Take Me Home

A few years back I entered into a songwriting partnership with a pair of gifted musicians that it was my good pleasure to have known at the time; guitarist Joe Hannigan and pianist Sammy Brown. I had previously performed in an excellent country band with Joe called Cold Cold Heart. CCH was trying to catch the country line dancing wave that was washing over New England at the time. Regrettably, the tide was ebbing by the time we launched the act, and as good as we might have been, the gigs were drying up and the managers were always grumbling about the count when they paid us. All and all a sense of melancholia permeated the whole scene. It wasn’t for lack of trying on our part, but eventually it became more trouble than it was worth, so when bandleader Joe announced that he wouldn’t be pursuing any new bookings, Cold Cold Heart went under, nautical metaphors and all. 

My greatest love in music has always been with fifties rock and rockabilly ala Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry and on down the roots rock food pyramid. I’d experienced a taste of success and even fame with my partners in the Boston Rockabilly Music Conspiracy (B.R.M.C.) years prior and kept returning to the genre a slave to my hardwiring. 

BRMC’s original lead guitarist (as well a guitarist in Cold Cold Heart) Charlie Ortolani, had remained in touch and we formed several groups over time, often including Kevin Guyer, a guitarist, stand-up bass player and kindred spirit from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We were toying with the idea of performing as a trio like Elvis Presley’s—that is to say—no drums; just electric guitar, acoustic guitar, stand up bass and lots of echo as was done on his seminal Sun sessions. With that in mind, we did some home recordings of cover versions as well a silly ditty that I had come up with called “I Got the Money.” The song was shelved and we three, whatever we chose to call ourselves on a given day, did an occasional gig until that too ran its course.

Fast forward to an invitation Joe sent me to an anniversary party being thrown for former CCH drummer Carl Bergman and wife Melody—a "celebration" of their eternal bond. I knew a lot of people there including Charlie. With all these musicians around you know there would be a jam and I even managed jump up and perform a couple of tunes. I’d been away from it for a while and I have to say, it felt a little like old home week.

At one point Joe pulled me aside to introduce me to pianist/composer Sammy Brown with whom he had been writing songs and cutting demos in his home studio. He had the idea that I might be a potential demo singer for them. I also had some songs that I would like to flesh out and we agreed to put something together that would be mutually beneficial. 

Over the course of the next year we wrote, arranged and recorded a group of tunes we thought worthy enough to put onto a CD. We didn’t have a band per se, but to give the CD a name, we released it as Cold Cold Heart and titled it “Blue Collar Attitude” after one of its songs. Our intent was to seek out channels with which to submit songs to established artists. As we found out, this was a well-worn and mostly discouraging path due to the huge amount of competition. We worked out a deal where we would all get a percentage of any song that came out of CCH based on how much each of us had a hand in its creation.

One avenue that we pursued was an organization called TAXI. TAXI’s approach is to be a song clearing house, that is to say, they position themselves as a service to provide original music for film, television and advertising producers who place queries with them requesting submissions for upcoming projects. TAXI places “want ads” at their website and paid members (such as we were to become) can submit digital songs that fit the requirements based on the listing descriptions. If the song passes the TAXI jury, it is submitted to the potential customer, and if they want your song they get in touch. Mostly they don’t and you are out of your submission fee. 

After a few strikes you start to pay closer attention to the descriptions in the listings rather than waste a shot. One request for submission called for a simple uptempo Country/Rockabilly song for an upcoming film project: name TBD. Most of what we were working on didn’t fit that description but I remembered the one that Charlie, Kevin and I cut in Kevin’s parlor in Maine, “I Got the Money.” I knew I had a CD with the file around somewhere, and once I found it, Joe remastered it but other than that we didn’t alter the arrangement or add additional instrumentation or vocal tracks. Once done I sent it off, and wouldn’t you know, this was the song that was accepted. What we got for this exchange was a check (don’t ask) that was split amongst us as per our agreement. I received the most having written the song and singing lead on it, Joe got a nominal fee for mastering, and Sammy got to wet his beak for marking “present” on his time card. None of this mattered a whit to me—my little runt-of-the-litter was going to be in the movies.

Once a song changes hands I came to know, it dips beneath the surface of a sparkly stream beginning a zen-like journey of its own. Not much info comes from the purchaser and research is necessary to track the project’s progress. I began stalking my creation as it wended its way across the country making the large circuit of film festivals. 

The film premiered at the Nashville Film Festival in 2011. It was produced and directed by Sam Jaeger who also starred in it I learned (in the interest of full disclosure I didn’t know who he was). Not knowing when or if it was going to be released to the general public, I considered traveling to catch it at a film festival not too far away. When it got to Brooklyn, N.Y. I was tempted to go but held back, however when it finally it came to the Boston Film Festival, I knew I couldn’t pass up hearing my precious jewel up on the silver screen. 

The event was occurring early one Saturday evening in Park Square in Boston and I managed to pry myself away from Gloucester to drive into town. I grabbed a buckskin jacket that had been airing out on the porch after a winter in the cellar garnering a musty aroma. 

The area around the theater was showbizzy electric with one of those backdrops that celebrities take pictures in front of. There were mingling people with bright smiles and sparkly eyes dressed better than normal as well as photographers, lights and limos— accoutrements that seemed grafted onto the stodgy muted hues of the Park Square that I had always known. Asking directions I mentioned that I had a song in the film and was deferentially directed to where I needed to be. 

Waiting in line for the doors to open to the auditorium, I grabbed a glass of wine and was keying in to the sights and sounds around me, when I overheard a couple discussing an odor in the room. “It smells like my grandmother’s cellar” the woman was murmering. When I peeked back at them they were pointing at a vent over their heads trying to ascertain the reek’s source, but I guiltily knew what the culprit was and couldn’t wait for the line to move. Once inside, my first order of business was to find a seat away from anyone. The second was to ditch my jacket somehow. I ended up rolling it into a ball and putting behind a curtain of fabric that covered the rooms wall.

