In Boston, It's 25 Cents

In Boston, It's 25 Cents

by Bill Russo

In the 1960s I was fortunate enough to spend a few years in Boston, once called the 'Athens of America' for its position as the nation's leading center of education.  Even today, a sheepskin from 'Beantown' seems to be valued above one from nearly every other metro area. Seems like everybody wants to go to Harvard, M.I.T., or the Berklee School of Music.

There are more than 60 colleges and universities in the city serving some 250,000 students each year.  In the 1960s, I was lucky enough to be one of those pupils, first at the venerable Huntington Preparatory School for boys; and later at Grahm Junior College.

At Huntington Prep, I was one of the few 'poor' boys among a student body that came from some of the wealthiest families in America. My best buddy at school was the son of one of the most successful mattress manufacturers on the East Coast.  His 'allowance' was far larger than my Dad's weekly paycheck!

Though we had a cafeteria in our building on Huntington Avenue, my pal and I often went to lunch at the nearby 'Lobster Claw' or one of the other spots in the area.  He always paid the tab and never made me feel bad for not being able to chip in.

My next stop on the educational ladder was Grahm Junior College, in Kenmore Square. The school focused on the performing arts, mostly radio, and television.

The star alumnus of our little college, now just a memory, is Andy Kaufman, also, sadly just a memory today.  After leaving Grahm, Andy went on to a highly successful career, first as 'Latka' on the long-running TV sitcom taxi, and later as a comedy star on stage and screen.

Andy always said that he learned Transcendental Meditation at Grahm - but there was no such course.  I got it though.  I understood because I studied Jazz and Gloria Lynn at Grahm - but there was no such course.  

I often chatted with one of the school's janitors. He was a very large, but quiet and gentle, African-American man who knew as much about Jazz as Louis Armstrong.   

He also knew many of the top performers.  Through him, I cut my teeth on the raw and gritty music that never really got into mainstream America, but gave birth to the material performed by people like Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and many more. 

You may not have heard of Gloria Lynn - whom I seriously studied, but she was a towering figure in Jazz and R & B circles. In 1964, it was no surprise to me when her song 'I Wish You Love' topped the Rhythm and Blues chart and put a pretty fair dent in the top of the Pop chart as well.  

I had another connection to the music world of Boston.  A much older cousin, was one of the leading brass guys in all of New England.  He didn't have, or use, brass knuckles, but if you gave him any instrument made of brass, he could handle it as well as anybody in New York, New Orleans, New California or anywhere else in the New World.  

Whether it was a Trombone, Trumpet, Flugelhorn, or Tuba, he could play it. He could even play a conch shell .  He did it too, on a bet one night, at a club on Cape Cod.   A conch shell is not brass, but the key to a brass player's ability is the 'lip'.  If your lip is good enough you can play just about anything, even a shell.

My cousin had a job with a major manufacturer and never went into music full time - but he was so good, that he was often hired as an extra musician when big name singers like Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett came to Boston.

From my cousin I learned inside stories of many of the greats, from Judy Garland to Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and even Lawrence Welk.

So what all this is leading up to is this: Based on my Boston experiences many years ago, here's a mostly true tale of the golden era of Boston - from Blinstrub's Village, the biggest club in New England, to Sinatra himself; here's my story -   

In Boston, It's 25 Cents  

It's mostly true, but please don't put me on the witness stand, because I can't swear to all of it.  It's free to listen, on Short Story Theater: Click to hear it. 

https://www.spreaker.com/user/11578348/in-boston-its-25-cents

Joubert, the Wolf Catcher

Do you ever find yourself yearning for bygone days when you could walk in a pristine forest, hear the sounds of the wolves, see elk, deer, and even a moose or two pass by you on the trail?

You don't need a time machine to find such a place.  All you have to do, even in the 2020s, is go to the most northern area of the 48 adjacent United States.  The vast Allagash wilderness in Aroostook County has all of the above and more.

It's a place where the wild animals outnumber the few people in the towns and villages, a hundred to one.  It's an area where the snowfall can be measured in yards, not feet.  It's a region where the record low temperature (set near Depot Mountain in 2009) is FIFTY DEGREES BELOW ZERO.  

The old record was negative 48, that frigid temperature mark was set in Van Buren, a village of about 2100 people, on the American side of the St. John River. It's near Madawaska, the biggest city in the far North, with a population just over 4,000 (2010 census).

Joubert the Wolf Catcher lived in the late 1800s and yet his story, could still happen today.  Much of what you'll see and hear about, including the families of the potato farmers, is still the standard - even now in the 2000s. 

Travel back to yesterday (and today) in the most Northern part of the 48 United States, The Allagash Wildnerness, and watch on YouTube, the free, 20 minute dramatized video of Bill Russo's tale,
Click to watch.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3-uUATRLCU
https://youtu.be/P3-uUATRLCU




Joubert, the Wolf Catcher. 

