as their native language.  It was only after the Second World War that the use of Yiddish atrophied to the point of uselessness.  In Russia the Jews were plumping for an autonomous Jewish people with Yiddish being one of the official languages of Russia.

     In the wild enthusiasm of the Bolshevik victory the introduction of Yiddish phrases was probably thought of as an opening salvo for the creation of an autonomous Jewish people in the United States with Yiddish as a second official language.  Never forget that the Jewish Cultrual Revolution was to last from 1913 to 1928.

     By the use of Mencken it was thus that the Jewish counter-culture might begin to flow into the dominant culture to subvert thought toward the idea of an autonomous Jewish people.

     Mencken’s attacks on the Hill folk, Anglo-Saxonism and the Boobocracy of America as he termed it had the effect of dividing the Urban Aristocracy from a major constituent and pitting it against it.  Divide and rule.

      This attitude was abetted by the formation of the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith in 1913, which was the opening year of the Jewish Revolution.  The ADL began immediately to attack it’s list of ‘known’ anti-Semites which further divided ‘good’ goys from ‘bad goys.’  In an effort to show that they were not prejudiced against Jews the ‘good’ goys turned viciously on their own people and against their own best interests.  Always ask this question:  Is it good for the Jews?

page 1786.

     The crowning blow against the Hill People was delivered in 1932 by a semi-literate Communist by the name of Erskine Caldwell.  Caldwell comes across in his writing as a vicious bigot.  Tobacco Road, his most famous and infuential novel, appeared in ’32 followed by God’s Little Acre in 1933.  Both books sold in unprecedented millions in the heart of the Depression penetrating so deeply into the consciousness of America that for decades there was no one who had not heard of Tobacco Road and believed in its excistence.

     In the Communist manner it was Caldwell’s intent to demean the Hillbilly below the status of the Negro in which he succeeded.  This would not be the last time that the elevation of the Negro would be attempted by lowering the status of the Whites.

     In an introduction to the novels written in the latter years of the twentieth century a Negro writer describes the pride of place he felt when after reading the two tracts he realized or hoped he would never sink as low as Hillbillies.

     The fear of Tobacco Road plagued White youth for at least two generations to be later replaced by the image of Archie Bunker of TV fame who was created by a Jewish writer.  It was no coincidence that one of the early anthems of the Folk Rock era was a song called Tobacco Road.  In it the writer notes that he is not going back to the Tobacco Road he has escaped.

page 1787.

     Thus by the late forties Hillbillies had been thoroughly ‘niggerized’ taking their place on the bottom rung of the ‘minority’ ladder below the Negroes.  It no longer mattered what they might believe individually as a whole ethos had been projected on them by the Urban Aristocracy and the Negroes.

     In the post war years this vision of Hillbillies as a quaint stone age people was furthered by such comic strips as Snuffy Smith and the tremendously influential ‘L’il Abner’ by the Jewish writer, Al Capp.

     Although convicted of child molestation at the end of his career destroying a fine reputation Capp was revered in the forties and fifties by an audience that did not reflect on what he was up to.  Capp was able to infuence fashion and change American social mores.  Girls and women embraced the styles of his heroine, Daisy May, down to the off shoulder blouse and cut off jeans.  He called the name of this hillbilly haven he invented, what else?, Dog Patch.  Following some of these themes through can be an amazing experience.  One of the customs of Dogpatch was the tradition of women asking men out.  The custom was strictly forbidden in real life.  His character who did this was called Sadie Hawkins.  By mid decade in the fifties every school in America was holding Sadie Hawkin’s days where the girls could ask the boys for a date.

     Capp’s influence peaked in the sixties when Dogpatch moved to Hollywood in the TV series ‘Beverly Hillbillies.’  After that the hills were filled with Urban Cowboys while Archie Bunker replaced the Beverly Hillbillies.  Same tune, different words.

page 1788.

     Capp’s efforts in the forties were seconded by several Jewish film writers among whom was the semi-literate Red, Lester Cole.  He keenly felt the ridicule immigrants endured before 1920 so he wrote scripts where he invented an ignorant Hill dialect that assuaged his tortured feelings although it made him a bigot.

     Thus having fled his Dogpatch for Mobile, Black Jack David Drainsfield was treated like a dirty dog by the Southern Aristocracy in that Dixie metropolis.  Unable to endure such treatment he did what all self-respecting Whites and Blacks did.  He headed up North to ‘freedom.’

     He found the same reception up river as did the Negroes.  He was ridiculed and despised as a sub-human.  Like the Blacks he was driven mad by this savage treament.  He was young so he had the strength to resist but at the stage of entering life he was driven from pillar to post.  Caught in an existence from which the only escape was transformation he was at a stage of indecision.  Unable to assimilate easily into the smarmy culture of Chicago he sought refuge from time to time by returning to Mobile.  Once there he realized the impossibility of enduring life as a dirty dog from Dogpatch so he returned to Chicago which he was doing now.

     Like the Black Folk of Richard Wright’s novels he asked repeatedly:  ‘Are we just dogs to be treated so?’

     Well, Al Capp thought so or he wouldn’t have named his Hillbilly Nirvana Dogpatch.  The Urban Aristocracy thought so or they wouldn’t have projected the character of Dogpatch on them.

page 1789.

     Thus from H.L. Mencken through Erskine Caldwell to Al Capp the true source of the Hillbilly character is derived.

     Drainsfield like all people who fled this character to be derided, which he certainly was, both in Mobile and Chicago, was at great pains to establish his integrity.  It was not his intention to travel through East St. Louis up 66 but to take an alternate route up the Indiana line.

     He was extremely fearful that Dewey might distrust him so he went to great lengths to assure Dewey that his route was a better way to Chicago.

    ‘This is just as good a road but it saves a lot of miles.  We bypass East St. Louis which is the last place in the world I’d want to break down.  It is still the road to Chicago so don’t worry that we’re taking you somewhere else.’

     ‘It’s alright Black Jack.  I can read the signs on the highway.  Don’t worry.’

     Now heading up the Indiana line they all settled back for the long haul to Chicago.  Pleased with the nice hop Dewey had again reconciled himself to hitchhiking.  He turned his attention to the Dixie Darlin’ who, as she played her game of solitaire quietly sang the lyrics of an old Hawkshaw Hawkins’ tune:

Don’t want no warmed over kisses

Or yesterday’s sighs;

I want everything fresh

Even brand new lies.

If you don’t have what I want

Another boy may,

If it ain’t on the menu

There’s another cafe.

page 1790

     Hawkshaw Hawkings had already been all but forgotten so Dewey was pleasantly surprised to hear one of his favorites.

     ‘Oh wow.  You know Hawkshaw Hawkins?’

     ‘Of course.  I know everybody in both kinds of music.  I like them all.  Every one.  Do you know Cowboys Copas?  And Floyd Tillman?  And Ernest Tubb? and Ferlin Husky?  And Rex Allen? And Montana Slim?  They’re all Western singers.  Do you know them?’

     ‘Oh yes.  I do.’  Dewey replied.

     ‘How do you?  You don’t talk like us; you talk real Yankee like.’

     ‘Uh, I am from Michigan which is why I talk Yankee but some of my family were hillbillies from Kentucky and I’ve listened to hillbilly music all my life.’

     ‘You mean Country music, don’t you?’  Darlin’ had already been taught to be ashamed of her origins.  The term Hillbilly came across to her like ‘nigger’ would to a Black.  In fact Hillbilly was used by the Aristocracy in exactly the same derogatory sense as nigger but acceptable to them because Hillbillies were White hence they could be defamed at will.  There was no Hillbilly Anti-defamation League.

    ‘No, Dixie Darlin’, I mean hillbilly as in the Carter Family, Bill Monroe and Roy Acuff.  I mean Hillbilly as in American music expressing American ideals and not this smarmy immigrant Tin Pan Alley garbage.  I have my Hillbilly roots and I’m not ashamed of them, nor should you be.’

page 1791.

     ‘Well, we get treated real bad because we’re from the mountains both in Mobile and Chicago.  Why’s that?  We didn’t do nothin’ to nobody no time.”

     ‘That is no reflection on yourselves; merely the ranting of narrow, bigoted persons who are beneath your dignity to recognize although you still have to deal with them.  Just stand up for your rights and turn their own evil back on them.  They are low, not you.

     Just a second Darlin’, you said you like both kinds of music.  Do you mean Tin Pan Alley and Hillbilly or what?’

     ‘No.  I mean both Country and Western.  I will not use the word Hillbilly and I would appreciate it if you didn’t too.’

     ‘No.  That’s all right Darlin;.’  Black Jack David said.  ‘I think he’s one of us.’

     Dewey had never considered Country and Western as separate but he now stood corrected.  The corpus of these singers formed a large part of the ephemeara of Dewey’s intellect.  Ephemera are the most important part of one’s identity.  Songs, movies, radio shows, ads, newspapers and magazine articles that are forgotten by history almost as soon as they are voiced but are carried in the memories of individutals throughout their lives is the stuff of the personality.

     With the exception of Ferlin Husky one of the Bakersfield hillbillies and not a Western singer who was contemporary, the rest of her list of favorites were all of the late forties and early fifties and now all but forgotten.

page 1792.

     As ephemeral as they were to society at large they formed a great deal of Dewey’s outlook on the world.  He knew dozens of songs by them.

     ‘I really liked ‘Signed Sealed And Delivered’ by Hawkshaw Hawkins.’  He said knowingly, meaning to impress Darlin’ with his encyclopedic knowledge.

     ‘That was by Cowboy Copas.’  She corrected.  ‘You can’t fool me.  I know just about everything there is to know about music.’

     Dewey nearly took her correction as a reproof since he was rather vain about his knowledge of music.  Instead he chose to deflect the conversation.

     ‘Well, all those are good but really old.  Do you like anybody new like Elvis Presley?’

     ‘I liked Elvis when he was a hill…Country singer.  After he went mainstream he changed and this Army Elvis is something else again.’

    ‘Yeah, but Elvis is a hero.  Before Elvis there was nothing and now there’s a chance for everyone.  You know how they say that Elvis sings like a Black guy?  Does he sound that way to you?  I don’t get it.’

     ‘Me and Belle saw Elvis at the fairgrounds in 1955 before ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ came out.  I didn’t think there was anything Black about him at all.  Wouldn’t have liked him if there was.  Sounded a lot like Bill Monroe to me.’

     What in musicology are known as the Sun Years was the decisive period in post 1950 music.  Sun was a record label formed by a man named Sam Phillips.  Originally Phillips scouted out Black singers and either sold the masters or issued the songs on Sun Records.  The Black artists were a small and not very lucrative market in the early fifties.  Phillips is reported to have always said that if he could find a White man who could sing Black he would make a million dollars.

     Presley according to Phillips was the genuine article.  He sold his contract to RCA for $37,000.’

     Society with its guilt complex about Negroes has accepted the judgment that Presley sang like a Black man without question or reservation.  I, as the author, was a teenage bronkin’ buck in 1954, ’55 and ’56 and to this day I cannot fathom what Phillips might have meant.

     Black men sang in a variety of styles none of which Presley sounded like.  Black styles ranged from Billy Daniels, the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, James Brown, Hank Ballard and Little Richard to name only a few.  Presley’s style bore no resemblance to any of those.  In fact any White man copying them would have sounded so ludicrous he would have been laughed off the stage.

     Phillips himself discarded his Black stable as soon as Presley attracted a stable of White hillbilly artists.  None of Phillips White artists sounded remotely Black from Elvis to Johnny Cash to Roy Orbison.  They were all hillbillies and the music they created was immediately known as Rockabilly which to my mind says all.  The same people that hated Hillbilly hated Rockabilly as well.

     Actually Darlin’ was correct.  The early Presley Sun recordings all sound like jumped up Bluegrass a la Bill Monroe.  The flip side of Elvis’ first ’45 was even Monroe’s Blue Moon Of Kentucky which begins in the traditional style that Presley interrupts with the statement:  ‘Hold it man, that don’t move me.’  Then they jump it and do the song Rockabilly fashion.

page 1794.

     Nor did Phillips’ Sun label have much impact in the ’50s.  The affection for the music and style is a latter day romantic movement.  At the time I was the only person I knew who had the records and one of the very few who had heard of them.