Take Me Home

TMH unreels (I guess there are no reels anymore but whatever) as a romantic comedy about a down-and-out NYC cabbie named Thom (played by actor/director Sam Jaeger) who, desperate for money, takes on a fare heading for the West Coast. The customer is an upscale yuppie-type named Claire (played by Jaeger’s real-life wife Amber) who is melting down because she finds that her husband is having an affair with his secretary—this is in addition to her having a terminally ill father in L.A.

From there we navigate through the predictable tropes of a road movie with amusing situations and setbacks. They make a cute couple and, as these things go, they get friendly. This is not the worst hour and a half  I’ve ever spent in a movie theater by any means, though the subject matter is a bit on the lite side for my taste. Still, the acting is believable and funny where it needs to be, and production values are first rate (it’s even got Victor Garber in the in the cast last seen apologizing to young Rose that he should have built her a stronger Titanic). The primary soundtrack is by a group called Bootstraps and it’s both punchy and appropriate. There’s a lot of incidental music used as well of which our “I Got The Money” is one, and I was laser-focused as to  when it would appear. 

It seems to be a convention in movies for there to be an event/plot development 15 minutes in or so and that is roughly when Clair surprises Thom by announcing that she wants him to drive her across the country. Once he agrees she intones the immortal line, “I need an Atlas.” In the following scene she is coming out of a little store with her book of maps, and at 17:43 IGTM starts emanating from behind a screen door for a glorious magical musical 59 seconds (turn it up). From that point the plot continues on to its happy conclusion. I stuck around for the credits and sure enough there we were. 

 Although I was invited to a “talk back” session with the star/director, I chose not to attend, wishing instead to grab my musty jacket out from behind the curtain and scurry off hoping nobody would catch a whiff of it in passing. Such is the essence of immortality.

Click here to listen to "I Got The Money."

Clear the streets, the Boy is back.

To find out what all the commotion is about, pick up a copy of The Boy From Plastic City  

King on TBfPC.

These stories are frighteningly good. Maybe Uncle Stevie can adapt a few for my next book. 
To order your copy of "The Boy from Plastic City" go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692625437

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Cholame

My plan is to publish a revised version of my memoir "The Boy from Plastic City" along with the blog of the same name. On this the anniversary of James Dean's death, I offer this essay on his career and my idolatry of the star during my early teens. Submitted for your amusement. To obtain a copy of "The Boy from Plastic City" please go to: 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692625437

Prelude:

On September 30, 1955, James Byron Dean’s meteoric rise to film stardom was cut short when his newly-acquired Porsche Spyder collided with a Ford outside of Paso Robles in Cholame, California. Jimmy’s intended destination had been a sports car competition at Salinas where he planned to enter the car marked with a 130 and the nickname “Little Bastard.” At first he planned to trailer it to the race but had opted for photographer Sanford Roth to shadow him north with the empty trailer in tow. He did not take the scenic route up the coast—he wanted to shake out his new toy on 466 where he could open it up a little. 

When the driver of a two-toned Ford, Donald Turnupseed, made the decision to make the left onto 41 from 466 he had misjudged the speed at which the Spyder was barreling at him. Dean had taken for granted that the Ford would give him the right-of-way until he passed before making its turn. Porsche mechanic Rolfe Wurtherich was riding shotgun that day. Wurtherich (who was thrown from the vehicle in the crash) survived and later recounted that the young actor had yelled “That guy up there’s gotta stop; he’ll see us,” as the Ford began to lumber across the white lines. It was the actor’s last spoken line on Earth. At 24 he had lived up to his credo to, “live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” It was 5:45 p.m.

•

In the summer of 1990 I was given a two-week assignment to edit a technical manual at a company facility near Santa Barbara. The job entailed physically pasting type corrections into an existing mechanical board and was a real blast-from-the-past kind of project execution-wise. The tools were: an IBM Selectric (with a type ball), an X-acto knife and a can of rubber cement. It was the worst type of Kamikaze/Nazi-Frankenstein paste-up job and represented the last time that I would use a drawing board to do my work. The time would pass however and it was a chance to see a bit of California (to which I’d never been nor been back to since). The middle weekend was approaching and I kicked around ideas for keeping myself amused with the guys in the office offering suggestions. 

Disneyland came up and although I had told my mother in no uncertain terms back in 1955 that I was definitely going there after seeing it being constructed on the Mickey Mouse Club program, I was finally getting my opportunity—and balking. It was a few decades late in coming I’m afraid. Anyway that’s a place you bring kids to. They described the Hearst Castle which sounded interesting and would put me on the Pacific Coast Highway heading north which I liked the idea of. I brought up my interest in the James Dean accident site in what I remembered as being at Paso Robles but they knew to be Cholame. Bear in mind that this was pre-Google era.

•

On Saturday morning I took off with my sketchy plan that might (or might not) involve San Francisco as a final destination. Along the way I spotted some zebras in the fields off the road and knew I was either having an acid flashback or approaching the Hearst property at San Simeon. I pulled into the vast parking lot but upon seeing that tour buses would be a necessary component of the experience, made a U-turn and pulled back onto the PCH.
I had always assumed this would be the route that James Dean would have chosen on his way to the races at Salinas but this was not the case. Still, I was happy to have a solid destination on that beautiful day. At San Luis Obispo I turned towards Route 41 and Cholame and as I got closer my mind drifted back to 1961.

•

When James Dean died in 1955, I was all of eight-years-old and had more interest in Annette Funicello's underpants than him or the circumstances of his death. His was just another face in my mother’s movie magazines. I did have one faint memory about the blond actor in a red jacket and cars driving off of a cliff, so maybe someone had taken me to see "Rebel Without a Cause," but I’m sure the plot would have been over my head.