Boston Crime: From Brinks to Lobsters

In January of 1950 the city of Boston was the scene of the largest heist in U.S. history when Big Joe McGuinness and his gang lifted 3 million from the Brinks Armored Car Company.


Now the city is once again setting a record - this time for the largest lobster heist in history.  In mid December 2019, a 29 year old 'losah' (loser) from Southie, (South Boston)  'allegedly' jumped into a box truck with 10 thousand bucks worth of 'Lobstahs'  (lobsters)

and tried to drive off towards Beverly or Salem. But the 'yegg' was spotted by employees of the New England Lobster company who saddled up and gave chase.

A couple of the workers followed the crook with a second New England Lobster Company truck. The guy who was scheduled to be driving the lobster truck, mounted his personal vehicle and joined in the 3 vehicle chase through the ancient streets of the home-town of the Boston Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins.
The guy in the car routed the thief, by smashing his vehicle into the front end of the stolen truck. The guys in the other lobster truck slammed into the back end of the truck stuffed with the lifted 'lobstahs'.

After they had the stolen truck wedged in, the employees dismounted and 'assisted' the 'alleged' crook out of the stolen truck. The 'alleged' stooge is now cooling his heels in the can. I think the guy could make bail, but will probably decide to stay safe in the lock-up, rather than try to take to the streets of Boston as long as the 'Lobstah Cowboys' are still in town.

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Spending Christmas 'Under' the Snow

If you know anything about the "Blizzard of 78" you'll understand the plight of a family in 1904, forced to spend Christmas 'Under' the Snow. The tale of the Barnes family, hoping 'Dad' can make it back home for Christmas, is an 18 minute heartwarming episode of Short Story Theater...free to hear. Click the link. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20363211

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Wild West Twitter Gunslingers Exposed

Reading today's headlines, my mind wandered and though I continued skimming the news, this meme seeped into my mind.  See if you can match it up to an item from today's 'feed' or from any recent day.  

 I'm not saying I aimed this at any one particular person - just put the shoe on whomever it fits. 

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A World With No Seams

A Wish, A Hope, and A Prediction

by Bill Russo

It will happen. Not in my lifetime and not in yours. Nor will it occur in the life-span of your children or their children. But it will transpire at some distant point in the future. Instead of adding stars, all fifty of them will be taken away. The United States will be disbanded! And what then?

As an optimist, a glass half-full guy, I say what will take place is that the United States will go out of existence, but will be re-born as a part of U-N -O -T-W, the United Nations of the World.

Peace will eradicate war. Love will erase hate. And the world will be seamless. This is my hope. Call me silly, an old fool or whatever you wish. I prefer to think that 'human' nature will evolve into 'humane' nature and my prediction will come true.

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The Jack in the Box

We know that letting a genie out of the bottle seldom turns out well; but what about a Jack-in-the-Box? Would you dare to release one?  Don't answer until you've seen my new suspense video - The Jack in the Box.

The  17 minute YouTube video of Jack in the Fox is Free to watch. 

Christmas in 1776 - Short Story Theater

Remembering the White Guy in an All Black Band

(The great guitar player and teacher, Chet Krolewicz, -known profesionally as Chet Krully- passed away in Brockton, Mass Hospital on November 27, 2013. I was one of Chet's worst students - but he never held it against me. Hearing his stories of the big band days was the highlight of my lessons and a true bright spot in my life. Listening to him was like having my own time machine ! ! ! This story is based on real incidents that Chet told me about. R.I.P. Chet. You were a good guy. Bill Russo.)

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The crowded train chugged out of Penn Station on a freezing morning in the winter of 1942. The 'Silver Meteor' roared, and snorted hot steam; engulfing the dirty snow on either side of the tracks and melting it into rusty water.

Originating in icy New York city, the Sea Board Air Line Railroad’s flagship combination would travel 1382 miles, make more than two dozen stops, and still hit ninety degree Miami in its scheduled 25 hours.

“Don’t get your hopes up boy,” said the tall, spare black man with silvery hair on his chin, but none on his head. “The 12 of us in this band won’t be in Miami in no 25 hours. We be lucky to get there in 25 days. Maybe it might be 50 days.”

“What do you mean Mr. Sloane? I thought we were going to be playing in Miami,” questioned the green youngster who sat across from him, his hands grasping his guitar.”

“Call me 'Lucky' kid, like everybody else. They call me that cause I lucky to be alive. I been nearly lynched in a dozen towns and arrested in prolly a hundred. Ya see, I’ve always been uppity. It’s why I never made it big in the music bizness. I can play the trumpet way better than Cootie Williams, Hot Lips Paige or Satchelmouth Armstrong….but I never give in easy. I make it hard for myself.”

“You are the greatest player for sure,” said the young man. “That’s what I told Mr. Henderson when I joined the band. I want to play with the best.”