     I had no affinity for Black music.  I probably would have rejected Elvis if he had sounded Black.  The record store used to order Sun releases for me.  If a release was by a Black artist I gave it back; if Rockabilly I bought it.

     It was not that I was prejudiced against Blacks but their music didn’t ‘move me’ and that includes that sacred cow ‘gospel music.’  The stuff was far too ethnic  to appeal to White ears.  Only in the late ’50s when the Black edge was taken off Negro singers could Whites tolerate the stuff- except for Little Richard and Fats Domino of course.

     Whatever you may think of Berry Gordy he and his Motown label really put the Black singer into White ears.

     The basis of Phillips’ statement remains a mystery to me.  Like most Americans he probably deluded himself that he respected Black culture while he actually rejected it.

     Black Jack David whose real name was Derek had been intrigued with Dewey’s identification of himself with Hillbillies.  He relaxed a little and began to converse with Dewey person to person instead of across a great divide.

page 1795.

     ‘They sure make it hard on us in Chicago though.  Almost as bad as in Mobile but different.  They laugh at us for our music which is real American but they claim to really like Negro music which just sounds noisy and illiterate to me.  You have to be dumb to sing the blues.  Like the Carter’s say:  Stay on the sunny side of the street.’

     Dewey was still ignorant about the Blues and didn’t know a lot about the sunny side of the street either.  He had heard a fair amount but he couldn’t identiy the structure of the Blues.  The stuff just dounded like a lot of repetitious moaning to him.

     It was a phenomenon that White Folk in general professed a high regard for Black music, although they didn’t buy much of it, while they shunned Southern White Music like the plague.

     White Southern singers were basic folks without a lot superfluous education but there was still a higher level of musicianship than with Blacks while their lyrics were, how shall we say, less earthy than those of the Blacks.  No White person would have been allowed to write much less sing a song in mixed company called ‘Drop Down Mama.’  Yet White people would listen to a Black man sing the sexually explicit lyrics and ooh an aah at the sensual freedom of Black Folk.

     Well, you know, what was a wide awake guy to do but shake his head and wonder.

     Just as Sun was establishing Rockabilly music out of Memphis by the early  and mid-fifties the corpus of songs and the stable of Blues performers that would carry through the century had already been defined and recorded by Marshall Chess of Chess/Checker records in Chicago.  The most influential of the early rock n’ rollers, Chuck Berry, also came from Chess.  Marshall Chess seemed to know a lot more about Black music than Sam Phillips.

page 1796.

     Elvis Presley kind of steamrollered Chuck Berry when he broke with Heartbreak Hotel but Berry established the archetype of Rock n’ Roll music in ’55 with his hit Maybelline.

     Thus by the late fifties both streams of migration from the South were entrenched in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and points North.

     Black Jack and Dixie Belle had met and married in Mobile leaving for Chicago for the first time shortly thereafter.  They migrated for the same reason their Black counterparts did.  Not considered ‘niggers’ they were deemed ‘Poor White Trash.’

     Black Jack didn’t want to remain poor, he didn’t object to being called White but he definitely hated the trash part.  He was no fool.  He could see at a glance that he was as good or better than the so-called Urban or Southern Aristocracies but he also realized that he would never be able to escape the stigma of Poor White Trash.  Skin color isn’t the only stigma.

     He couldn’t go back to the hills so the only escape was North.  Blackjack, Dixie Belle and Dixie Darlin’ followed the drinkin’ gourd ending up on the South Side of Chicago across the street from the Black South Side.

     The change was momentous; as much a cultural shock as that of Country Blacks seeing the big city for the first time.  The Hillbillies ‘pure’ English ways clashed with the smarmy hybrid immigrant culture that had developed in Chicago.  They were almost as obvious as the Black Folk.

page 1797.

     A comparable situation would be the invasion of Los Angleles by the Arkies and Okies of the 30s.

     Twenty years after, a term of opprobrium in LA was to call someone an Okie even as his culture was transforming LA.  Fifty years later a Mafioso bigot by the name of Quentin Tarentino would portray the type negatively in his movie ‘Pulp Fiction.’  Actually he made fun of Anglo-Saxons in all his movies.

     Still, the only reason that LA had a Country music scene is because there were so many Okies in the Basin; there and in the Bakersfield/Fresno area.  The Okies still stuck out in LA like Blacks and were treated the same or worse.

     Black Jack David, then still know as Derek, felt himself in a desperate situation.  He knew his own worth.  He was sure of his value as a human being; he wasn’t about to stay and be treated like a dirty dog.  Everywhere he turned he was derided.  He had little formal education.  His manners, while not worse than, were not the manners of immigrant Chicago.

     He was laughed at and derided as though he had been a Negro.  Not naturally offended by Blackness he nevertheless developed a resentment towards them or, rather, passed the resentment he felt at his treatment to them.  The Blacks considered him as though emigrants from Tobacco Road feeling free to despise him.

     Needing to escape the Chicago environment from time to time he made frequent trips to Mobile.  As a mirror decoration instead of a pair of fuzzy dice or a garter he had an upside down cross.

     ‘Uh, I notice your cross is upside down.’  Dewey stated.  ‘Why? did you get it cheaper because they put the hole in wrong end?’

     The Dixie Belle turned in her seat to smile at Dewey:  ‘My husband is a fully ordained minister in the Church of the Second Coming of The Golden Dawn.’

     There was a mouthful of religion.  It shut Dewey up.  He turned to look out the window at the racing landscape.

This Land Is Your Land

     They were moving rapidly into the grip of the Northern cold front.  The softer features of the barren prairie landscape were being turned into cold hard features by the frost.  What should have been land promising of the rebirth of vernal pleasures looked merely like an industrial resource waiting once again to be exploited.

     Americans had no love of their environment; even on a scientific level ecology had no meaning for them.  They had always come to rape the land converting it into a dollar value that could either be taken back to Europe or, if necessary, lavished on a home establishment.

     Initially the ability to rape had been severely inhibited by the limits of ‘human resources.’  The phrase is another attempt to substitute money for people.  But as technology improved in the nineteenth century the ability to rip the land asunder to ‘develop’ the country increased.  Alfred Nobel, the man in whose honor all those grandiose prizes are awarded, provided the penultimate means of maiming the environment when he invented TNT or dynamite as it is otherwise known.

page 1799.

     This enabled man to blast into the solid rock at Cripple Creek in pursuit of a handful of yellow dust or open the rich coal seams across this continent of ‘unlimited’ resources.

     Nobel might justly be characterized as a demon but the devil arrived in the disguise of a man called LeTourneau.

     Like so many monsters LeTourneau was a smallish man given to a certain amount of flab but the man’s imagination was of gigantic diabolical proportions.

     Small  himself his diseased imagination caused him to create earth moving machines of what might be called indescribable dimensions if they hadn’t been hatched on a drawing board.  Still the behemoths stagger the mind.

     Rather than tunnel into the earth, a concept known as ‘strip mining’ was devised and employed a few miles away in the coal fields of Southern Illinois.  Huge shovels bigger than the biggest building of ninety percent of American towns with a shovel capacity of 100-150 tons were built.  Le Tourneau chipped in his two tons worth by building gigantic trucks capable of transporting a shovelful.  Then raised their load capacity to two hundred and three hundred tons.  Three hundred and sixty ton trucks are said to be on the horizon.

page 1800.

     Thus the ‘overburden’ could be scooped off and dumped somewhere else.  The ‘money’ hidden beneath the earth could easily be gotten.  The ‘resource’ could be consumed in a trice.  Having gotten the money out the operators left a huge gaping scar on the landscape on one hand and vast mounds of debris on the other.  The money had been gotten, the land was now worthless.

     There was no thought of even attempting to repair the damage.  There was no concern for the beauty of the landscape or the quality of life for the remaining ‘human resource.’

     As bad as that was let us follow Mr. LeTourneau’s creation to the twenty-first century.  By this time his trucks are bigger than most houses being twenty-seven feet wide and twice and long.  the trucks themselves are three stories tall while appearing as toys beside the monster shovels.

     Now, there was still a lot of coal in the Appalachian seams but the operators said it couldn’t be economically ‘recovered’ by conventional methods.  As always the environment meant nothing, or less than nothing, to Americans.  This means you and not just a class of evil exploiters.  You would have done the same.

     Combining the contributions to human happiness of both Nobel and LeTourneau the operators came up with a simple solution.  They merely planted enough dynamite to blow the mountain tops off several miles at a time.  As they had to have someplace to dump the ‘overburden’ they moved the ‘human resources’, the descendants of the Hatfields and McCoys , out of their ancient homes in the valleys or hollers or bottoms, and using Mr. LeTourneau’s magnificent machines they dumped the mountain tops down into the valleys.  And they did this with their eyes wide open.

page 1801.

     The child is father to the man.  The mines of Illinois were a concept in embryo which Dewey recognized but his mind could not conceive the horrible denouement which insanity would perpetrate.

     The premonition apparent in his mind he heaved a sigh turning back to Dixie Belle and her pride in her husband who was a fully ordained minister in the Church Of The Second Coming Of The Golden Dawn.

Black Jack David In Chicago

     ‘When was the First Coming Of The Golden Dawn?’  Dewey asked.

     ‘You’ve never heard of Aleister Crowley?’  Belle asked.

     ‘No.’  Dewey said flatly.

     ‘Well, my husband knows all about him.’  Belle said.  ‘This is my  man, Black Jack David.’  She added superfluously but with infinite pride.

     Dewey had never heard of Aleister Crowley.  Since neither David nor Dixie Belle was going to mention him again contrary to Dewey’s expectations suffice it to say that he was a psychotic drug addicted sex therapist cum magician of a Theosophic stamp although the Theosophists rejected him.

     In the last quarter of the nineteenth century a guy named MacGregor Mathers started a group called the Golden Dawn in England.  The Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, who wrote a poem called ‘The Second Coming’, was its most famous member.  We may presume that Black Jack combined the poem with the sect to come up with his own variation.  Obviously he fully ordained himself.

page 1802.

     Crowley became a member of the original Golden Dawn and managed to steal their Arcana thereby appropriating the sect to himself.  The original followers went their separate ways.  Crowley turned the sect into a sex and drug cult whose motto, like that of the Abbey of Thelema was:  Do What Thou Wilt.

     Crowley and the sect underwent vicissitudes.  Crowley died in 1947.  The sect ended up, as things of this nature will, in LA.  In fact, their publishing house was located in Barstow.  The house Dewey had been taken to in Pasadena, in the story he related to the Darrels, had actually been a coven of the Golden Dawn.

     Black Jack David was unaffiliated with any other known group.  He and the Dixies were the entire congregation of the Second Coming Of The Golden Dawn.  Black Jack David like Napoleon had ordained himself.  They did have a couple of almost converts in Chicago.  Always a believer in omens Black Jack had immediately recognized Dewey as the lieutenant he needed, miraculously provided by God.

     Black Jack’s program didn’t make much sense.  It was a crude amalgam of Protestant Christianity, the Golden Dawn and general Rosicrucian Theosophy.  Black Jack had picked up most of it on the streets but he had done some desultory unsystematic reading.  The principal incredient of his system was the ‘magick’ Black Jack thought he needed to save his life.  He too was looking for a miracle.

page 1803.

     As all these things are, the Second Coming was merely a projection of the psychological  needs of Derek Drainsfield.  He felt completely rejected and scorned.  He sought salvation.  More than that he had what it took to create it.

     ‘Why is the cross upside down?’  David asked rhetorically finally getting around to Dewey’s question.  He eyed Dewey anxiously as he wanted to make a good impression on the disciple the Lord had provided.  ‘Well, I’ll tell you.’

     ‘Uh huh.’  Dewey said with weary expectancy.

     ‘Justice and decency are overturned in this world.  The Christ has been displaced in this orb of despair by evil, vile and materialististic men.  That cross will remain upside down until those men are defeated and the Rose of Sharon is restored to its rightful place.’

     Dewey was suitably impressed.  The explanation was better than he had expected.  ‘What kind of magic do you have to do that?’  He asked facetiously.