But something clicked in 1961. Maybe I was at an age where I was feeling a teenager's alienation, anger and seeking something to identify with when I caught a TV broadcast of "Rebel" and a light went on in my head. It was like I was somehow seeing myself in the flickering pixels. I started seeking out his other movies—"Rebel’s" bookends: "East of Eden" and "Giant." Occasionally there were special showings of his work from back when he was cutting his teeth on live television but they were few, far between and therefore to be savored. I started assembling a scrapbook torn from old magazines. I was finding them in used book stores by grabbing handfuls of publications from 1955 and going through page-by-page in the event that there would be a snippet here or a picture there. My girlfriend’s older sister donated her collection to mine and so it expanded. Geno and I even went on a special mission to find archived articles at the Leominster Public Library. He ripped out a plum spread from Life Magazine, stuck it into his motorcycle jacket and we jumped out the back window. Such was the extent of the obsession.
I started to ape Jimmy’s patented slouch, scrunched my face into contorted, tortured expressions and pulled my hair out by the roots trying to make it look like his. With my conk perfected, my facial muscles trained into a Deanish rictus and my voice altered to approximate his nasal Hoosier drawl, all that was needed was a cherry on the top—that Technicolor red windbreaker—and it wasn’t hard to find.
Looking back on those days with the objectivity of time, it all must have seemed kind of…eerie. I can even remember a high school counselor expressing concern over this idolatry of a dead man to which I just shrugged my shoulders. You either got it or you didn’t. My mother was actually disappointed to see me abandon my allegiance to Elvis, whom she’d come to like, but for me at that time, the singer seemed to have lost his relevance. 

Over the years, I have come to learn that the James Dean that I had deified from his movies bore little resemblance to the star in real life. I came to see the confident, competitive, articulate actor, bursting with talent, moody, complex and wide open to life. His art was more than what he put up on the screen and stage; his greatest masterpiece would be himself, man as Art. Moreover he was far cry from the hurt/vengeful boy of "Eden", the rebel/hero trying to be accepted in the painfully dated "Rebel" Without a Cause or the lovelorn rags-to-riches punk he portrayed in "Giant." Dean is not without his detractors, but long after my obsession passed, he remains an acting genius in my estimation. If you can touch someone’s life with your art to the degree that he had mine it’s an achievement worth noting. 

•

Now in Cholame I looked for landmarks along the highway. I knew that I was near the scene of the accident and I noticed a little diner on my left so I drove down to the next intersection to turn around. I didn’t know it at the time but that’s where the crash occurred. I went into the restaurant and sat at the counter figuring I’d get a hamburger and a beer and maybe make a little small talk about the famous actor who had died nearby. There was a small amount of memorabilia on the walls to look at while I waited but after a while when no one came to wait on me I got up and left. Outside in the yard of the diner there was a scrubby looking tree that had a large abstract chrome sculpture wrapped around it dedicated to Dean. A bronze plaque nearby explained that it was a gift from his fans in Japan. There were only a few people milling around and it occurred to me that this would be an appropriate moment for a symbolic gesture. I would leave my red windbreaker (one of a long line of many—this one with a polo player on the breast) on the sculpture as an offering and leave, thus marking the end of an era. I walked over and removed my jacket, hung it on the memorial, took a picture of it then turned my back and went to my car.

•

Coda:

The physical death of James Dean marked the birth of his legend. He’d only lived to see one movie released which was East of Eden, perhaps his best. Because of his startling death at a young age, the debut of "Rebel Without a Cause" created a sensation. Today there are still remembrance rallies in Fairmount, Indiana where he was born, while in California devotees still make the (somewhat morbid) drive up 46 retracing Dean’s stops along the way as if they were the Stations-of-the-Cross: Donut at the Farmer’s Market; site of the speeding ticket; Blackwell’s Corner for apples and Coca-Cola; haunted Polonio Pass and finally the crash site itself. But his fans are growing old now and dwindling in number. He has no oldies on the radio, no major tourist attractions, or (Heaven help us) James Dean impersonators to perpetuate his memory or generate new fans. There remain only a handful of films that may or may not have stood the test of time to define his legacy. Whatever one’s judgment of them may be, I maintain that Jimmy’s power and artistry in those roles still hold up. 

It would be more poetic to say that that’s where the story of my impromptu pilgrimage ends—but it isn’t. Actually I sat in my rental for a while with the engine idling, looking over at the sculpture reflecting the California sun with my red jacket fluttering in the breeze from an appendage. It was no use. I got out of the car, retrieved the jacket and drove off in the direction Monterey.
Although I haven’t worn it since, the Technicolor red windbreaker hangs in my cellar to this day, a vestige of my youth, smelling old as do all the yellowing magazine clippings that I still keep in a cardboard box on a shelf. I can’t seem to bring myself to throw them out...yet.

Man this guy is such a Rebel. I bet these stories might make a great movie!

Buy "The Boy from Plastic City" here.

The Season Of War

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy so I'm posting this essay from my book,"The Boy From Plastic City" in his memory. As far as the book goes it sold reasonably well given that it's self-publlshed. I'm going to put a revised expanded version shortly and tinker with blog and website. Watch this space, as they say. John.

The Season Of War

The year was 1967 and the season of war had come around again. It seems that there was a meat grinder in Southeast Asia called Viet Nam (which nobody had ever heard of) that was putting a lot of 19-year-olds into new wardrobes. Before the year was up I’d be “wearin’ the green” myself and not just on St. Patrick’s Day. This would, however, necessitate a flight to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for a fitting. 

I’d drawn a low number in the draft lottery, passed a pre-induction physical and kept finding ominous invitations from Uncle Sam in the mailbox. Even though I explained that I was planning to shampoo my hair that year, he was not allowing me to gracefully decline. Unless something came along to change things, I’d be going bye-bye and very shortly too. Some guys were running off to Canada to avoid the draft but I knew I couldn’t do that—it actually sounded worse in a way. I asked my mother if I really had to go but she just shrugged her shoulders and reminded me that her brothers had served in WWII and did not wait to be drafted with patriotism running strong after Pearl Harbor. I guess I was hoping she would get me off-the-hook somehow: maybe call in and tell them I was sick or something. But after that conversation, I knew there was no hope. I was going. 