“Well boy, you got your wish. And I wish you ain’t gonna be sorry you got it.”

“So, how come we’re not going to Miami for a long time?”

“Kid. We colored. We a colored band. We don’t got a schedule like Benny Goodman or Paul Whiteman.

Whiteman….that’s a funny name. You think Paul Whiteman would be making so much money if he wasn’t?”

“Wasn’t what?”

“Wasn’t white, boy! He is a white man named Whiteman. That’s pretty funny.

But us. Like I said we a colored band.

What that mean? That means we sometimes play in the white clubs and sometimes we play in the black joints. But after the show in the white part of a city, we gots to go back to the other side of town. We gotta stay in cheap hotels, eat cheap food, go to colored only places. Hell we can’t even use their telephone?”

“What do you mean?”, asked the young guitar player.

“I mean that once you get in the South, boy, there’s separate everythings. …..hotels, bathrooms, restaurants, schools, and yes even telephone booths. We can’t use a white telephone booth. We gotta find one for usselves or we can’t make no call. If we gotta take a leak we gotta find a colored bathroom or don’t go at all.

One time I hadda go so bad I couldn’t hold it no more. I peed against the side of a building and some citizen put the police on me and they slammed my head on the side of that brick building till I passed out. Then they jus left me there lyin' in my own blood and a puddle of piddle.”

“They can’t do that,” said the guitarist who for the first time, was having doubts about his choice of jobs.

“Shit kid. They can do whatever they want. You a northern boy. I guess that’s why you don’t get it. In the North they do things like that but it’s a little more hidded. They still do it but not quite so much as you’d notice it.”

The train ground to a reluctant halt a few miles out of Washington to take on water and mail. The musicians stopped talking and opened the windows. They stuck their heads through. Hoping for maybe a smell of cherry blossoms - instead, they got their nostrils burned by smoke and steam. Their car was near the front of the train and got the smokestack snot, while the passengers in the 'white-only' cars further back had the luxury of the clear, crisp air.

When its tanks were full of water and its postal car stuffed with fresh mail, the Great Locomotive called “97” resumed its clanky run to Florida.

“Well anyways, getting back to when we going to be in Miami,” Lucky closed his window with a thud and began speaking again when their speed was back to forty, “ Fletch has a few bookings lined on up certain dates but mostly we try to pick up work along the route of the train. Usually we play a night or two in Wilmington. Then just like the trackage of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, we go on to Baltimore and work a few days, then we get back on the train and head on down to Virginia and try to pick up a couple gigs in Alexandria and then Richmond. After Richmond it gets really tough as we go thru Rocky Mount and Fayetteville in North Carolina and then Charleston in South Carolina and so It goes until when we get to Savanna, Georgia where we will work for a couple of weeks. Then on to Jacksonville and maybe a week or two after that, after that we will be in Miami.”

“It sounds great to me,” said the young guitar player. “Ever since I first heard the Fletcher Henderson orchestra, I’ve wanted to be in it.

When I was in high school, I went to try out for band and the leader said ’what do you play?’ When I told him guitar he just laughed".

'There’s no guitar in bands!,' he scorned.

“There’s going to be,” I told him. “I’m going to play for one of the great Big Bands,” I vowed. He just laughed some more.”

“Well boy", Lucky responded, "you are here now and you are really good. You drive that Stromberg 300 just like the steam engine pulls this ol’ train. You are about the first guitar man to have such a big chair in a Swing Band.
I gotta ask you again if you know what you are getting into.”

“I know Lucky. I know and I am ready. I know I’m going to be eating in all those ‘colored only’ places you told me about and sleeping in segregated hotels…..and......”

“.......And don’t forget about peeing in colored toilets,” Lucky chuckled.

“That too,” agreed the guitarist, “peeing in colored toilets.”

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He did it too. Until the aggregation broke up, about three years later, that determined young man's hot guitar drove the Fletcher Henderson orchestra and made it one of the country's finest swing bands.

He ate with the band, slept where they slept, drank from the colored-only fountains...and even called his Mom every Sunday, from the segregated telephones.

There’s a little more to the story.

He was not only one of the early great Jazz guitarists…but he also happened to be “white.”

Young Chet Krolewicz, barely out of high school, in late 1942 became one of the first (if not the first) to cross the reverse color line. He was the only white player in an all black band.

Chet was asked many times over the years, why he would endure the hardships he did in choosing to play with Henderson’s band when he could have signed on to any one of dozens of white bands.

His reply was always the same,

“I wanted to play with the best.”

Cape Cod Film-Maker in Clover, While Up to his Ears in Alligators.

 By Bill Russo 

Dan Adams of Cape Cod is considered a great ‘old school’ film director by a number of elite Hollywood actors, including the likes of Bruce Dern, Sandra Bullock, and Richard Dreyfus.  It was Adams of Barnstable Village, who gave Bullock her first shot at a starring role in his initial feature film, 1989’s A Fool and his Money.