     ‘The right kind.’  Black Jack triumphed.  ‘Did your magick have a K at the end?’

     ‘What magic?’

     ‘That magick.’

     Dewey paused for a moment to seek Black Jack’s direction.

     ‘I spell it M A G I C.’

     ‘Aha.  The wrong kind of magick.  Add a K to that and you’ve got the right kind of magick.’

page 1804.

     Dewey was baffled.  Black Jack was retailing Crowley’s self-help system contained in a book called: ‘Magick: Theory and Practice’ or, in other words, how to become what you would like to be as an act of will.  Magic is important to Christian and Theosophic systems but is discredited by materialist and scientific approaches.  Hence Crowley put a K at the end of magic in the hopes of making the notion credible.

     ‘Oh.  the only kind of magic I know of that will achieve what you want is the A-Bomb and then only because it wipes everyone, evil or not.’

     ‘How did you know about that?’  Black Jack asked startled as though Dewey had divined the secret.

     ‘How do I know about the A-Bomb?’  Dewey asked equally incredulously.

     ‘Yes.  It’s in Chicago you know.’

     ‘I know the atomic pile was in Chicago but how is the A-Bomb in Chicago?’

     ‘The missing one.’  Black Jack pressed on assuming Dewey knew what he was talking about.  ‘It’s somewhere in the nigger district on the South Side.’

     ‘What missing one?’

     ‘The one that disappeared from the stockpile a few years ago.  It’s in Chicago, I know.’

     ‘An A-Bomb disappeared?  How’s that?’

     ‘A patriot named James Burnham published a book in 1954 called ‘The Web Of Subversion’ in which he says that an A-Bomb has been stolen from the stockpile.  He thinks that it’s in private hands somewhere in America.  I’ve got it figured out where.’

     ‘There’s a missing A-Bomb?  Why do you think it’s on the Black South Side?’

     ‘Where else would it be?  Chicago’s the center of the country.’

     Dewey was stopped.

     ‘Well, OK, but why in Darktown?’

     ‘Well, come on.  Where’s the last place in Chicago you would look for it?’

     ‘Uh. I’m not too familiar with Chicago.’

     ‘Well, that’s it.  It’s in the basement of some building right in the heart of Niggerville.’

     ‘In that case you can be sure I’m not going to look for it.’  Dewey said laughing.

     ‘Black Jack’s not afraid.  He goes in there lots.’  Belle reproved.

     ‘Why not?  We’ll need it.’  Black Jack said excitedly thinking that he’d already recruited Dewey.

     ‘Need it for what?’

     ‘I thought you understood.  It’s the magick we need to turn the cross around.  You said it.  First we get the bomb and then we send a note to the President and the Mayor and the Chief of Police telling them that we are holding Chicago as hostage.  Unless all our ransom is met we’ll destroy Chicago.’

     ‘What’s the ransom?’  Dewey asked curiously.

page 1806.

     ‘We want all the malefactors of great wealth and men of evil disposition delivered unto us.  Then we’ll execute them and save the world.  Then the cross will be upright again.’

     Dewey saw that he was in the presence of the ultimate do-gooder.  Was it the boldness of the plan or the absurdity of the premiss that took his breath away?

      ‘Personally I hope the bomb goes off and kills everyone of those of those niggers.’  Suddenly burst from Darlin’ who had been playing quietly with her deck of  ‘funny looking’  Tarot cards.

     ‘I swear I’m going to carry a gun and the next nigger that lays a hand on me is going to get his head blowed off.’

     ‘Amen.’  Dixie Belle intoned.

     ‘Something’s got to be done about that too.’  Added Black Jack David.  ‘Don’t you think so.’  He aggressively asked Dewey.

     Dewey didn’t know what to reply.  The great sweep of Black rebellion was moving across America.  Freedom Riders were active in the South.  Pent up hatreds were erupting in the North and West.  In less than ten years cities from California to New Jersey would go up in flames as Blacks revolted against their situation.  Americans minimized the destruction because it happened here but the hundreds of square miles that were burnt over was topped only by the destruction in bombed over German of World War II.

     True the Blacks fired their own neighborhoods but Dewey would be able to understand that.  After all, if you can’t get away from what is hateful to you it has to be destroyed.  As Dewey knew in his case; to heal oneself psychologically the old self has to be destroyed in order to replace it with the new.  Black frustration, the revolt of the dogs in their kennel, the desire to bit their leash in two, was comprehensible to Dewey.

page 1807.

     The period was one of great transition for Black people as well as America.  If the history of the Blacks can be divided into three periods:  The Slavery Period, the Jim Crow Period and the Self-Awareness Period, then the Blacks were transiting from the Jim Crow Period to that of Self-Awareness.  the transition was fraught with great danger.

     The musical transition was from Rhythm and Blues to Soul music.  (Do you like soul music? No?  Well, then do the Trouser Press, baby.)  In progressing from R&B to Soul music the Blacks acted out the central problem of their existence.  They had a hole in their soul.  Not a criticism, not their fault, just a fact; they had and have a damaged psyche.  It’s bad too.  We always complain about what hurts us the most.  Furthermore the hole can be accurately identified and described.

     The man who put his finger on it was the old vaudevillian by the name of Bert Williams.  Bert performed in the years around the beginning of the twentieth century.  Thus he was the legatee of the Reconstruction Era.  History may be abstract but those who suffer through it have to deal with painful psychological realities.  Life may be a cosmic joke but it is not funny to be the butt of it.

     Bert Williams was a very perceptive guy and an excellent poet in the popular style.  He embodied the Black dilemma in a Coon Tune that is still sung today titled ‘Nobody.’  I will reproduce the lyrics in full in a moment but first let’s discuss the evolution of the Black pysche as evidenced in its musical stages.

page 1808.

     One of the most wonderful descriptions of the development in American of William’s period is the Irishman Mark Sullivan’s truly magnificent six volume social history titled ‘Our Times.’

     Sullivan was an especially acute observer of musical trends.  He says more about Black culture and history in a few pages than most authors get into multi-volumes.  As well as being concise he is perceptive and accurate.

     He was quick to understand that a change in a people’s music represents a change in their psychical attitude; something that Goldwater reactionaries should have picked up on in relation to their White offspring.  Thus one can accturately trace the psychological history of America, also know as the Land of the Thousand Dances, by understanding its popular music.  If you follow the bouncing ball  and don’t get hung up on your preconceptions you won’t have any trouble.

     thus as Black music developed after emancipation a first phase was the era of Darky Songs when Blacks were fresh from the Plantation.  That’s what the White Stephen Foster built his reputation on.  This was followed by the era of Coon Tunes.  There is a different psychology in each.  The permutations of Ragtime and Jazz came through the twenties and thirties followed back out into the Urban Blues, Doo-Wop and the Rhythm and Blues of the forties and fifties.  R&B merged into Sould and Soul disappeared into Rap.  Each musical expression represents a distinct psychological reaction.  Blacks substituted the term Soul for Psyche.

page 1809.






Disco Donn Demands Deliverance


R.E. Prindle

Part II-4

     The Gambler looked over at Donn to see if his story made the impression he wanted.  The story wasn’t bad, it was even entertaining if you weren’t over critical but Donn didn’t believe the Gambler had talked to a live Elvis.  He just shook his head and said:  First that, now this.’

     The Gambler realized his mistake.  He should have known that Donn wouldn’t be like the ignorant buffoons gathered in the jungles under bridges.  Why hadn’t he advanced the story as a theory instead?

     The Gambler cleared his throat.  ‘First what?’ He enquired.

     ‘Aw,’ Donn said, ‘I ran into this crazy guy, shadow boxing his life away, talking about how there’s no difference between Nazi Germany, Russia and here.’

     ‘Oh, you met the Mankato Kid, did you?  He’s near?  Hmm, yes, well, I taught him everything he knows you know.  Did he go on about Holly Grove, Ludlow?  Yes.  When he first met me he didn’t have a rationale, a story; he was just prancing around the edge trying to keep from falling in.  I saved him; kept him from losing it completely.

     His is truly a tragic life.  he is an innocent decent guy who was victimized by a whole town.  He was pursued by the elite while the rest of the town turned their backs on him.

     Like most people rather than retaliating on his enemies he turned their venom on himself, internalized it, made himself the guilty party, so to speak.  Hence you see him circling the town pounding away at the air, punching out his internalized enemies; hysterically trying to punch his way out of the bag he’s in.

page 151.

     I researched the situation.  What he should have done, I think it’s too late now, was either kill one of them or kill a child or grandchild or two.  Thus the vengeance would have relieved the strain while teaching his enemies the lesson they needed to be taught.’

     ‘Yeah, but who wants to go to jail for the rest of their lives?’

     ‘My god, man, don’t be so crude.  We aren’t talking the insanity of Richard Speck or Charlie Whitman, we’re talking the same kind of discretion the Kid’s enemies used when they killed his father.  The killings would appear accidental of course, goes without saying.  That’s the way it’s done in polite society.  Elvis should have had a couple of them offed too.  He was big enough to get away with it.  Would have made him feel better and they would have made room for him.  That’s the only thing that sort of people respect.’

     The Gambler looked over at Donn’s feet.  ‘Say, those are very nice shoes.   Ferragamos?’

     ‘Yes. Yes, they are.’

     ‘Pretty fancy footwear for a knight of the road.  Hey?’

     ‘I like nice things.’  They both chuckled appreciatively.

     ‘Yes.’ Said the Gambler who believed he hadn’t yet impressed Donn with his verbal wizardry.  The night was still young in his eyes and he could talk forever.  He had entertained the homeless for seven or eight hours at a stretch.  He eyed Donn up and down, then shrewdly hit a topic that made Donn’s eyes light up.

     The Gambler was a learned man.  He had actually spent more time in the stacks of America’s best libraries than- one hesitates to say any- most professors.  He studied with system.  He actually had written several hundred pages of universal history which he had secreted in sheaves among the hidden recesses of the various libraries.  He was a knowledgeable man.  What he is about to tell Donn was factually true, whether one chooses to accept his interpretation of the facts is one’s own business.

     ‘History moves along at a very rapid pace.  Too rapid for we mere men to grasp its significance as it happens.  There are too many interested parties to obscure the facts, turn them to their own benefit.  Everyone want to rearrange the facts, change them to suit their own needs and prejudices.  They want to revise history to reflect their own fantasies.  They want to conceal their own criminal deeds while exhibiting those of others.

     Thus all ideologues become obstructionists to the true understanding of reality.  This is no more evident than in the study of the history of Adolf Hitler.’

     The Gambler noted that Donn’s eyes lit up at the mention of Hitler.  He’d struck paydirt.  The Gambler warmed to his subject.

     ‘That Hitler was one of the most destructive conquerors- perhaps the most, but that’s a qualitative judgment- in History needs no affirmation.  The facts speak for themselves, as they usually do.  But let us consider the recieved opinion that Hitler was an aberration, that somehow he stands outside the worst standards of human conduct.  I  tell you frankly, Donn that relegating him to that role places an obstacle in the path of comprehending history that is insurmountable.  My writings are undertaken to demonstrate that not only is Hitler in the tradition of great conquerors, albeit, perhaps, the most destructive, but that his behavior is an aspect of the personality of each and everyone of us.  Yes, there is no escaping psychology.  Hitler did nothing that any of us wouldn’t do if we thought we had the ability to escape retribution.

page 153. 

 Now, this holds for all peoples.  There are no innocents.  Freud tells the story of Heine who painted this idyllic picture of what would satisfy him and at the end desired his enemies to be hanging from trees in front 0f him.  I am happy to forgive my enemies, Heine said with Freud quoting approvingly, but only after they have been hanged.  There you see, the main problem to understanding Hitler and the whole period is, of course, the Jews.  As unpleasant a fact as it may be they are omnipresent throughout European history.  In many ways their virtual annihilation destroyed four thousand years of hopes and dreams.  I think, although I can’t prove it that it shook their hopes of Messianic redemption to the ground.  Quite clearly their God tested them too severely for no apparent purpose.  The net result of the period seems to be that the Euroamericans have brought them under control again as before emancipation.  The disciplining that the Jews escaped by the Emancipation of the French Revolution and which resulted in the two Great Wars seems to have been reimposed or is being reimposed.  The expropriation of the Rothschilds by the French was a significant act.