At that time I was playing bass in a band called the Cavemen. I’d originally gotten the gig by filling in for the rhythm guitarist, Mike, while he was taking six-months active duty training as part of his requirement for the Massachusetts Army National Guard. Mike had since returned but I stayed with the group anyway when Pete—the former bassist—left. The only catch being that I needed to learn to play bass. The drummer, Paul, keyboardist Dennis and new member Lenny were all in the same Guard unit as Mike: Company B, 26th Aviation Battalion, the Yankee Division drilling in the Plastic City. They said they would keep an eye out for an opening and sure enough one eventually did come along. These Guard positions were in high demand because of the unpopularity of that war and I was lucky to get a jump on the posting.

Now it was my turn in the barrel. The deal was; you’d take basic training and advanced individual training with the regular Army, but rather than being shipped off to exotic ports-of-call, you went home and settled in to fulfill your six-year commitment—one weekend a month at your armory and two weeks at Camp Drum, New York in the summer. My fellow Cavemen threw me the obligatory going-away drunken bash to ensure that I would be ghastly ill for my bus trip to Boston and my flight to DC with connecting flight to Fayetteville, North Carolina for some hot fun in Joo-lie sun. It was on this, my first flight ever, that I encountered Robert Kennedy.

RFK
I’d seen Bobby and his brother Ted from the window of the plane as they were boarding at Logan. They had so much luggage that they were personally supervising its loading into the hold. Although Bobby would not officially announce his candidacy for president until the following March, there was a lot of buzz about him following in his brother John’s footsteps—something he would do in the most tragic way in June 1968. To put the events into perspective, I should note that JFK was revered as a near-saint in our house. His campaign, nomination and ascension to the Oval Office was a thrill ride for my mother who could relate well to his upbringing in another large Irish-Catholic family from Massachusetts (major economic differences aside). She also found him handsome. Truth-be-known, I think she loved him. 

I was home sick from school when JFK was shot. My mother and I were watching two different television stations as the news began to trickle out of Dallas. She would come to my room periodically to compare reports with me. Finality came when Walter Cronkite lifted the horn-rimmed glasses from his watery eyes, looked a clock on the wall and announced that the president had died at one p.m., Central Standard Time. It felt like a personal loss. My mother was shattered. Now Robert wore the Kennedy mantle and seemed destined to lead the country. 

Once our jet leveled-off, Bobby appeared at the door to the first-class section and struck up a conversation with the coach passengers in the front rows—doing a little campaigning I suppose. I was 10 or so rows back and could not make out what was being said. I only heard sporadic bursts of laughter. RFK made the cabin electric. Standing during the entire flight in the doorway he never stopped smiling with those big Kennedy choppers as he chatted up the passengers. He appears now in my memory in vivid Technicolor; white button-down shirt with repp tie, blue eyes, tanned by the sun, threads of grey mixing in with the famous mop of auburn hair. Bobby had sometimes come across as arrogant and tough in the media but it was nowhere in evidence that morning. He didn’t return to his seat until it was announced that they were beginning the final approach to Dulles. With a small wave and a smile he was gone.

After landing in DC, Mooney—another Massachusetts guardsman heading down for basic—went off to get some travel information for the next leg of our journey to Fort Bragg while I stayed watching our bags. I was standing next to what seemed to be a mountain of brown leather suitcases that turned of to belong to the Kennedy entourage. I knew because left guarding that stack was none other than the astronaut and Kennedy running-buddy, John Glenn—first American to orbit the earth. Glenn was a huge celebrity and national hero in those years and it seemed a little demeaning in my eyes to make someone of that stature stand there like a goon watching the luggage (well, like I was). He noticed me looking in his direction and I would swear he seemed a little embarrassed. 

Coda:
There is a famous photograph of Robert Kennedy’s bleeding head being cradled by a busboy the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel as his life seeped out of him. It always makes me think of Abraham Lincoln. In my memory of that July day of the flight to Washington, I see him as he looked on the plane, bathed in brilliant sunlight. It was like seeing Lincoln alive again, standing, smiling and chatting in the doorway to first-class, all in vivid Technicolor.

Why I oughta...read TBfPC.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692625437

Gilligan

Skipper, this might be the key to getting off the island.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692625437

Taylor Swift

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692625437

Maybe I'll buy a summer home in the Plastic City.

Brother Bones

Prelude

It was the premiere of their yearly minstrel show and the young men of St. John’s parish school were on parade. In keeping with the tradition’s format—one that had not changed appreciably in a century—they danced and pranced their way from the school to the auditorium, shuckin’ and jivin,’ rattling tambourines, whacking at banjos, smeared with greasepaint and singing “When The Saints Go Marching In” to the high heavens. A small marching band provided the music albeit somewhat off-key. An oompah tuba blamed the bottom end and the big bass drum held down the rhythm. This pre-show was for the amusement of the assembled ticket holders—among them Aunt Mag and John McGowan—queued up in the cold, waiting for the signal to enter. It was a peek at the spectacle that they would soon see in full, like when they lead the elephants over to the circus tent. These Irish-Catholic boys were dressed in gaudy costumes down to their handmade top hats. Their make-up was not amber, beige, buff, burnt umber, chestnut, chocolate, cocoa, russet, tan or taupe. It was black, and the garish white greasepaint that outlined their mouths was something out of a nightmare. The fact was, most of them had never seen person-of-color unless you wanted to count Stepin Fetchit or Buckwheat from the movies. They did know Amos ’N’ Andy from radio, but not the fact that they were always voiced my Caucasians. So this was what they supposed the “darkies” looked and acted like. These stereotypes had been passed down from the mid-1840s through the folk-art form of Minstrelsy, born in the year the bricks for the Beoli Mills were being mortared into place.

