Lawrence Ferlinghetti Died Today, February 23, 2021

Lawrence Ferlinghetti died today. Back in 1953, with a $500 investment, he opened what would soon become the legendary City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. Poetry, to him, lived somewhere between speech and a song. He rocketed into the public consciousness with the publication of Alan Ginsberg’s, “Howl”. City Lights became the go to scene for the Beat Generation. When I read Ferlinghetti’s, Coney Island of the Mind, although I was only a pischerka way away on the far coast of Baltimore, Maryland, I fancied myself a Beat poet as well. My first poem, “Love Is A Feeling”, was a coffee house hit. My true mensch of a life-long buddy living in Florida can still quote the thing. I remember the first one dozen words or so, and I’m embarrassed when I think of them.  My then girlfriend, Shelly, with long black hair and heavily made-up eyes walked through the audience with a bread basket chanting, “Bread for the poet. Bread for the poet.” Seven bucks. I thought I was hot shit. Three days later she ran away to South America with a jazz drummer. Never saw her again. He must have been more hot shit than I was.

When I was at Yale I took a course in literary criticism in the graduate English Department taught by Cleanth Brooks, a well known lit-critic I had studied while at Morgan. “When someone tells me they want to be a writer, I ask them why? If they answer, ‘Because I have something to say,’ they’re not a writer, but if they say it’s because they love what words can do, they might just be a writer.” Me? My desert island book has always been Roget’s Thesaurus. I love what words can do, the way they play with each other, the way they sound. I never let a sentence go free unless it sounds right.

My final year at Yale all of the playwrights in my class hustled to take a course in film taught by Michael Roemer and Robert Young, wonderful filmmakers whose recent credit, Nothing But A Man, starred Abby Lincoln and Ivan Dixon along with Moses Gunn, Gloria Foster, Esther Rolle, and Yaphet Kotto, young Black actors, mostly unknowns at the time. I was taken with that film and it spoiled me forever into thinking that’s exactly what a movie should be, in other words, about something. Anyway, I remember crossing the street towards the School of Drama building while the rest of my class passed me in the opposite direction heading for the seminar in film. I was having a hard enough time learning to write a play. I didn’t want to mess with movies.

Nu?

Decades later I sold my first script to Universal and signed a three picture deal. A meeting was set at Universal/Park Ave/NYC with Jennings Lang, the exec who bought it. I had a blue wool suit which I never wore but decided to wear that day. The first words Jennings said to me when I walked through the door were, “I see you wore your Bar Mitzvah suit.” Right then and there I should’ve known better. At some point in our meeting I kvelled about my ability to write action sequences. “I didn’t buy it for the action,” he growled, “I bought it for the love story.” It was years before I finally got it: Write from the heart or don’t bother to write at all.

What follows appears to be a graceless segue, but please indulge me. 

Some of my best friends have been fly fisherman (Two happen to be Jewish, but that's inconsequential). One, dead for decades now, was an ungainly guy -- big bellied with gangly arms and legs, and eyes that fixed you sure but seemed to come from two different directions. However, put a fly rod in his hand and he became pure grace. The line he looped backwards and then slipped forward was balletic, elegant, breathtaking, even gentle. His ability to place the fly exactly where the fish would take it was a joy to watch. I say "watch" because I am not a fisherman. I don't like to eat fish so see no point in catching them. My friends practice "catch and release" -- catch them; let them go -- but again I see no point in causing a creature panic just for the fun of it. It doesn't know it's going to be set free. It thinks it's going to die. However, as I was staring into the creek that flows in front of my house it occurred to me that I do practice catch and release, only in my own way.

Robert Frost said that a poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of anger, a homesickness, a love sickness. It is never a thought to begin with. When I walk my woods and stare at rushing water I have no words either. I listen to all the birds singing with no goal to capture them on a list. I don't care what they're called. I just want to listen. I have no thoughts but I do have a lump in my throat. I do have yearnings. My job (if one can call what I do a job) is to capture these feelings by putting words to them, to craft them and allow them to float free of me, to bring them to the attention of someone else, to share them. In this way I keep my thoughts from dying with me. I don't believe in any mystical after life experience. I believe the here and now is all I've got. Except for the words I choose. If I choose them properly they will live on beyond me. I catch my feelings, distill them, and craft a spell that sends them on their way, to you, I hope. When I write a book or a screenplay external factors, lots of external factors, are involved. But these blogs are written for the pure pleasure of writing them, for the freedom I felt as a little boy rolling down a grassy hill and smelling spring onions as I mashed them on the way. Of course, having spent my life as a professional writer I do believe in an audience out there somewhere. I don't believe writers who profess not to care what other people think of their work. Of course, I care, but these blogs are not written for the same reason as the work for which I sometimes get paid. They begin as a lump in the throat, not a pitch, not a log line, not a query letter, not a movie star in sight. For me they begin as something deep and mysterious. They come from somewhere and must mean something, but I don't know what until I catch them, process them, and let them go. The mystery, however, never goes. I continue to believe in the deep and mysterious, but only in all too rare moments do I catch a whiff of what it is. Only then.