    In any event, as what is actually a rear guard action, the Jews are doing their uttermost to prevent an objective examination of the period.  Their 614th commandment is not to allow Hitler posthumous victory.  On the one hand they deny their own implication while denouncing Nazis to the uttermost.

page 154.

     I mention the Jews, Donn, because History, Western History, cannot be understood without understanding their role in it.  To discuss the Jewish role objectively is to, not only leave oneself open to charges of anti-Semitism, but inescapably to be so.  The truth is anti-Semitic.  I am no an anti-Semite, which is different from anti-Semitism.  To the victor belongs the spoils. But that inevitably means that the losers are despoiled.  Unfortunately for the Jews their historical role has been that of the losers.  A habit of four thousand years is unlikely to be broken soon.

      But, back to my point.  How were Hitler’s actions aberrant?  Man has always destroyed what was in his way.  There are indications that when primitive man disputed a plain with herbivores he merely stampeded them over cliffs to get rid of them.  I am not such a sentimentalist that I make a great distinction between herbivores and homo sapiens.  Specially, it is almost certain that Cro-Magnon man exterminated the Neanderthals.  There are sentimentalists that say that the two species were assimilated but in the light of the activities of historical man this seems highly improbable to me.

     There is a great deal of wisdom in the saying:  The child is father to the man.  So, certainly Hitler’s actions are in accord with his primitive ancestors.

     Out of a wealth of examples you do understand that I must necessarily be selective.  After all as Gibbons put it, history is little more than a recitation of the crimes and follies of mankind.  Who am I to dispute with the master?

     While the Bible was at one time universally believed to be true, modern scholarship casts doubt on the accuracy of the whole Bible.  I myself believe it to be a work of fiction, and not expecially good fiction, which manipulates  what might be facts into a coherent whole serving the needs of the Jewish people.  None of it is to be believed as history.  Nevertheless if fiction is to be believable it must be based on probable occurrences, or even actual occurrences conveniently arranged.

     Thus when the Jews state that when they invaded Canaan they exterminated man, woman and child of the inhabitants of numerous cities to make lebensraum for themselves the story is plausible.  So, the ‘inventors of morality’ are no different than the rest of mankind.  One may also include these murders under the heading of genocide.  Not only is mass murder common but so is genocide.  What could be more natural?

     In addition to the race wars the extermination of peoples can be extended to ideological differences.  As chance would have it the first great ideological war involves the Jews.  As a matter of fact the Jews are unavoidably the ferment of Western History in any age or place.  It is just so.  It can’t be denied.  They must needs be discussed.  The remarkable thing is that entire volumes of history are written without even mentioning Jewish involvement except perhaps a passage lamenting an inexplicable anti-Semistism.  A recent history of Germany by Hajo Holborn scarcely mentions the Jews.  Incredible, what?

     While Judaism has always been an ideology it doesn’t appear to have taken definite shape as such until confronted by the Hellenic ideology fostered by the conquests of Alexander.  While the rest of the world embraced Hellenism, the Jews rejected it.

page 156.

     To be sure a portion of the nation was attracted to Hellenism but this merely set in motion the crisis of the ancient world.  The Jewish Hellenists being the weaker party called their Hellenistic masters to their aid. 

     The conservative element resisted the imperial government bringing on the War of the Maccabees which resulted in the independence of Israel against the Hellenic Empires.  Now, Donn, much of this interpretation is disputed so if you have any objections, just say so. 

     The Jews, at this point, must have believed that as they were not to be allowed their ideology undisturbed that it was incumbent on them to conquer.  Their manpower was insufficient for this so they had to recruit more.  As the wish is father to the deed they made war on their southern neighbors, the Idumaeans.  Having conquered them they forcefully circumcised their little wee-wees, so the story goes.  This pretty effectively made the Idumaeans Jews albeit, sullen Jews.

     But this was a pretty ineffective way of adding to the population and I’m sure the backlash was more than they were prepared for.  After all, Roman law classed circumcision with emasculation and forbade both.

     The Jews then embarked on a course which they had never employed before and have never employed since.  They set about a serious course of proselytization or converting non-Jews to Judaism.  Now, Donn, we’re getting into areas that you have to study hard to get at the facts.  Much of this information while harmless in itself, is willfully concealed by society.  As a young history student we were all warned away from studying it.  We were told, in so many words, that we would be dropped if we pursued the topic.

page 157.

     The Jews were remarkably successful.  By  the time of Augustus, which coincides with the birth of Jesus, which may or may not be a coincidence, they were firmly established throughout the Empire.  They were making converts, which involved circumcision, at a quick step pace.  Plus their ideology was strange enough to enlist sympathizers who stood between Judaism and Paganism called ‘God-fearers.’

     Jerusalem served as a counter capitol to Rome as Judaism formed an actual empire within the Empire.  Every professing Jew was required to send a half shekel to Jerusalem once a year.  If they all complied, and there were millions in the Roman Empire then millions of shekels went to Jerusalem every year.  Thus, one has an interesting historical problem which no one has ever addressed.  What happened to those millions per year?  What were they used for?  Fomenting sedition perhaps?

     The two ideologies were locked in mortal combat.  Now this was also a time of extreme Gnostic religious fermentation.  Impossible Gnostic beliefs rose to the pinnacle of impossibility.  It is not my purpose to go into these beliefs but suffice it to say they all found expression in the person of Jesus the Christ.  Now, while the Jews of the empire sent their half shekel tax to Jerusalem they refused to pay the Emperor his taxes.  The story becomes more familiar.  In the Jewish mind they were obligated only to God, not to the Empire.  I think you can see the emerging problem.

     Jesus tried to cut this Gordian knot by saying:  Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.  In other words he was trying to effect a compromise, separating the spiritual kingdom from the temporal kingdom.  There would still be an empire within the Empire but one would be spiritual and not in conflict with the temporal.  Peacemakers were as little thought of then as they are today.  The Nazz was crucified.  All that remained was for the war to break out.  Which of course, it did.

     The Jews fully expected all Jews throughout the Empire, interestingly enough they called it the Evil Empire, to rise up and slaughter the non-Jews.  Their goal was simply to exterminate all the non-Jews.  Do you imagine that the program has been changed?  And Hitler is thought to have been an evil man.  Think of it!  The Jews were certainly less than twenty percent of the population but they were going to exterminate the rest.

     While there was Jewish unrest throughout the Empire the actual war was confined to Palestine.  In 70 AD Jerusalem was conquered and razed.  But the Millennial frenzy was on the Jews.  They wouldn’t give up.

     The Dead Sea Scrolls uncovered a document called the War Between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.  Some say it is allegorical but the real war closely followed the blueprint the document offered.  The Jews were, of course, the Sons of Light.  The war was to begin in the South and then spread North.

     In the sixty-five years following 70 AD that is exactly the course of the actual war except that the war didn’t progress too far North.  In 116-18 the Jews of Africa- Cyrene, Egypt and Cypress attempted to exterminate their neighbors.  The war was fanatical but they were suppressed only to flare up again in the Bar Kokhba rebellion which ended in the virtual extermination of the Jews.  The exasperated Romans could take no more.

page 159.

     Thus Hitler was prefigured in this, actually, gigantic struggle for supremacy.

     When the Saxons invaded Britain they carried on a war of extermination against the Britons.  They killed every man, woman and child that fell into their hands.  The Britons themselves fleeing to Armorica  or what has become known as Brittany in France, in their turn, in one district, they killed all the men of the conquered people.  Now, get this, so that the women, who were spared, couldn’t corrupt the British language, they cut their tongues out.

     My god, Donn.  It must be clear what Man is.  Show me how Hitler violated the parameters of human behavior.

     Tamerlane, or Timur, roamed through Asia decapitating the men, women and children of towns of one hundred thousand.  He piled their skulls in huge pyramids which can still be seen.

     Genghis Khan, who we respect because he’s not White, caused the destruction of millions and millions.  He depopulated huge areas.  He transported, uprooted in modern terminology, large populations.  I mean, hell, Genghis served as a role model for Hitler.  If Genghis is a hero why is Hitler a villain?  But, you see how the human mind works.  Favorites can do as they please.

     Oh yes, I know, well, you will say he employed slave labor, put people on starvation diets and worked them to death.  Quite right.  Now, Donn, don’t think I’m apologizing for Hitler because I’m not.  But things have to be put into perspective.  One cannot excuse in these what one condemns in those.

page 160.

     The very same thing happened right here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.  Those of us who have never been able to deal with the state of affairs as they exist have always been out here on the road.  After the War Between The States of hateful memory, when the railroads were pushing West, spreading South and North, tens of thousands of us roamed ceaselessly back and forth, up and down.  They called us hoboes and bums then, now they call us the homeless.

     But those that didn’t have what it takes for the carefree life joined the ranks of labor.  That is to say, unskilled labor, the lumpenproletariat.  Those who have what it takes to accommodate themselves to Leviathan become skilled laborers or white collar workers.  By their very inexplicable natures these have always done well no matter how much they’re paid.  We carefree ones hate them to the bone.

     These groups combining with those restless souls who are always trying to accumulate pelf at the expense of their fellow man accepted the prevailing view of history that the poor, meaning in this case unskilled labor should always have their faces ground in the mud.  This notion is Biblical and therefore Jewish.  The basic premise received tremendous support from ‘science’ in the nineteenth century by the works of Malthus and Darwin.  The ‘scientific’ view being that a surfeit of laborers drove down the cost of labor.  The thought being that as there were more mouths to feed then nature could provide for, the less there was to go around, then the less people would accept for a hard day’s work.  Now you see why intelligent men took to the road.  There is always plenty out here.  All you have to do is ask for it.

page 161.

     As these were the poor they were considered to have no rights.  They could be treated as one wished.  Now between the War Between the States and Woodrow Wilson, Men of Property were a law unto themselves.  As J.P. Morgan said to the President of the United States:  Why didn’t you send your man to my man to talk it over.  The magnates made the rules.

     At the close of the War the great period of immigration began.  It is probable that the movement was encouraged by the Magnates to drive down the price of wages in accordance with Malthus’ law.  If not, they skillfully employed the precepts.

     Work forces were organized to be comprised of as many different languages as possible.  Thus any segment of the work force could communicate only with its fellow nationals.  They were easily divided and controlled.  Then, as in the great steel mills, men were worked twelve to fifteen hours a day seven days a week for starvation wages.  Safety precautions were not even considered.

     When men were injured or broke down under the strain or grew too  old- the last of which as you may imagine happened early in life- they were simply discarded.  Left to die.

     If they resisted they were merely gunned down by the private armies of the Magnates.  The armies went under the name of Pinkertons or some such.

page 162.

     The poor were expected to understand and keep their place.  Nor were they allowed to withdraw their labor.  When that happened as at Holly Grove and Ludlow they were turned out of the company housing which they occupied at sufferance and high rents.  Having moved into tents, the Magnates called in government troops to machine gun men, women and children from armored trains.  At Ludlow where they had dug pits within the tents to avoid the bullets they were fire bombed and burned to death.  Women and children.

     It should be borne in mind that the Magnates who ordered these deeds were both Jews and Gentiles, not only Gentiles as is often pictured.  The two nations acted as one.  Brothers of the dollar.  Now you may say that for some reason the slave laborers of Hitler are different from American slave laborers.  If so the difference is so problematical that I don’t care to argue it.

     The whole system ws changed by one courageious man.  For his class betrayal he has been defamed ever since even though more worthy than any of them.

    But first, here’s an interesting detail.  The police of New York City were using dental drills to extract confessions long before the Nazis did.  True.  Think about that.

     Back to my story.  Now, just as the savagery toward unskilled labor was reaching its peak in 1916-17, just after Holly Grove and Ludlow, Henry Ford had made a success of the Tin Lizzie.  Single handedly and with no help from the financial community of Wall Street, both straight or Jewish, Ford had built a billion dollar corporation.

page 163.