Rituals

Along with placing poinsettias at my mother’s final resting place after each Christmas, I stop at the family plot of her parents, aunt, uncle and brother. It’s always the end of December and it’s usually bleak and cold—sometimes bitterly so—and blustery enough that it’s a trick to keep a votive candle burning even for a minute. For the sake of survival, I find that a nip of Jameson’s is advisable, and, I like to think, apropos. The monument that marks this family plot is substantial yet without artifice which might also describe those at rest beneath. It’s a double-sized slab of grey granite with a serpentine top. Notches at the top corners are the sole adornments. The epitaph gets efficiently down to business as well inscribed as follows:

1886 JOHN J. McGOWAN
HIS WIFE
1874 MARGARET M. CRONIN
1891 HUGH M. GALLAGHER 1958
HIS WIFE
1891 HANNA M. CRONIN 1975
SON
1915 JOHN V. GALLAGHER 1937

Hugh and Hanna were my grandparents, and their son, John was my namesake. But it’s John McGowan and Aunt Mag that I’m considering today—one specific incident in particular. I observe that their years of death are not etched into the stone, which leads me to believe they were still alive in 1958—the year I’m guessing that this stone was placed with the passing of my grandfather. I’ve spoken of Aunt Mag in previous installments. She and her husband were Irish immigrants from the area of Knockmanagh near Killarney in the Southwest corner of the “Auld Sod.” They were the ones who sponsored my Grandma, Hanna, then a doe-eyed 18-year-old colleen—in the new country. Doing the math that would have been around 1910. Due to the repressive policies of their English colonial overlords, Irish children were kept under-educated (therefore less dangerous I suppose) which made the task of relocating to America and finding a decent job all the more daunting. As with many Irish immigrants, Hanna found work as a domestic in service to Fitchburg’s British Brahmin expatriates.

Once Hanna met and married Hubert Gallagher, they moved into a 10-room farmhouse on Baltic Lane in West Fitchburg provided by his new employer Crocker Burbank: makers of paper. He could easily walk to his job which was in Number Eight mill right next door. They had an extended credit line to buy their necessities from Crocker’s own co-op market up on Ashburnham Street and for all intents and purposes, you owed your soul to the company store, just like in that old saw, “16 Tons.” In fairness, there were to be plenty of those pesky necessities attending the births of the 11 children that followed, and—soul possession aside—there’s something to be said for a steady income. Especially with the Great Depression taking shape on the distant horizon like some worrisome, unknowable beast being born ugly.

~

Beoli Mills

John McGowan and Aunt Mag lived a mile or so away from the Gallaghers in a compact Mansard-roofed, two-story dwelling at 34 Sprague Street where it wound down at a precarious pitch towards the North Nashua River. As with my grandfather, Mr. McGowan could easily walk to his place of employment at Beoli Mills on Westminster Street, clicking the heels of  his spit-shined brogans in the face of the rising sun as he went. That leg of the commute was a breeze; a hundred cement stairs from his back yard; down onto Sanborn and then left on Simonds. Slogging home after his shift might call for some liquid fortification at the British-American Club or the Log Cabin before scaling that slope and facing his frequently feisty better half and her imposing arsenal of Blue Willow china.

Beoli was a textile mill operated by the American Woolen Company and John worked there as a “Finisher.” Architecturally the building could have been part of a Nazi concentration complex with it’s anxiety-inducing brick facade. The assortment of buildings were as varied in form as a capricious child’s grab bag of geometric shapes. At one corner stood a battlement-like tower capped with a giant onion dome which wouldn’t have looked out of place in Moscow. Old photos show an abundance of windows however so some cheer must have filtered down onto those otherwise drab, lanolin-soaked floors. The company provided John with solid employment for 25 years until it went belly-up—yet another Depression casualty in an era of many. The equipment was sold and the jobs were lost. But John McGowan was close enough to retirement age that the two events dovetailed as well as could be expected and he and his Maggie would be okay if they played their cards right—they hoped.

~

Cakewalk

Once inside the marching musicians joined the piano and drummer in the pit and the show’s Overture began. Snippets of popular songs and chestnuts from the Stephen Foster catalogue wafted through the room. As always, the minstrel show would be divided in three. In the first, the entire troupe would take to the stage warbling “Ain’t She Sweet” as they did a cocky cakewalk on from stages left and right to a thunderous ovation. It was hard for the audience to believe that these were their own sons, relatives and sons of friends as they tried to recognize them under their makeup. Freed of any stage fright by the anonymity afforded by disguise, these often-times shy youth appeared loose-as-geese in the footlights and hammed it up shamelessly. The Interlocutor appeared and instructed his minstrels to take seats in semi-circles to either side of his elevated perch. Also attired in a minstrel-fashioned costume (except for the blackface), the Interlocutor served as Master-Of-Ceremonies as well as somewhat pompous straight man for these mad proceedings. He was flanked by the so-called end men—Brother Tambo and Brother Bones. These two characters (caricatures?) got to set up the gags and deliver the punchlines as the rest of the cast rollicked in exaggerated mirth and jangled their tambourines. The concept of Surrealism was known in the thirties though what they might have called it back at its creation in the 1840s is a mystery, yet the term seems to describe the Minstrel Show experience best. A sampling of the humor is as follows:

Interlocutor: No, Bones, you mean three days previous to her decease. 

Brother Bones: No, she had no niece.

Interlocutor: I presume he was a pretty good physician? 

Brother Bones: No, he wasn't fishin'; he was home.

Interlocutor: I mean he was a doctor of some standing. 

Brother Bones: No, he wasn't standing, he was sitting on a three-legged stool.

At the conclusion of the Part One, the assembled cast along with the Interlocutor cakewalked back off the stage carrying their milking stools to another round of applause. The boys were far from stage frightened, the fact was they hated to leave the spotlight. Given the conditions of the times, this explosion of farce, color and music was a welcome respite from their grey existences and they were elated.

~

The Auction

In 1932 the physical plant of Beoli Mills—minus the textile producing equipment—went on the auction block. The proceedings would take place in the huge empty plant. Addison Freeman of Boston’s Samuel T. Freeman and Company would serve as auctioneer. His firm had previously announced that the property would be offered in its entirety first and then in four separate parcels. Whichever brought the highest bid would prevail.

