I lived as a boy in one of the suffocating tracts of suburban homes
Italian, Portuguese and Japanese farmers left leaving no trace.
Sidewalks laid out with curb cuts
Those orchards were a relatively private after school place -
Bracero camps were felled
As promised by the developer -
a community pool for our blocks of tract homes
A redwood barbecue table was set up under the cabana
Stuff like Elvis, the Everley Brothers, Bobby Darin and Gary U.S. Bonds,
Most of the families were striving to perform
I headed for the pool on Saturday
At the gate to sign in to the pool area, something was definitely changed.
A custom lead sled. Nobody had Tennessee plates.
Nobody did up a Caddy like that,
And there they were sitting on the lawn for Christ sakes,
You walked up to the gate and there they were just looking at you.
Each had a fallow distant face
It was the music. I was turned to stone.
The Tennessee Stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green
The Tennessee stud was long and mean...
I know I must of stood there
A brooding deep ghost voice sung out
Forget Fabian, Frankie Avalon, the Four Seasons, Bobby Vinton...,
From that day on Johnny Cash has been in my musical back pocket.
Cash had the face, that amazing face
Watching his eyes you could see back generations
As a young boy looking at him I saw the whole realm of male reality,
You can hear the music of the hills and green valleys of the South,
Rest in your peace Mr. Cash
swallowing the fruit orchards and berry fields of the Santa Clara Valley.
Dozers chewed and growled through the rows of apricot, prune and cherry
trees heaping the carcasses into huge bonfires that would burn for weeks.
Whining skill saws and endless hammering slowly replaced
the drone of irrigation pumps pushing clear cool beautiful water
through sun baked ditches and the roaring furnace blast of the fruit driers.
for un-built houses replaced the shady orchard
rows for adventure and boyhood fantasy.
to convince Elena Ramirez to open here blouse.
without a thought of the ghosts
of those who came every season
to sweat their life for a contemporary slavery.
named Los Ranchitos was built and it became the center
of summer adolescent boredom and children's swimming lessons.
facing the concrete deck alongside the pool
where we would plug in our teenage record players
and spin stacks of 45's.
remembering "Candy Apple Red Impalas" in the late 50's
and none of us new how late it really was.
and define the script of the West coast middle class.
That really means the homes could be bought
on VA financing and you better make the payment,
landscaping and fencing not included with a prune tree
in every backyard. It was white and it was not middle class.
not being able to stand the confinement
of my room or the silence of the sweltering house.
I had seen these guys before or actually I had seen them in a 48 Cadillac
Fastback, a low long loud bomber in primer white with a split rear window,
white and red tuck and roll, big fat whitewalls, and Tennessee plates.
I mean this is California,
40 Fords or 56 Chebbies for sure,
but not a big low and long tank like that.
right in front of the gate with a record player with an extension cord
plugged into one of the outlets for picnics that never happened.
Three guys with pomaded ducktail hair, petrified never-washed Levis,
cowboy boots, big collared shirts with rolled up sleeves.
with eyes that would be labeled
the "thousand mile stare"
by blind-sided teenagers back from Viet Nam.
He had the nerve and he had the blood
And there never was a horse like the Tennessee Stud
nothing could beat the Tennessee stud.
jaw dropped in a adolescent brain
fade looking a pubescent Neanderthal.
and filled the trim green lawn
with an alien - earthly spirit.
all of that Mickey Mouse Club shit...Johnny Cash just wiped it clean.
In later years "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" played incessantly
on our record players singing the words out loud.
of long wounds and unspeakable history -
his eyes could cut you down or fill you with warmth.
to Appalachia coal miner anthems, hear the mandolins
and banjos, gospel send ups, old liquor stills deep in the pines,
and badass flathead Fords on a dirt street Saturday night.
the burden of hard youth, the recklessness of innocence spent
wickedly, the haunting memories of days wasted in decay.
the pain of lost dreams, the struggle of the working class -
and always, his quest for forgiveness.