     Then in 1915, as soon as he was able, amidst the horrors of Holly Grove and Ludlow he chose to double the wages of his unskilled laborers.  He adopted a decent attitude toward workers in his plants.  In one fell swoop he disproved the existing theories about labor.  He overturned the rules.  He was never forgiven for this.  Both Jews and straights piled on engaging him in lawsuits, sabotaging his efforts, defaming him and tormenting him in general.  They didn’t break him but he died in very bad odor.

     So, you see, Hitler was no break with accepted practices.  His crime was merely a matter of degree or style rather than substance.  He didn’t disguise his intentions behind hypocrisy.’

     Donn had fallen asleep by this time.  The Gambler noted but as he was hot in the pursuit of his ideas he continued on, talking to himself in the dead of night.

     ‘Even in the context of Hitler’s times there was absolutely nothing extreme in his actions.  It is a well known fact that Hitler patterned his whole program on the Judeo-Communist pattern.

     As Judaism is the pattern of all Semitisms so Communism and Nazism were cut to measure from that pattern.  The Jews, of course, deny anything but incidental relationship to the Bolshevik Revolution whereas as the most casual examination of the facts will show, they were its backbone.  Certainly in the early days before Stalin’s counterrevolution and subsequent purges.

     Nor was the threat confined to Russia.  After the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia, Communist activists flowed back through Central Europe.  The emissaries were almost entirely Jewish.  I’m sure this fact can be explained in any one of a number of ways but the fact remains.

page 164.

     The so-called German Revolution of 1918 which undermined the German will to persist- the famous stab in the back- was engineered by those Jews as were the various power seizures or attempted seizures, in Berlin, Bavaria, the Ruhr and other places.  This is an uncontestable fact, undeniable.

     Then a particularly savage Jew- Bela Kun- seized power in Hungary.  If his deeds there were widely known all sympathy for the Jews would evaporate.  The whole story has been suppressed worldwide.  The same as saying the holocaust never happened.  Even I have not been able to find an adequate history- in English of course.  The central horrific fact seems to be that Kun crucified thousands of Christians, one on each telephone pole for miles and miles.  Telephone poles form a cross, you see.

     The same was done in Russia where God knows how many millions of people were slaughtered; we won’t even discuss the willful starvation of millions in the Ukraine.

     Now, at this time the Jews were seeking a homeland.  Some were plumping for Palestine, some for another place wherever it could be found.  Taking advantage of the disorder in Russia the international Jewish community decided to appropriate the Crimea in the South of Russia.  Bela Kun who had meanwhile been driven out of Hungary was sent down from Moscow to depopulate the Crimea for Jewish occupation.  Yes, that’s right, he was sent to exterminate the inhabitants.  Now, this was done in conjuction with world Jewry; specifically by a couple of organziations you’ve never heard of, nor have many others, called the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American Jewish Committee under the overseership of Jacob Schiff.

page 165.

     Kun eliminated several hundred thousand Russians before being called back to Moscow.  His method was simply to take his victims out to sea, tie rocks around their ankles and chuck them overboard.  Thus one may say this was the will of the Jewish people, dissenters aside.

     Even though these facts have been suppressed you may be sure that Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Roumanians and whatever are well aware of them.   Their well publicized ‘anti-Semitism’ beween the wars was based as much on fear as any prejudice.

     It is the custom to discredit anything that Hitler said.  But the nationalist reaction of the Freicorps in Germany following the Great War was a desperate fight for survival.  When Hitler said of the struggle ‘We know that if we fail our heads will roll in the sand.’  he was not exaggerating.

     One points the finger of horror at Hitler’s slaughter, quite justifiably so, but had the Bosheviks won in Germany six million or more German nationalists would have been slaughtered.  So you see it’s really six of one or a half dozen of the other.

     I mean, really Donn, if boys will be boys what is one to do?  I have no idea.  Separate them and tell them to behave, I suppose.

page 166.

     My point is simply that Hitler, bad as he was, was no worse than any of the others on the playing field.  There is no aberration.  There is no discontinuity of history.  Certainly mankind has every reason to be ashamed, for after all, God knows how many millions of years of development man has undergone and he is no better now than his earliest ancestors.  We’ve just got better weapons.  What Hitler did is embedded in the subconscious of each and every one of us.  Send not for whom the bell tolls…you know.  That’s the lesson to be learned here, Jews and Nazis to the side.’

     The Roving Gambler ended with a thump well satisfied with himself.  He looked over at Donn sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.  He looked at the Ferragamos on Donn’s feet.  They were way too small for the Gambler but they were such nice looking shoes.

     The Gambler picked up his rucksack, going over to Donn to remove his shoes.  Then with sure skill he carefully rolled Donn about until he got Donn’s pants undone.  Easing them down the Gambler sodomized Donn.  He pulled Donn’s pants back up without fastening them.  Then rucksack on back, Donn’s shoes in hand he casually strolled out of the ravine.

     ‘Goodbye, Donn.’  He sneered.  ‘I’ll see you again up on the nine thousand foot level of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.’

      The fire was glowing ashes as the sun came up like nutty putty across the Mississippi in the East.  It had risen fairly high before the light penetrated Donn’s exhausted sleep.  He became conscious of the light penetrating his eyelids but the effort of opening them was too great.  He heaved two great longdrawn breaths and issued a long loud groan.  Slowly he became conscious of his arms and legs.  He lay long feeling the nervous connections before his limbs seemed to join his body.

page 167.

     His eyes popped open.  Without moving his head his eyes searched down his body examining his right arm and leg but still not moving them.  Suddenly the reality of his existence crashed through his consciousness.  He groaned again wishing he had never awakened.  But he had, he was alive, he couldn’t die.

     The experience at the dumpster the previous night seemed an eon away.  It might just as well have been in another lifetime.  He remembered his old self slithering off his arms.  He remembered his form cracking away to reveal a smaller self.  He summoned all his willpower to put back together a self with which to face the world.

     Sensation began to return to him and he realized that his half opened mouth was kissing the dirt.  He groaned again turning with a great effort onto his back.  The freshness of the weather around his crotch made him look down where he found to his amazement that his pants were wide open.  Mystified and uncomprehending he zipped them up.  This exertion reactivated his energy.  He rose to his feet looking around.  Then slowly a vague memory, as from a dream, of the Roving Gambler returned to him like the steady drone of the Gambler’s voice.  He took a couple steps toward the remains of the fire.  He raised his foot in surprised pain as he stepped on a sharp twig.  Looking down he found to his amazement that he had no shoes.  He stood looking down at this feet stupified.  Where in the hell could his shoes be?

page 169.

     Looking around he saw them nowhere.  His life collapsed around him again.  Unable to endure the hammering anymore Disco Donn Contrales sank to the ground, leaned forward head between his knees and sobbed uncontrollably.

     ‘Why me?

      What did I do?

      What did I do?

      What did I do?’

     The harsh mistreatment of Maggie Spingold was taking effect.  Donn was transferring the guilt of the world onto himself.  The next step would be to accept the guilt.  He would feel the need to expiate his ‘sin.’  But not yet.

     Donn prayed to die but since his prayer was not answered he began to think about what to do next.  There was nothing for it but to walk out.  Unlike the Gambler who had walked out of the ravine Donn climbed up the opposite side of the hole he had fallen into.

     He had an uncomfortable climb out of the ravine.  The pricks from the sticks and stones on his feet were bad enough but the unfamiliar feel of earth crumbling beneath his toes and molding under his feet disturbed him.  Then too the ground was cold and wet from the heavy dew of the night.  He had spied the way back over the railroad tracks to the highway over a half mile distant but the walk through the woods was too daunting for him.

     Then as he looked to his right he saw a man standing looking through binoculars- a bird watcher.  He was six-four but he had on a nice pair of ox blood loafers.  Looking down Donn saw a rock that tapered to a blunt end about the size of a gun barrel.  Donn picked it up, carefully sneaking up behind the bird watcher.  Donn jammed the blunt end of the rock hard into the bird watcher’s lower spine.  It hurt.

     ‘Don’t turn around.’  Donn ordered.  ‘Your life or your shoes.’

     ‘What?’  Said the birdwatcher in amazement.

     ‘Your shoes or your life.  Don’t give me any backtalk.  Just step out them, keep walking and don’t look back or you’re a dead man.’

     ‘Hey, heck yeah man, sure, you can have them.  Don’t kill my for my shoes.  They’re yours.’  The birdwatcher said kicking off his shoes, limping away as rapidly as possible.

     Donn, without a thought at the ludicrousness of the situation stepped into the shoes and tramped off to the highway in relative comfort.

     The birdwatcher wore size thirteens while Donn wore nines.  The sight was like a little boy walking in his father’s shoes.  Donn threw a shoe a couple times on the way back to the highway otherwise they did their job.

     Back on the side of the road Donn stuck his thumb out.  Within fifteen minutes a big Cadillac Eldorado hove into view, stopping just in front of him.  Donn clumped hurriedly up, pulled the big front door open and slid into the luxurious leather seating.

     The Cadillac made quite a contrast to Donn who by now was very scruffy with a three day growth, untrimmed mustache overgrowing his upper lip, blond hair uncut and unkempt, his suit and shirt actually dirty.

page 170.

     The driver was driving barefoot, had the heat on  to warm his feet.  The heat quickly warmed Donn’s clothes.

     The driver sniffed the air:  ‘Do I smell garbage?’  He asked pointedly.

     Now Donn ashamedly realized the odor of the dumpster still clung to him.  He cleared his throat to formulate an anwer making the mistake as he did so of swinging his right leg across his left in the spacious front seat.

     The driver immediately slammed on the brakes skidding across the highway and back again onto the shoulder.

    ‘Hey, those are my shoes!’ He bellowed as the out of control car skidded to a stop.  He had Donn’s door open pushing him out headfirst as he stripped Donn of the shoes.

     ‘You’re just damn lucky I don’t kill you.’  He shouted as he accelerated back up the highway leaving Donn sprawled by the side of the road.

     ‘Oh, Jesus.  When will this ever end?’  Donn said out loud as he sat disconsolately by the side of the road.  He just sort of blacked out.

     The next two or three weeks were only blurry streaks in the movie of Donn’s life.  His mind broke down, failing to record impressions as he found his way across Minnesota and Wisconsin into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

     Everywhere it seemed as though people knew he was coming.  He seemed to be recognized by total strangers.  To the observor this might have seemed to be paranoia on Donn’s part but indeed he was recognized by total strangers; Maggie had faxed his picture to the Neworks all the way down the line.  Thus Donn was rudely roasted and shoved on down the highway.  He never knew where he got the white Adidas tennis shoes he was wearing as he neared the top of the world on the spectacularly beautiful blue shores of Lake Superior at Sault Ste. Marie.

page 171.

     In the subliminal workings of Donn’s mind he had been unconsciously directing his steps hither since St. Louis.  He perceived the Locks as being so far out of the way that he would be able to find refuge and be ignored.  But he was mistaken.  It seemed that his thoughts had been anticipated by the residents.  In addition Donn’s bedraggled dirty unkempt appearance now  confirmed Maggie’s faxes.  The people seemed to form a solid wall that shunted him back toward the South.  Whatever plan he had had was now destroyed.  His goal had been reached and now as he turned to cross the peninsula toward the Straits of Mackinac and the Grand Traverse he was wandering aimlessly.  He began to think seriously of swallowing his pride and returning to his father’s house and Waco.

     About midway across the Peninsula the disaster of his life again overcame him.  It was a day of light traffic.  No cars came by.  The sun shone down brightly but with seemingly little heat.  The paradox registered strongly in his mind.  Now Donn felt alone and abandoned by the whole world.  Even Helios seemed to deny him his warmth.  He fell down on the shoulder of the road on his back arms outstretched, sobbing.

page 172.

     By coincidence this was the exact spot at which Dewey Trueman, then known as Far Gresham, left the highway to disappear into the forest to the West.  Now Donn’s will gave out.  He was a beaten man.  As much as he hated it he decided to go back to his Daddy and Waco.  He thought that in the bosom of his family he would find surcease.  There was still a distance to go before he fit bottom.

     He began to move with some purpose although now the ravages of his situation were clearly impressed on his face and posture.  Even without Maggie’s interference he now projected a repellent persona.  His looks were still there but beclouded by a black darkened mental attitude.  Despair and loathing advanced before his visage.  Aware that he would be rebuffed he was aggressively defiant and defensive in manner.  Aware of who he had been, the memory haunted him.