Mr. McGowan’s motivation for wanting to purchase his former place of employment is at least partially conjectural and remains part of the lore of this grey Irish enclave of blue-collar labor nestled in amongst the granite hills. The legend would have us believe that a stop at the British-American club with a group of his peers before proceeding to the auction had perhaps impaired his judgment. But even into his cups, he made a cogent case to his former co-workers that it was a sound investment without revealing what he was about to lay on the table lest someone else beat him to it. He was confident that the economic pendulum would swing the other way eventually—wouldn’t it? Then again, what was the satisfaction of owning the place that you once slaved in. Regardless of his motivation he came prepared to buy. What was up for grabs was substantial too: ten mill buildings with 175,150 square feet of floor space and a large power plant located on several acres of land. The assessed value of the complex was $128,000 but during the peak years of the textile industry it was employing 600 souls (1926-1927), and was worth $264,100. After laying out the rules of the auction, Addison Freeman started the bidding with a “clarion” call that echoed off of the brick walls of the cavernous space, “How much am I offered for this property in its entirety?”

The scores of former employees that he’d just been drinking with bated their suspicious breaths and waited for the bid. Then came McGowan’s booming baritone, “ten thousand dollars.” It was the only offer so it was “knocked-down” to him. His former coworkers gaped at him in slack-jawed astonishment, and you could have heard a pin drop. When the newspaper reporter asked him what his intentions were for the property, he replied, “I am ready to sell it to anyone who is ready to pay me my price.” He also declared himself to be acting as sole agent. It was his and he planned to flip it. 

But on the dark way home, with the echoes fading in John’s ears with each footfall, the scaling of Sprague seemed to be taking a preternaturally long time. Now was the figurative cold, grey, light of dawn and as he approached the buttery luminescence of his own parlour windows, he began formulating the rationale with which he would present his case to Maggie—all 90 pounds of simmering Irish TNT. 

Put gently, she was not pleased. True; they had managed to scrape together $10,000 or so but not much more, and they were getting up there in years. What John hadn’t brought into the equation, Mag reminded him, were things like taxes on the appraised value ($128,000) and such mundane matters as building maintenance. It was clearly time for some damage control. They secured a lawyer and were able to extract themselves from the deal but at a cost of a couple of thousand dollars from their nest egg—money they were counting on. That class-consciousness that their neighbors brought over from the old country was still pervasive and there was a certain amount of self-satisfied blather behind the McGowans’ backs about them and the knives came out, as they will. Who did they think they were, anyway?

~

The "Olio"

The second act was called the "Stump Speech", a lone dissertation the main purpose of which was to allow the backstage to be set for the elaborate "Afterpiece." On this cold night, the custodian, Mr. James O’Brien, had stoked the coal furnace higher than normal for the comfort of the audience at the show, and between that and the rising body temperatures, the low-ceilinged auditorium became as hot as a Lakota sweat lodge, and the audience began peeling off any unnecessary clothing. 

Brother Bones took to the stage and began to pontificate on everything from science, society and politics during which his dim-witted character attempted to speak eloquently, only to deliver countless malapropisms, jokes, and unintentional puns. As he did, he moved about like a clown, standing on his head and often prat-falling off his stump. He delivered salient social criticism with the focus being on sending up unpopular issues and making fun of blacks’ supposed inability to make sense of them. Since local gossip was a fair target, Brother Bones introduced a song that he’d written especially for the occasion entitled: “The Day John McGowan Bought The Beoli Mills.” Although no record of this ditty exists, the imagination can provide a sketch.

With his black greasepaint running grotesquely down his face, Brother Bones delivered his mocking ballad directly towards John and Mag dead center in the audience like a command performance.

Within a peal of laughter, the furious McGowans donned their overcoats and stormed out. They would not be staying for the Afterpiece after all.

~

Coda:

I actually saw a performance of St. John’s Minstrel Show many years later, long before the term “politically correct" had been coined. 

Codetta: 
Aunt Mag and John McGowan lived to ripe old ages. They were not rich but they were okay—as he had hoped. Had they stuck with purchase of the Beoli Mills and then sold during the Depression’s end in 1940, they may have  enjoyed a truly golden age. But then again…?

The Boy from Plastic City

Thats Alright Mama Boston Rockabilly Music Conspirancy Live 1984 Presle...

Hometown Interview

Here is a shot of me being interviewed about my book "The Boy from Plastic City" by the Mayor of Leominster on Aug. 11, 2016. Click the red letters for the link. You'll find me at 40:22.

J. Dawson

Alyssa

A few years ago I picked up a copy of A Night to Remember by Walter Lord, from of all places, my toolbox. It’s a well-worn paperback and the torn-off cover now serves as a bookmark. That cover bears the iconic image of the massive stern of the RMS Titanic, raised to a 45° angle as she prepares to slide beneath the surface of a black North Atlantic, so calm that Captain Edward Smith described it as being, “like a millpond.” I absentmindedly began to flip the yellowed pages while standing in my cellar, but had no intention of finishing it again, as I had three times over the years. But the story gaffed me again and I started plowing through it. 

~

The history of the Titanic has fascinated me since childhood and in addition to the book (and other sources), I’ve seen all of the film versions that I know about. At the top of heap is James Cameron’s masterful take on the incident. The director closely follows the events depicted in Lord’s book, but, like most adaptations, he tacks on a fictional story to which we the viewers are invited to relate. In Titanic it is the love story of society brat Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and artist/grifter Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio). This film has now eclipsed former champ The Godfather for number of repeat viewings on my TV. 

It’s an oft-told tale that bears repeating so, in a nutshell; here is what pretty much everybody already knows. The Titanic was built in 1912 at the Harlan-Wolff shipyards in my Grandfather’s birthplace of Belfast, Northern Ireland. She was to be the largest vessel ever to ply the seas. It was the golden age of steamship travel and ships were in great demand, especially fast and regally appointed ones of which the Titanic certainly was. The nouveau riche from America demanded nothing less, but added to the equation was a multi-cultural wave of immigrants pinning their hopes on a fresh start in the New World. For those who barely scraped together the price of passage, accommodations were somewhat less than posh, and this mix of Irish, Finnish, Slavic, Scandinavian and Jewish passengers huddled together in steerage. 