Speaking of money, it probably should be pointed out that the real talent of the 60 year old Adams lies not in his film-making but in ‘G-OPM’ – as in “Getting Other Peoples’ Money”. It was this skill that netted him two years in prison after being convicted of bilking the Massachusetts Film Commission of 4.7 million dollars to finance his Cape Cod productions of The Golden Boys (2008) and The Lightkeepers (2009).

Adams claimed writing credits for the projects, yet old time Cape Codders recognized both films as reproductions of books by writer Joe Lincoln of Brewster on Cape Cod. The Golden Boys was based on Lincoln’s 1904 work – the Story of the Coast. His Lightkeepers was a reworking of Lincoln’s 1911 tale, The Woman Haters.

 
The pair of films taken from the highly successful Joe Lincoln books though well regarded, yielded scant box office returns. That was not a problem for Dan Adams however, because he was paid over $5,000,000 in film credits that could be used as cash.

He told the state film commission that he paid Richard Dreyfuss 2.5 million dollars to take the lead role in the Lightkeepers. Since he actually paid his star only 400 thousand, he put the extra 2.1 million in his own pocket. This was the most egregious overcharge to the state, but not the only one.

 
He admitted to the crimes at his trial and in 2012 was sentenced to serve two years. In late 2013 he emerged from jail and announced that he intended to resume his film career. 

After his release there was talk of him making a film version of “The Big Valley”, a very successful 1960s tv series starring Barbara Stanwyck. Though nothing ever came of that, Adams worked quietly to build up another stockpile of cash and in 2018 he directed a film called “An L.A. Minute” starring Gabriel Byrne and Kiersy Clemons. The film has only one star on Rotten Tomatoes and just 2 and a half on IMDB.

An L.A. Minute was released in just three theaters and generated merely $5000 in ticket revenues from the three theaters it played in. So how could Dan Adams make any money from such a colossal flop?

The answer to that question surfaced about five months after the release of the film. In February, 2019 the United States Securities and Exchange Commission charged Dan Adams with fraud, saying that he induced two investors to put $160,000.00 into the project, as part of a 50 million dollar fund he and a partner assembled to finance their films and music ventures. An L.A. Minute was their first production.

As of this date the status of the filing is uncertain. I haven’t been able to find any follow up stories, but I suspect another trial is in store for Mr. Adams. 

Okay, this brings us up to the end of November, 2019. What’s next for the intrepid Cape Cod film-maker who has been compared to the legendary Alfred Hitchcock?

THE WALK! 

It was announced this week  that Adams has been signed on to direct ‘The Walk’. The film will be produced by Micheal Mailer, whose last effort, The Ledge, with Liv Tyler among others, earned all of $8,000 in ticket money!

Don’t fear. Even if The Walk only picks up about $340 in box office dough, Dan Adams will find a way to make some cash from it. He always does.

By the way, Dan Adams is the co-writer of The Walk. The other writer? His name is George Powell. A convicted drug dealer who served time in Bay State pens with Adams.

 
Since earning his freedom, Mr. Powell has been earning his daily bread by script-writing. The Walk is his first effort, but it won’t be his last try – because one way or another, everybody is going to make big money from this film: with the probable exception of the investors!

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Struck by a Meteor - The True Story

65 years ago in late November, the Sky Fell on Alabama - when 10 pounds of space rock plummeted towards the home of Mrs. Ann Hodges.  Seconds later she became the only person in the history of the world to be struck by a rock from outer space - this is her true story, dramatized by Short Story Theater. Click the link to be taken to the video...…..  https://youtu.be/MwI3o31FLng

What Happened in the U.S. on 11-23-1954?

On this day, November 23, 1954. the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a new high of 383 - the highest mark since the 'Great' Depression. On this day in 2019 the DJ will close at around 28,000 dollars! This fact comes into play in "The Sky Fell on Alabama". It's Episode 14 of Short Story Theater - coming this week to all major podcast platforms and YouTube. It's a 15 minute, full cast true story of the only person to be struck by a space rock, and live to tell about it!

Coming to Short Story Theater

The true story of the nightmare life of Mrs. Ann Hodges

who survived being struck by a six pound

 meteor from outer space.....

Coming the week of November 23, 2019 

to all major podcast platforms as well as Youtube

When the Neighborhood Knights Ran the Numbers

Back in the days when gambling wasn't run by crooked politicians,  the 'Knights of the Neighborhood', the local bookies ran the show...and the police looked the other way, except for this one cop who didn't.....'Ten Dollars on the Nose', Episode 12 of Season One of Short Story Theater, now available - free to listen to this ten minute drama base on a real life incident in Massachusetts (click the link) .....https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20038849