     Having bummed enough for a dinner he washed in a gas station in Grand Traverse and entered the restaurant at which Angeline Gower still worked after all these years.  When Trueman as Gresham had appeared here in the same, actually worse, condition nearly thirty years before the good hearted Angeline had taken him in and saved his life.  Dewey had recovered his equilibrium then walked out on her.  Embittered she had rejected all other men.

     But there was something about Donn that kindled thoughts of Dewey as she silently watched that scruffy replica of a human being eat.  Funny, he could have told her where Dewey was which she longed to know.  But had she deigned to strike up a conversation with Donn the Bum how could she have ever asked the right question.  How could he in his misery have known how to answer.  How many times do we have our heart’s desire within our grasp without knowing it.

page 173.

     Donn’s steps were now directed somewhat aimlessly, toward Texas.  He was also approaching the nadir of his virtuoso performance in his facet of Donn the Bum.  Donn wished he could have skipped these scenes in the movie of his life.  As bad as his appearance was it failed to match the deterioration of his mind.  Donn’s mind just came and went.  Sometimes he was aware of what he was doing sometimes he wasn’t.  As chance directed him his steps led him over nearly the identical route followed by Dewey Trueman when he was exiled from the Valley; down through Midland into the Saginaw Valley and into Valley City itself.

     On his progressing Thelema into town he had excellent success panhandling.  At the big intersection of Thelema, Main and Melmoth hunger over took him.  As it was now dinner time his mind slipped into the glories of yesterday.  He momentarily forgot his deplorable condition and entered a tavern and eatery called the Royal Palms.  The facade was not overly imposing.  Donn pushed open the door and stepped inside.

    The place was done up in that spartan Michigan style.  Wood floors, plain tables, checkered tablecloths, when there were any, and chairs.  The dining area was through an arch to the left, a long bar ran down the right.  The Royal Palms was scarcely presentable.  Donn even less so.

     The bartender took one look at Donn, leaned out over the bar to indicate the back door to him, and ordered him out.  As though in a dream Donn walked the length of the bar pausing under the EXIT sign for a lingering look at the empty restaurant which was indeed in the twilight of its existence.

page 174.

     He pushed open the door to step out amongst the garbage cans.  He looked at them absent mindedly for a few moments then, without thinking began picking among the remains to see if there was anything good to eat.  He was delighted to find a T-bone with a large piece of meat attached.

     His delight was abruptly destroyed by laughter and catcalls.  Donn looked over to see several young men standing by their cars.  They jeered at him becoming abusive and threatening.  Donn was jerked from his reverie.  Looking up at his detractors Donn blushed red to his very bones.

     In better days Donn could have handled the whole bunch easily but in his present defeated state of mind he cast them a furtive glance and shambled hastily down the street before anything could develop.

     He was unaware of where he was but fortune led him out of town.  By luck he followed Melmoth into Nelsonia right on Wigwam and out into central Michigan.

     Donn’s crumbling pride was very severely crushed by his ejection from the Royal Palms.  The place was one he would never have considered entering in palmier days except as a lark.  His path led out across Western Michigan through Lansing past Benton Harbor and St. Joe down to Gary.

     By now Donn was half crazed, turned inward, fearful, scarce able to go on yet aware of the terrifying length of the final stagger down to Texas.  Once again fortune favored him with a piece of luck.

page 175.

     He put out his hand to John Fadinkle:  ‘Say buddy, give a dime to a guy who’s down and out!’

     With such an approach Donn was no threat to the Roving Gambler’s three day record.  Donn’s vision of panhandling was from movies of the thirties.  Bums no longer asked for dime nowadays.   The most audacious didn’t even ask for spare change.  They demanded dollars, fives and tens at least.  The most bold and arrogant would demand twenty or even more.  Shoot, when the world owes you a living who can settle for dimes.

     Fadinkle was twenty-eight, one of those lean over bearing men.  He was a self-righteous Christian who took his charity seriously.  It allowed him superiority over his fellow men.  While earning a living as a bookkeeper at the mills he gloried in doing men such as Donn spectacular acts of charity.  He didn’t get too  many opportunites so he seized this one.

     ‘You want a dime, hey?’  Fadinkle bellowed to watch Donn grovel.

     ‘I could use it.’  Donn winced under the additional humiliation.  Had he seen the ludicrousness of asking for a dime he would have laughed out loud at himself.

     ‘What are you going to do with a dime, young man?’  Fadinkle said although obviously younger than Donn.

     Donn made some helpless gesture then turned to walk away.  Fadinkle grabbed his arm pulling him back.

page 176.

     ‘Just a second, young man.  It just so happens I’m a Christian.  I may be able to help a fellow man more than he anticipated, no matter how low he’s sunk.  What do you want the dime for?’  He demanded stentorously again, placing a hand on left hip and extending his right leg.

     Donn stood looking at this Ancient Mariner for a moment.  His intuition was sound.  He unburdened himself to Fadinkle.

     ‘Trying to get home to Texas, eh?  Well, I hope you’ve learned your lesson, son.  At least this time you have applied for help and comfort to the right disciple of Jesus.’

     Donn winced at the words ‘help and comfort’ fearing the worst.

     ‘I’m going to take you down to the bus station, son, and buy you a ticket to wherever in Texas you want to go.  And I hope you find Jesus and mend your ways.’

     And he did take Donn to the bus station, bought him a ticket to Waco, bought his dinner while they waited for the bus into Chicago and put a twenty dollar bill in his hand for the trip.

     Donn was too weary to be overjoyed.  Fadinkle wasn’t.  He exulted in his acts of Christian charity.  His self-satisfaction was vulgar.  He boasted of the deed vaingloriously for months.  Yet there was no denying that his gratuity was real and this his act momentarily lifted the burden of cares from a fellow man’s shoulders.

     Donn found a seat on the bus.  He was so exhausted he slept through the bus change in Chicago unaware that he had made it.  He slept fitfully all the way through St. Louis.  He became conscious again just ouside of Joplin.

page 177.


Somebody Shoot Out The Jukebox

I don’t want you under my roof

with your eighty-six proof

Watered down till it tastes like tea;

If you’re going to pull my string

Make it the real thing

for me.

-Chip Taylor

     Donn had been sleeping fitfully all the way from Gary.  He didn’t want to wake up.  He didn’t want to open his eyes until the bus pulled into Waco where, he hoped, he would open his eyes on a new world where the horror would disappear.  But just South of Joplin he became aware of an oppressive weight pressing him into the side of the bus.  As consciousness forced itself upon him the hot smell of exhaled Southern Comfort wafted up his nostrils.  Cautiously he flickered his left eye open angling his pupil to look over his left shoulder.  He found himself looking into a big fat beefy face gazing at him intently.

     ‘Oh, you’re awake.’  Screamin’ Big Daddy Gargantua said.

     ‘Get off me.’   Donn demanded.

     ‘You looked like you were dead to the world.’

page 178.

     ‘Get off.’  Donn insisted shoving futily against the huge three hundred eighty pound bulk of Screamin’ Big Daddy.

     ‘Back off.’

     For some reason the term ‘back off’ registered with Big Daddy whereas ‘get off’ hadn’t.  Perhaps because ‘get off’ had the drug connotation of getting high.  Big Daddy eased over but he was so huge that he overflowed into Donn’s seat leaving little room for Donn.  Donn cast his eyes around looking for another seat but to his consternation he found the bus full.

     ‘Hi, I’m Screamin’ Big Daddy Gargantua, leader of the band.’

     ‘What band?’

     ‘I’m the leader of the Bull Lee Band.  Rockin’ mother-fuckin’ roll.  We’re the best.  On our way to Big D to fill a gig.  We’re hot, in demand, wanted, live and how.’

     The music industry is not noted for its delicacy of language.  If fact a lack of coarseness is punished by ostracism.  Big Daddy’s speech will be severely edited but so the reader will understand the reaction of the other passengers here is a brief sample of Big Daddy’s actual discourse.

     ‘I fuckin’ got on this shit-eating bus in fuckin’ Joplin.  The other fuckin’ guys are going by fuckin’ micro fuckin’ bus but their wasn’t fuckin’ room in the fuckin’ thing for me.  Fuck me, huh?’

     Big Daddy had a high piercing voice propelled by a massive diaphragm which as the Bull Lee’s lead singer he knew how to use.  The passengers soon called the driver’s attention to Big Daddy but as he was a huge 6’3″, 380 the driver was reluctant to antagonize him.  With good reason, Big Daddy went from smiles to rage in less than a twinkle.

page 179.

     ‘Donn said:  ‘Your name’s not really Screamin’ Big Daddy Gargantua.  No one’s is.’

     ‘No, it’s not, Donn.  Big Daddy is a stage name like Wolfman Jack.  Clap for the Wolfman, hey , buddy?  What a guy.  Listened to him for years up in Charlevoix and down in Detroit.  Always wanted to be just like him.  That’s why I chose Big Daddy.  The Screamin’ is a tribute to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.  You can see where Gargantua came from.  Ha ha.  No, my real name’s Robert Cunningham.  But can you see me as Little Bobby Cunningham?  I can’t.’

     Big Daddy took his arm from under his coat propping his other huge arm against the back of the seat in front of him to conceal the pint of Southern Comfort from which he was swigging from the driver.

     ‘Want some?  Don’t let the driver catch you or he’ll throw you off.  They’re really strict on it, besides we’re probably in a dry county.  You never can tell down here.  Screwy people.’

     Big Daddy was not only drinking but he was high on marijuana, racing along on amphetamines and God only knows what else.  Big Daddy was one of those with a fabulous capacity for drugs and alcohol.  He pushed his body unmercifully.  He would be dead in five years.  Heart.

     Big Daddy was representative of the end product of American civilization.  We are all told we are responsible for our lives.  We make the decisions that determine what happens to us.  On one level, of course, this is true.  At the same time none of us are responsible for our psychology.  We all have to respond to serious challenges before we have either the intellectual or moral capacity to make wise decisions.  Most of life is shucking off the bad habits foisted on us both by acquaintance and parents and most importantly the reconcilement of what C.G. Jung called the collective unconscious to reality; or else we succumb to them.

page 180.

     For the mind of Big Daddy and his Vague Generation was filled with specious received opinion that controlled his and their conscious behavior and against which they were unsuccessfully rebelling.  As the weight of society opposing them was too great the rebellion was repressed only to exhibit itself in several forms of bizarre behavior which was inexplicable to their elders.  Hence, as George Clinton of the Black group Funkedelic so aptly noted:  America began to eat its young.  The older generation which had created the situation declared war on their offspring, made them outlaws.

     Big Daddy was a WASP, redundantly styled White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a racist defamatory tag in a colored America.  Although the Jews do refer to Blacks as Black Anglo-Saxons with some justification.  Thus because  Big Daddy and his fellows were at the butt end, after 1950 they became objects, not perpetrators, of racism in America.  Any derogatory remark could be made against their race but they were forbidden to make derogatory remarks against others.  Remarkably they went from masters to slaves with little protest, even with a sense of humor.

page 181.

     Thus, although it was an unacknowledged truth, the Black/White and immigrant/native roles were reversed.  This was not probably all that strange as the numbers of Negro and immigrant descendants far exceed the native Anglo population. 

     The WASP population was made to feel ashamed of its past even though all progress emanated from their ideals.  They were made to feel supremely evil while all other peoples were portrayed as faultlessly virtuous.  Racism was made to be an exclusively White fault.  Thus the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was portrayed as shameless bigotry of the White race against the Yellow race.  Bigotry is a term which has no social definition except White against coloreds and Jews.

     The broader aspect of cultural or racial clashes are never considered in America.  Any ideological differences are automatically attributed to race.  American experience is never placed in the broader context of the European and Chinese diasporas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  America means myopia.  The aims and goals of the migrating nations are never considered.  The received opinion is that everyone was fleeing religious persecution.  Not so.  This might have a basis in truth before the French Revolution but not after.  During the nineteenth century Europeans were merely trying to better their economic lot or fleeing political retribution.