The ship set out from Southampton, England but stopped to board passengers in Cherbourg, France and Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland before steaming west for New York City on her maiden voyage. Disregarding iceberg warnings, RMS Titanic plowed along at a record setting pace, hoping for banner headlines for the White Star line upon her arrival. On the fourth day her luck ran out however when she sideswiped an enormous berg shaped like the Rock of Gibraltar. A spur of ice caught the starboard side of the ship’s hull below the water line and ripped it open like a can opener. Immediately the frigid Atlantic started gushing in. It was 11:40 p.m. (ship’s time), Sunday, April 14, 1912. 

It was a troubling situation but not ship threatening certainly because the designers at Harlan-Wolff (most notably Thomas Andrews, aboard for this inaugural crossing) had taken such things into consideration and had designed the hull with 16 water tight compartments that ran up to E deck. If a compartment were to flood, doors would slam shut, the water would be isolated and the ship would remain seaworthy. But not one compartment had been breached but five and that weight at the bow began to pull Titanic down by the head. As it did the water began to seek its own level and ran over the tops of compartments at E deck as the vessel angled downward. This was a chain of events that could not be reversed. At their impromptu crew meeting, White Star executive Donald Ismay was incredulous upon hearing that, in the words of the designer himself, it was a “mathematical certainty” that the great ship would founder. Mr. Andrews reported to Captain Smith that the ship had about two and a half hours on the surface, no matter how they sliced it.

Once that reality sank in, attention turned to the matter of evacuation but there were a number of complications to that process. First on the list; there were lifeboats for only about a third of the passengers. Since the ship was unsinkable, went the reasoning, why clutter up the aesthetics of the boat decks with lifeboats that would never be used—and that’s what they went with. 

Titanic’s communications crew began tapping out QED and SOS messages over their wireless. “Come at once. We have struck a berg.”  The Titanic's radio engineers sent this emergency message and many like it in Morse code wirelessly to anyone listening. The deck crew fired off signal rockets and beamed Morse messages on the Aldis lamp to try to garner the attention of a ship whose lights appeared to be only a few miles away but to no avail. That ship was the Californian and she was stopped in and ice field for the night as a safety measure. Her night crew saw but could not decipher the meaning of the messaging until finally when they no longer saw the stricken ship’s running lights, assumed she had sailed off when in fact she had sunk. The message did get through to the Carpathia and she tested her boilers on a mad dash from Halifax in a valiant attempt to rescue the passengers and crew of the Titanic. But at best, Carpathia would arrive on the scene two hours after the great ship had snapped in half and slid the two miles to the bottom taking 1500 passengers and crew down with her, or left bobbing in their life jackets to die of hypothermia in the subfreezing sea water. These were the ones who could not get into lifeboats. 

~

I brought A Night to Remember with me to finish on our May 2012 vacation in Ireland. The trip entailed renting a car and navigating to lodging in four pre-arranged “castles” scattered across the Emerald Isle. I had a sketchy dream of tying in a drive to Knockmanaugh, Kilarney where my Grandmother hails from but I’d had so many harrowing experiences driving on the left in that unfamiliar country that I wasn’t willing to press my luck further. I felt like I was taking my life in my hands every time I got behind the wheel.

In the town of Donegal we browsed in a bookstore called The Four Masters. Rereading Scott’s book had reminded me that the bulk of Titanic’s casualties had been the Irish from the Third Class, and while in the shop I spotted a tome entitled The Irish Aboard the Titanic by Senan Maloney. The book detailed the lives of every Irish passenger and crewman, something that had been given scant mention in that time. In 1912 the public was not interested in 700 people sharing two toilets, and the focus of the press was on the rich members of society aboard that cursed vessel, they being the rock stars of their day. I purchased the book with the intension of reading it on our upcoming cruise to Nova Scotia, the place where many of the casualties of the accident were taken for burial. 

~

Our cruise was a graduation gift to our Granddaughter, Alyssa, and we would be sailing with her sister Daphne and her parents, Richard and Alyson, on the Carnival Glory with stops at the ports of St. John, NB and Halifax, NS. When I wasn’t on deck sipping watery Bloody Marys to the incongruous accompaniment of Reggae bands, I was in my cabin immersed in my new book. Its format was to address each Irish passenger showing their pictures, names and ages, whether or not they had survived, their ticket number and what they paid for it, where they boarded and where they were heading. Each of them had a sponsor waiting for them in America and nobody got in without one to report to. This was followed by what was known about their background and their experience during the disaster. My Grandparents who did not know each other at the time had crossed the Atlantic in those same times but fortunately, their ships did not collide with icebergs. 

All those greyscale Irish faces began to haunt me after a while; women putting on their prettiest expressions; men slightly suspicious of the camera—most breasts bursting with youth and promise. As I turned each page a new life revealed itself to me and my own surging Gallagher blood had me hearing penny whistles and uilleann pipes in my dreams. In St. John we disembarked to have a look around at what turned out to be not much—about what I expected. Jocelyn, Alyson and I used the opportunity buy some wine and smuggle it aboard against ship rules. On the way there we passed a small young man with red curly hair and freckles wearing a green sport coat busking on a curb with a fiddle. At this point I was seeing the Irish everywhere I looked but this little leprechaun scratching away at a jaunty Reel pushed the envelope. I stopped to listen for a moment then dropped a Five into the upside down green top had by his side. “Tank You Sor,” said he in a brogue that only confirmed what I already knew. “Do you know the “Sailor’s Hornpipe,” I asked. He thought for a quick second and then launched into the tune familiar to anyone who has ever seen a Popeye cartoon. He was sawing away at it when we moved on and I had to repress the impulse do a little jig down the sidewalk. 