ECHOES
I.
You make it come alive.
My tract house childhood (five cookie cutter models all eerily similar)
VA loan for an $11,000 three bedroom ranch house
The disturbingly crazy shit that we did between 2:30 and 5:00
I could regale you with tales of debauched boozing
Yeah my old man was a great guy to know if
It didn't start like that.
My early memories were pretty normal.
The weirdness kind of crept up slow and steady.
Or spending three hours in the car out front of a dive
He was a bar manager for Claremans restaurants in Covina,
The North Woods in Covina, the Golden Cock in Cucamonga.
He thought he would own his own place some day
My childhood wasn't much different than millions of other
Simple times my ass.
Would you let your neighbor in yours
Lenny Bruce trying to warn our parents
What a country.
What a simpler time.
A couple of lyrical cats.
Only our little sub division
My dad was a beer salesman
Always lotsa Schlitz. Had kinda sweet taste after I had chance
At the swimming pool I was a member at I recall the swim couch
And the souls I think about .. every day ..
like this ..
Keith Jarrett ..
Yeah, I mean when th' junkies and the crack-heads
Ok, it's just all the old tiresome divisions have no use.
Especially the radio is so worthless lately.
Or what ?
was cut from the same cloth. Braceros, bean and berry fields,
early Orange County still barren in places and hot hot hot!
and my parents both working - while I, -
I could have been a poster boy for latch key children.
when the house was mine and anything goes and nobody knows.
Then the drunk old man stories!!
and self indulgent alcoholism that tore my childhood
into a recurring nightmare of frenetic memories
that weave a tattered tapestry rife with screaming,
crying, pity, pathos and all the depraved shit
that comes out of two fifths of Smirnoffs a day.
you wanted a shot and a beer back.
He had good taste in music if you liked Gene Kruppa,
Buddy Rich, big bands and jazz.
Davy Crocket caps and Jim 'Bowie knives' (plastic),
boys club ping pong, public pools,
barefoot summers and picnics in the park.
Like taking drives in Irvine and my parents sharing
a six pack of Schlitz on a hot summer Sunday.
in Ensenada while my mother would periodically run
into the cantina to try and get my old man to leave
his vodka martini and take us back to an American bar.
Cucamonga, and Gardena. Nice steak houses frequented by
pseudo celebs and big spenders who couldn't get in the Brown Derby.
(no shit, large rooster on a gold pole for a logo)
but that dream got lost in the bottom of a fifth of gin.
"Leave it to beaver" families that hid the truth from the neighbors
and bought into the lies of the fifties.
Cold war paranoia,
bomb shelters,
pressing questions of the era,
or blow his ass away?
that things weren't right but,
no one wanted to hear him.
Beatniks, hip chicks, Charles Mingus,
Be Bop and The Purple Eye.
II.
I sure can relate.
(900 sq. ft ranches w/basement to spin 45's
try'in that aspirin in a coke deal) and surrounded
bay big ol' corn fields in N. Columbus , Ohio. Latchkey.
to compare it to other brands. Coming home from catholic school
searching through my dad's sock drawer for the nudist colony mags
to get the vision of nunzilla out of my lil' pate.
setting up a 4th of July party and 2 of the older guys on the dive
team rode bicycles off of the diving tower probably 16' high
over same flames on top of the water the coach had formed
by floating a little fuel oil and igniting it while Johnny cash sang
"I fell into a burning ring of fire" over the crackly pool pa system.
III.
Thelonious Monk ..
James Brown ..
Lenny Bruce ..
Allen Ginsberg ..
Jack K ..
Miles ..
and Weather Report...
when Jaco was reportin' ..
was signin-in Son Ra .. right, Madonna,
Bootsy Collins and the Rubber Band, try this--
June Tabor and the Oyster Band --
I wish I could sign on with the all-enlightenment channel,
the Dalai Lama the main DJ, every day.
© 2003 - Diggers Digging in the Moment