     In the lesser known Chinese diaspora of the nineteenth century the Chinese were met with hostility wherever they went, and they went all over the world.  The White invasion of the world released the Chinese to begin a counter invasion.  Brown-Yellow racism was much more potent than Yellow-White.  The Chinese were subject to several massacres in the Philippines.  Throughout South-East Asia and the Indonesian Archepelago there were frequent bloody clashes between the indigenous stock and the immigrant Chinese.  All eventually imposed Chinese Exclusion laws, so the the United States was by no means alone.  There can also be no difference between brown-yellow or white-yellow discrimination or the yellow-white discrimination against Whites in China.  It’s all bigotry, if one sees the world in that term.

page 182.

     In many of the South-Eastern nations the Chinese were expelled in the twentieth century and the remaining Chinese had civil disabilities imposed on their culture.  Certainly the Chinese in the United States have little to complain about.  They have managed the Whites well.  It would appear that in comparison to other races the Whites are even benign.

     But the Chinese and Japanese in America retired into their exclusive communities and have had relatively small effect on the formation of the American character.  Anglo social attitudes have been most effectively altered by two European immigrant groups.  those two groups, as well as the Blacks, had the greatest effect in the creation of the Vague Generation.  Both were shrouded in gross misrepresentations of their characters.

     There are no innocent peoples.  All peoples can be found at the wash basin of God trying to wash the blood from their hands.  Received opinion states that these ‘innocent’ groups arrived pure and were corrupted by vile criminal Anglo-Saxons.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  They brought it with them when they came.

page 183.

     Italian immigration was mainly from the Two Sicilies; the island of Sicily and the southern half of the boot.  The area was indued with a criminal appreciation of society before immigration began, where it was in progress of development and continues developing to this day.  The Mafia is presently struggling for control of Italy; its American offshoot might be construed as doing the same in the United States.  ‘Bigots’ predicted the situation in the early twentieth century.

     The Two Sicilies are poor countries, they weren’t always but prosperity does not exist in a criminal society.  During the early nineteenth century the Sicilians were the migrant laborers of Europe.  They despised education.  Workers went North during the summer to return during the winter.  Eventually Italian laborers began to migrate across the seas to Argentina and Brazil or anywhere in South or Central America where there was work.  The intention was always to return home with a cache.  Inevitably large numbers remained overseas permanently.

     In the 1890s New York was added to their itinerary.  The Italians were migrant laborers, millions came but millions returned.  The net result when the Great War disrupted this migratory pattern was that there were several million Italians stranded in the United States.  The great enclave or colony in New York City was and still appears to be foreign colony in American territory.  The European diaspora was not confined to the United States or even North and South America but extended to South Africa, Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, Australia, China and in fact, the world.  Movement was virtually unrestricted.  the passport system was relaxed.  People could come and go pretty much as they chose.  As a result a shortlived international society grew up.  A sort of circuit was formed.  The resultant lack of societal controls allowed vast criminal networks to develop.

 page 184.

     Thus the famous Italian slave boys of New York City who were organ grinders on the streets for their owners.  Opportunities were rife.  Thus also the notorious White Slave Trade which had already developed in Europe spread throughout the world.

     The White Slave Trade involved the second of the peoples who have altered the Anglo culture of America.  These were the Jews.  At the time the Jews vehemently denied any involvement in the trade but recent studies, by Jews, have  confirmed the fact if it needed confirmation.

     No group has cast more aspersions on America than the Jews.  In the official version of their entry it is told that a holy group of religious ascetics, uncorrupted and pure, arrived from Mother Russia to be forced to congregate, in the densest mass of humanity in the world, as the per capita population of ther colony in New York City was.  Once they were  in the United States the WASPS extorted and abused them.  Under the pressures or American society the Holy People were stripped of their identity as their youths abandoned the ways of their fathers.  Forced to live in indescribable poverty they nevertheless rose above their circumstances to realize the American Dream:  A chicken in every pot, a car in every garage and free sex.

page 185.

     The scenario is not even half true.  Jewish society was already in dissolution in the Pale of Settlement.  A lingering seething resentment against Rabbinical Judaism had set in decades before.  The youth were already in the advanced stages of the rejection of Rabbinical Judaism.

     The Jewish reaction to the failure of the Messiah Sabbatai Zevi had already brought into existence the philosophy of Jacob Frank in the eighteenth century  which was based on the notion that the Messiah would never come so long as there was evil in the hearts of men so that people should indulge their evil impulses to get them out of their systems to make way for the arrival of the Messiah. 

     Thus by the end of the nineteenth century the Jews were in control of the world wide White Slave Trade.  Jewish gangs similar to the ones of New York City were already roving the streets of European cities.   The Jews, as with the Italians, merely picked up their culture and brought it with them to the New World.  Needless to say not all Jews were of the same mind, what culture is.  Respectable Jews went so far as to deny the criminal gang members burials in consecrated ground.  Yet the criminal class was so numerous that they had their own cemetaries which they found Rabbis to bless.

     Respectable Jews came to accept their criminal class on an equal basis.  In 1928 the arch-criminal, Arnold Rothstein, then very notorious although little remembered today, was buried in consecrated ground with great pomp.

page 186.

     Nor were the Jews exploited by goys.  They exploited each other.  The tenements were owned by fellow Jews from the beginning.  The first floor apartments were rented to prostitutes.  When the mother of the Jewish writer Michael Gold complained to her landlord about the prostitutes the landlord merely shrugged and said it was business.  If Gold’s mother was willing to pay more than the prostitutes then the landlord would be happy to rent to her.

     Like the Italians the Jews of New York arrived in such numbers that the Jewish areas nearly formed a Jewish state in America.  They did.  Nor did the intense crowding on the lower East Side have anything to do with America.  The Jews had always been crowded in the Pale. Look at Israel today.  The term ‘he doesn’t have a corner to call his own’ refers to the habit in the Pale of renting each corner of a room to different families, thus one room might house up to, say, twenty people.  Add to that the insecurity of the Jews seeking safety in numbers and you have the dense population of the Lower East Side.

     Working out of these colonies, which were impervious to the American police, the Jews and Italians formed a criminal network that was so pervasive it dominated the p0litical life of  New York.

     Originally the Italians were too insular to do much more than prey on their own people.  They nevertheless came into conflict with other ethnic gangs.  The result was a destructive internecine warfare.  It was obvious therefore that some sort of syndicate was necessary.  The intermediary for this was Arnold Rothstein.  Time has dimmed Rothstein’s renown but his notoriety during the twenties was paramount.  What he was doing is obscure to this day although his criminal activies seemed to consolidate both political and criminal activities toward one goal.

page 187.

     He was the agent who brought the Italian and Jewish gangs to the accommodation known as the Syndicate or organized crime.  He was also organizer and financier of bootlegging after the adoption of prohibition. He was muscled out of the liquor business.  Rothstein cast about for some way to realize the huge financial bonanza of prohibition.  He selected the drug business.  He had just succeeded in organizing the necessary worldwide system of contacts when he became politically superfluous.  He was assassinated in 1928.

     But the criminal influence in political circles was so great that the criminals were able to push many laws through the New York legislature and the US Congress that it made it difficult if not impossible to convict them of their crimes.  Their power was accepted by Anglo society as ‘another form of doing business’ thus criminalizing the Anglo mentality.  The ideal of virtue was pushed aside in favor of the ideal of vice.

      The Jewish politicians aligned themselves meanwhile with the New York politician Al Smith and through him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Smith lost his bid for the presidency through his parocialism but FDR succeeded.  Through FDR the Jews succeeded in being able to directly influence the President of the United States.  Thus the coalition was formed that ended in the introduction into American society of the Jewish philosophy of Pluralism and Political Correctness as opposed to the Melting Pot and Freedom of Conscience.  So you see, it could, after all, happen here.  We were just watching the wrong place.

page 188.

     The point is not that the Jews and Italians were necessarily worse than Anglos, it’s just that they were not any better.

     That was part of the problem of Screamin’ Big Daddy and the Vague Generation.  They were made to feel dirty and inferior.  They were made to assume the collective guilt for Hitler and the Nazis and the Evil in the world of which they were made to believe all others were innocent little children.  The Vague Generation was punished if it did not so believe.  When the Anglo and German Americans pointed to the Mafia they were admonished that the Mafia wasn’t representative of the Italian people.  Thus while they were collectively guilty for Hitler and the accumulated Evil of the world the collective guilt extended to no other people.  Logic was thrust aside.

     Just because, they were told, some Italians were Mafiosi not all Italian were.  True enough as far as it goes.  But the fact is the the Mafia is representative of the Italian psyche.  While all Italians are not Mafiosi, all Mafiosi are Italians.  The Anglos and Germans have no history of comparable organized crime.  If the Italians discountenanced the Mafia the Mafia would cease to exist, so collective guilt can be assigned to the Italians.  Instead the Mafiosi, if not honored in the Italian community, are powerful enought to command ‘respect’ and punish any dissenters with death.

page 189.

     Even though the facts contradicted the assertion on the face of it, WASP children had to accept the fact that they were ‘dirty’ while Italians were clean despite the Mafia.

     So with the citizens of the City On The Hill.  The ‘inventors’ of morality were not only guilty of the most heinous crimes but they sent the ADL crisscrossing the country to denounce the ‘anti-Semites’ who pointed it out.  The ‘anti-Semites’ were punished by the loss of jobs and social status without the benefit of a hearing or trial or even a definition of ‘anti-Semite.’  To be denounced was to be guilty.  Shades of  McCarthy.  Isn’t anybody watching?

     While the anti-Communists of the period took it upon themselves to publish ‘Red Network’ type lists that at least allowed the victims some avenue of protest, the anti-anti-Semites went clandestinely about their evil work.

     Neither would the Jews accept responsibility for their faults while projecting an aura of criminality on Big Daddy and the Vague Generation.

     Concurrently, the drug situation initiated by Rothstein matured rapidly in the post war world.  Drugs were, of course, not new.  They had always been there.  They were used mainly by the upper and lower classes.  If one examines popular music of the thirties and forties- and popular music is a very accurate mirror of society- one will find numerous references to drugs from the society composer Cole Porter to the Black composer Cab Calloway.

page 190.

     But for some reason the authorities increased the severity of the statutes against drugs just as the massive effort to extend their penetration began.  Drug dealers feeling the pressure turned for safety to recruiting juvenile pushers who had been placed outside legal jurisdiction and couldn’t be prosecuted.

     The drug push coincided with the development and spread of chemical pharmaceutical stimulants and depressants.  In addition certain herbs, like peyote buttons  and mushrooms emerged into prominence.  The pharmacopeia of drugs became immense.  As mankind is always seeking salvation from without, the older generation eagerly embraced the pharmaceuticals.  Thus the youth of America saw their elders popping oceans of pills for relief from the strain of living, so what was wrong with drugs they asked?

     The drug culture began to develop.  the push was led by marijuana and then on to the harder stuff.  Pot found its way into all communities of the US.  Screamin’ Big Daddy was born in 1952.  He neared maturity as the drug scene was reaching maturity in 1967-70.  He just slipped right in.  It was easy.

     The Immigrant Coalition had defeated the Anglo Nativists by 1950.  The Anglo acceptance of the notion of the Melting Pot in which the immigrants were to bend seamlessly into Anglo society gave way to the Jewish concept of Multi-Culturalism in which each nationality was to retain its distinctive culture; except the Anglo minority of course.  Anglo customs were portrayed as bad and offensive while immigrant cultures were good and rewarding.  I did live through this you know, so no denials.

 page 191.

     All the racial and cultural clashes were there; they had to be contained.  This was made very difficult by the emergence of the Black culture into the mainstream.  While there can be little doubt that the Blacks had been the victims of injustice as an entire group the elimination of those wrongs could only be achieved in both the Black and White minds by the creation of even greater injustices.  Upper class Whites were willing to sacrifice lower class Whites to Black rage.  Somebody had to pay the bill.  Big Daddy was lower class White.  Your check, sir.