That evening we sailed south out of the Bay of Fundy and rounded the southern cape of Nova Scotia north bound for Halifax. In 1912 we might have crossed paths with the Carpathia off on her rescue mission or the McKay-Bennett on its grim assignment to retrieve the remains of the dead. As Jocelyn lay sleeping I sat on the edge of the bunk having a nightcap of our renegade wine. The cabin was dark and the engines thrummed comfortingly. I drew the drapes apart and looked down. We were on the Starboard side and in a lower level of the ship. The wake seemed close enough to touch and you could hear its splashing. The churning sea was a pale green in the ship’s running lights, but a fog had rolled in and neither the sky nor the horizon were visible. Above the wake only a milky white mist prevailed. So immersed in the story of the Irish aboard the Titanic was I, that their greyscale countenances seemed to form in the fog to peer back at me. It was not lost on me that at this position, I was looking in the direction of the grave of the doomed Titanic. Yes, it was hundreds of miles distant and two miles down, yet these remain her waters. The faces seemed to jockey for position crowding one another, but did they not seem closer than before I thought? I slid the drapes back together a little too quickly, drained my wine and lay back looking at the window and the illumination that spilled in through the cracks. I would not be opening the drapes again on this night.

~

The following day we would spend in Halifax and an excursion was in order. Looking at the guidebooks we found one of the many that looked promising and bought tickets. While waiting at the terminal we walked through the assortment of booths selling memorabilia, crafts and a lot of T-shirts. I began to see what a cottage industry had sprung up around this worst sea disaster in history. References to the event seemed to be everywhere in the city. We got onto a tour bus that was to take us to the cemetery of many of the victims as well as a trip to quaint Peggy’s Cove (save your money). Our tour guide was a white-haired former school teacher who was direct from a central casting call for “Somebody’s Grandma.” She was wiry and well informed and had a way of quieting the bus passengers when she was doing her narrative that belied her teaching background. I half expected her to go up the aisle to see if anyone was chewing gum. As we drove to the Fairhaven cemetery, she ran though the facts of the disaster and the aftermath, though by this point I could have almost have given a tour myself. 

Alyssa sat next to me on the tour bus listening to our guide who sat across the aisle from me. My granddaughter has a way of slipping into “the zone” when her imagination whisks her away. I checked in with her a couple of times to see if she was okay and she always was. No one loves the Titanic Movie more than she. Alyssa has probably watched the tape more than me and one night when we watched it for the umpteenth time, I could see her moving her lips along with the dialog as she sat on the carpet playing with her Barbies. She relates to Rose and loves Jack. Apparently this is not an unusual condition and was common among young girls of this time period. Let’s call it Titanic Syndrome for want of a better term. 

We disembarked the bus and made our way through the gate of Fair Haven Cemetery and up the slope to where one hundred and twenty-one of the Titanic casualties are interred. One third of those graves are not identified. Surveyor E. W. Christie laid out three long lines of graves in gentle curves following the contours of the sloping site. By co-incidence, the curved shape suggests the outline of the bow of a ship. Among the stones is one marked J. Dawson. Joseph Dawson was a coal trimmer in the engine room and probably never expected to see the sky until he returned home to Southampton, but the events of April 14 brought him to the boat deck in the last moments of the life of the great ship. The life boats were long gone and the “Black Gang” removed their shoes because they knew they’d soon be going swimming. Dawson had the presence of mind to pocket his National Sailors and Firemen's Union card which would at least identify his body for his family. He was twenty-three years old.

The cable ship McKay-Bennett was dispatched to pick up what casualties they could find while the Carpathia sailed the 713 bedraggled survivors into New York harbor and the attendant media frenzy. McKay-Bennett’s mission was far less glamorous. They were to retrieve and embalm what remains they could locate. Upon reaching the wreck site, it quickly became apparent that there were far more bodies floating in the ocean than anyone had expected. They had not brought enough supplies to prepare this many bodies (306) for burial, so 116 were buried at sea. To put it indelicately, they were plucked out of the ocean and plopped back in. The buried-at-sea were mostly third class passengers but that did not raise the hackles of many because there was a de-facto class system that allowed people to expect such things. J. Dawson was among the lucky cadavers. Because he was carrying his union ID, he would be properly buried and have a dignified headstone that would bear his name. Other ships would find more casualties, but many were never found. After Cameron’s Titanic, word got out that there was a J. Dawson buried in Halifax and girls began to pilgrimage there. There they left offerings of flowers, movie tickets and some intimate articles of apparel. If there was such a thing as the dead looking down at us from a cloud, I can imagine poor Joseph Dawson complaining, “Where were you when I needed you?”

~

After our excursion to Peggy’s Cove, the bus descended the high ground into Halifax. By this point I may have been the last person paying attention to our guide’s narration. Alyssa was sleeping at my side and the guide was talking into a microphone sitting in a seat to my left. She also was obviously tired by this point but she talked on about the terminal. With eyes that seemed to look inward as she described the scene at which our ship was now docked down below. It was here that the bodies of the Titanic victims were unloaded and organized for interment. The Mackay-Bennett arrived at Flagship Pier at North Coaling Jetty No. 4, HM Dockyard early on the morning of 30 April 1912. She arrived at the pier to unload her cargo around 9:30 a.m. This was where the gaily painted Carnival Glory was now docked, and I could tell by our guide’s eyes that she was in a zone of her own.

Postscript:

After the Titanic disaster no ship ever sailed without adequate life boats for everyone. In addition; Coast Guard boats began to patrol the shipping lanes to report on any iceberg danger. The Titanic had an Olympic Class sister ship; the Britannic. In the wake of the Titanic disaster, the water tight bulkheads of Britannic were raised to B Deck. Although intended to be a passenger ship, she was called into duty as a hospital ship with the advent of World War One. In November of 1916, in the Mediterranean off of Greece, she was struck by an explosion that was either a mine or a torpedo. There were 1,066 souls aboard out of which 30 died. Even with additional reinforcement and the higher bulkheads, she joined her sister at the bottom of the sea in about an hour.

Post-Post-Scriptum:

In researching for this blog, I read A Night to Remember yet again. Now I can put it back into my toolbox…for a while anyway.