     In the fifties schools began to become living hells as all the destructive forces of society were turned loose in them.  Drugs and race antagonism combined to prevent effective education.  Until 1956 high school achievement tests had been rising steadily.  Beginning in 1957 they began to drop and have continued to do so to this day.  Americans, ever unwilling to face the truth, deny that the Black/White conflict has anything to do with it yet the schools have progressed from battlefields to war zones as Black/White tensions increase.  Whereas a switch blade was the deadly weapon in the fifties, students now tote automatic pistols in the hallways.  They probably need them too.

     Belying what they said, affluent White parents tried several end runs around desegration.  In Michigan, take Flint for example, the Blacks and Poor Whites were thrown together in the big A schools like Flint Central and Flint Northern while smaller C schools deep within White neighborhoods were created.  A few miles further North, Saginaw Blacks were kept on the East side of the river so that Saginaw High was mixed Black and White while Arthur Hill on the West side was all White while still professing great sympathy for the plight of the Blacks.

page 192.

     While Blacks were unable to compete with the Vague Generation on the proverbial ‘level playing field’ they were given preferential treatment to compensate.  White students of the lower classes were deprived of what they had earned by hard work so that Blacks could be handed more.  Uh, uh, now.  I was there.

     The result in the minds of lower class Whites like Big Daddy was that while the Blacks were freed they were being enslaved.  They could see little justice in transferring injustice toward Blacks to themselves.  But they had no recourse, not even the sense to complain.

     The manhood of Screamin’ Big Daddy was blunted.  He had to, he was compelled, to backpeddle his own abilities before not only Blacks and the immigrant psychology but also to upper class Whites.

     Big Daddy tried to recoup his manhood in the obvious way; by screwing other males.  In the sexual act of sodomy Big Daddy sought to transfer what was left of the other’s manhood to himself.  As a sexual predator he especially preferred Black homosexuals.  They were more willing to accord him the role of the Great White Planter.  Suffering from their own emasculation they were more than willing to accord him the role.

     Events had shaped Screamin’ Big Daddy; Big Daddy had had no hand in the shaping of events.  He was Society’s Child.  In a different less harsh more kind society he would have been a different man.  His was essentially a mind that had been wasted.  Yet, also, he would have been a different man had he made different decisions but one should not be overly critical of a man in no man’s land; it’s always easy to make good decisions in the safety of GHQ.

page 193.

     Big Daddy was totally obsessive-compulsive.  With an audience he was compelled to tell his story.  With a captive audience like Donn, well oiled as he was, he couldn’t be stopped.

     ‘My whole life’s been screwed up.  I’m amazed I’m here.  You shoulda been there.  I laugh but I don’t think anything was funny.  I laugh to keep from crying.  I mean, why me?  Before my ma left my dad we lived up in Charlevoix where the band is from.  That’s in the UP of Michigan.  Ever been there?  Michigan’s in two peninsulas you see, the Upper and Lower.  The state motto is:  “If you seek a beautiful peninsula look around you.”  Maybe that’s why we have two.  I always thought the motto was kinda stupid.  Who goes around looking for beautiful peninsulas?  ‘Sides that’s kind of like sayin’ if you seek a blue sky look above you.  Guy had to be a real genius to lame that one up.  We always felt inferior because Minnesota had the motto Land Of 10,000 Lakes on their license plates.  Hell, they said, Michgan’s got 12,000 lakes.  Only thing is we didn’t have the sense to claim it first; we waited till Minnesota did it.  And then we complained about them.  So now I’m in Detroit, little kid five years old.  My ma doesn’t even bother to get a divorce, she’s still married to my dad.  He didn’t have the sense to realize he should have got a divorce.  He’s married to someone else now.  Bigamist.  So, anyway she just leaves, never got one.

page 194.

     Well, after about six months my dad comes down to Detroit and asks my mother to go back to Charlevoix.  So he’s hittin’ the bottle just as heavy- Southern Comfort just like me- and battin’ my ma around just as hard, so six months later we’re back in Detroit.  So now I put a half year in two different kindergartens.  Well, my ma likes ’em rough and crazy.  So she’s having these cruds over to the apartment all the time.  Sometimes they do it in the livin’ room right in front of me.  I don’t mind (Big Daddy lied) because I learn a lot.  So, my dad comes down and takes me back to Charlevoix because he get wind and is disgusted with my ma.”

     All these events were confused in Big Daddy’s mind.  The whole period until the eighth grade was one confused ball of events.  The whole period of about seven years had entered Big Daddy’s mind as one event.  He was unable to say in which year anything happened, nor are his facts necessarily accurate.  His memory was one of discrete events rolled into an amorphous ball.  There was no cause and effect.

     “So they they start arguing and fighting over me, I’m back and forth all the time going to two maybe three schools a year.  That’s why I’m such a good clown, the only way I could get along at all without fightin’ non-stop, not that I didn’t have to fight all the time anyway until I got big which happened fairly early, then they just did things behind my back, drove me crazy.  You wonder why I call myself Screamin’ Big Daddy?  Hunh!  I know tricks, buddy, I know all the tricks.  Hate everyone of them mother-fuckers.  Kill ’em all I had the chance.  Just put all their necks together, wrap a piano wire around ’em and pull tight.  I know I won’t get the chance though.  Life ain’t fair.

page 195.

     So between the two of ’em, my crazy old man and my whore of a mother, I’d rather be with my mother.  But I still spent time with the old drunk or the band wouldn’t be from Charlevoix, hey?

     Couldn’t stand Detroit.  My ma didn’t have much money.  She was more interested in men than work, didn’t have enough sense to charge ’em for it, thought they were all madly in love with her, don’t know how she ever explained to herself why they never came back.  So we’re always in border areas between Whites and Blacks, sometimes we’re even over the border.  Boy was that hell.  When Detroit blew up I threw a couple Molotov cocktails wherever they would land and ran right back to Charlevoix as fast as I can, wait’ll the riots are over.

     Of course, high school, shit.  How did anybody get out alive.  Blacks and Whites, Blacks and Blacks, Whites and Whites.  Goddamn fist fights and knife fights goin’ all the time.  I don’t know how the girls handled it.  If they all didn’t get raped by the bloods at one time or another I’d be surprised.  All the time, all the time, all the time, had to watch your back, both sides and your front in every class.  Hell, things fell out of the sky.  Don’t know how we learned anything.  Must have learned everything I know in Charlevoix.  By high school I could kick shit out of any of those White pukes so they had to give me respect.  Either give it or I’d knock it out of you.

page 196.

     I tell ya about the band?  So, I got nothin’ but the sounds to keep me warm.  I’m all over that radio every night.  Listened to everything, you name it.  Ain’t nothin’ I don’t know.  Rock, pop, R&B, Country, jass.  Man I know groups and singers nobody else in the world ever heard of.  They probably don’t remember themselves.  I know funky black shit funky blacks don’t know.  They’re…”

     Big Daddy almost let his true feelings show by saying “…dumb as dogshit.”  but his social training asserted itself and he blocked that phrase out.  Didn’t want to sound like a bigot.

     “…natural, man.  It all comes to them from places they don’t know about.  They got sources us White guys, all hung up and everything, will never know nothin’ about.  Man, just check out Sun Ra or Pharaoh Sanders, you’ll dig what I mean right away.

     But, you know back in the early sixties they used to package about a dozen flops in plastic wrap, 45s you know, then they’d put a flop by a big name like Buddy Holly on top where you couldn’t see the other stuff.  Used to rip ’em off all the time.  I’d go over to one of the clerks and tell ‘im I saw the nerdiest looking guy there stuffing ’em so the clerk would watch him then I take what I want.  Had thousands of crummy 45s.  And you know most of ’em weren’t that bad as music or songs.  I mean, man, they put out thousands of records and maybe only a couple hundred would ever make the radio even once.

     So, I mean, man, I learned just about everything there was to know about music.  I can play any instrument just have to pick it up fiddle around for a few minutes and I got it.  I play sax with the band on the long instrumental breaks, honk that mother like you ain’t never heard.  We got a ass kickin’ band.  Johnny and Jack is as good a rhythm section as any you find, probably better.  Can’t have a good rock band without a solid rhythm section, I figured that out right away.  Then we got Charlie on lead guitar, he’s OK, Ira on rhythm and here’s where we really kick ass, Augie Myron, Farfisa.  The Farfisa’s a funky little keyboard organ, Augie really puts us over the top, then I really blow ’em away with my vocals and sax.  I open every show with this terrific shtick where I start in my highest falsetto then without a break shift right on down to my baritone.  Kills ’em every time.  We’re a real party band, we clown around a lot but never, never do Johnny and Jack miss a beat, man, never.  That’s why we’re top party band anywhere.

page 197.

     Let’s see did I leave anything out?  Oh yeah.  My so-called college career.  I get into Junior College in Detroit, I can’t even bring myself to mention the name, high schools neither, I almost throw up every them I think of it, gag for sure.  It was weird, really weird, really was.  Like in high school the Blacks and Whites was mixed up all the time but at college it was they disappeared.  Half the school was Black but, I mean, like you never saw ’em, not the young one’s anyway.  First time in my life I had classes that was all White.  Cafeteria was all White, they was there but I don’t where they went.

page 197.

     I mean it was, like, the administration dealt with us separately.  It was weird, at the same time they was tellin’ us we were sinners if we didn’t love Blacks and give way before them, they was fightin’ like hell to keep Black studies off of the curriculum at the same time.  Never could figure it out.

     The music drove the bastards crazy.  That and our long hair, the old fucks never could deal with reality.  They thought we should be simps just because they were, then when they found out we was too cool they hated us.  If it was up to me not a one of those bastards would buried when they die, just leave ’em layin’ on top of the ground for everyone to see how rotten they were, are, is.

     So you know from one side they’re tellin’ us about freedom of speech and from the other side they’re tellin’ if we don’t say what they want they’ll make us hurt.  Who cares, when you get old you lose, I wanta live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse.  (Daddy would get two out of three and two out of three ain’t bad.)  So they used to stage these mock debates, everything’s mock in America, there ain’t nothin’ real, over whether Blacks are naturally inferior or not, then they wouldn’t invite the Blacks so as not to hurt their feelins.  White only affair.  Why they did I don’t know because nobody was goin’ around sayin’ Blacks was inferior.  Wouldn’t dare, they’d expel anyone who did.  So they tap me to take the side about Blacks are naturally inferior.

     Oh yeah, but I forgot.  First I’m in this political science class where they tell you what to think, you know, party line, why call it education for chrissakes, and I’m next to this old buck, Black guy about forty, so we get this test back, I got a C and this black guy gets a B, but I look over at his paper and see I’ve got a higher score.  Well, you know, I can’t take that without a squawk so I point out that if this guy should have a B I should have a A, don’t want to take nothin’ away from the old blood, so this guy, this so-called prof, looks me right in the eye and says that because of the bell curve he’s only got so many As and Bs to hand out, that because this Black guy’s had it tougher than a White guy like me who’s had all this ‘White skin privilege’ he gets a B and I gotta take a C.  Bull Shit!  I’ve had it plenty tough.  If you wanta compare tough with tough I’ve probably had it tougher.  I mean, I don’t know whether I’m comin’ or goin’.  So this so-called prof says shut up or I’m out of the class.  Boy, I am plenty burned, but so what?  What can I do about it?  Nothin’.

page 199.

     So, then they tap me for this debate, probably because this asshole tells ’em I’m a bigot or something, and I’m told to lay down, take a fall , you know.  Fuck that shit!  If I’m in it I’m in it to win.  So I give ’em holy hell, used statistics and everything, so  they order me off the dais right in mid debate and call me in for a chat.  I defend myself because, man, I mean, I’ve had enough.  They tapped me I didn’t go to them.  But then I notice the administration is pretty cool to me and I can’t get good grades no longer.  Guys are always challenging me in class, provoking me.

     So I wrote this prayer for racial harmony.  The only problem was I started out ‘Oh Lord…’   Not only did they bar my poem on religious grounds but when the hailed me before the board as a trouble maker, get this, some Black guy who was a Muslim objected on the grounds that I was talking about a Christian god, he assumes because I’m White I’m a Christian, which discriminated against Allah, and this Jewish guy nods his head in agreement because my prayer might be taken as anti-Semitic on the same grounds.

page 200.

 End of clip Part II-4.  Go to clip Part II-5 which is the last clip.