MORGAN STATE/MY FRIEND, JEAN WILEY

 I am blessed by the people in my life, not all of them, of course, not even most of them, but some of them. Jean Wiley was one. I hadn’t seen her since 1970. She died a bit more than a year ago, so I will never see her again, yet I feel her presence, so vibrant and alive, because that presence remains a part of me. I can still hear her voice. We were students together at Morgan. I may not recognize this at the time but, at some point, a kind of osmosis takes place sensing cues from another and making them your own. Jean was ferociously intelligent but quiet and unassuming, traits which camouflaged her will of steel. You didn’t know how tough she was until the situation demanded it. She was quiet but did not budge, anything but a coward, so unlike the bombastic crap artists in today’s congress. I remember we met in a class on the English novel taught by Dr. Lee, Dr. Ulysses Grant Lee, Jr., a dedicated teacher with a dazzling mind as Jean Wiley had as well, only Dr. Lee was out there and Jean was reserved. She wore white gloves, a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat, and carried a purse, yet she was not to be underestimated. She would not let you get away with obfuscation, dissembling, or outright bullshit. In her quiet manner, Jean would skewer you if you deserved it. We became close friends with another student, George Barrett. George was among the first contingent of Black students who integrated my high school. I remember a skinny kid with khakis and a green sweater. We were inseparable until graduation sent us on our worldly ways. George was drafted and, fortunately, spent his enlistment guarding a warehouse in Georgia or Alabama, one of those outhouse states. Jean won a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to the University of Michigan to study American lit. She was American to the core, and because she was American to the core, she refused to tolerate injustice. A vital American trait, right? The irony of this fight for justice? Black activists were the American citizens fighting to preserve the democracy white nationalist American citizens were fighting to take away. Those people had contempt for a democracy that included all of us, not just them. That mob we just saw invading the capitol was nothing but a lynch mob. I’d seen photographs of lynch mobs smiling at the camera while Black bodies swung from trees in the background. I saw no difference, souvenirs of fingers and toes, the mob seeking death and souvenirs of their own. White people wonder why the “colored” hate us? “They are prejudiced, too,” was caucasian America’s prevailing “wisdom”. Imagine being smart, attractive, qualified, and capable but having every door slammed in your face, every single one, relegated perpetually to the back of the bus. You may be useful for medical experiments but nothing else. Live this for generations, for lifetimes, and ask yourself if you’d sit back and say, “I don’t care if my kids don’t get the benefits your kids do. There are plenty of jobs at Dollar General.” How can any sane and reasonable person in these United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave, sit by and simply suck it up when someone takes their job, their child’s future, their seat on the bus?

 

After Michigan, Jean went to Alabama to teach at Tuskegee, a Black college in the deep south. She then became a major figure in SNCC and for her lifetime used her teaching skills and intellect to work for change. Her home became a way station for activists heading into dangerous territory. Right wing mobs love to chant “freedom isn’t free”, but there is no comparison to the violence perpetrated on Black people considered nothing but dregs to be shunted aside with impunity. The following is pure Jean. When confronted by a screaming mob with guns pointed at her, rather than turn and run she slowly backed away all the time facing people who wanted to kill her. In case she was shot and killed, a real possibility, she did not want her family to think she ran. She’d rather take the bullets of bigots than die in shame. How many of us have that kind of courage? Certainly not the elected officials we have in office today, men and women who don’t even consider the people who built the capital of the United States as human beings. Jean Wiley not a human being? George Barrett not a human being? Dr. Ulysses Grant Lee, Jr. not a human being? And, yet, a man wearing a Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt is? A mob defecating on the floor of the Capitol is? What kind of people are we to buy into this? The guts of a Jean Wiley had no need for an assault rifle to prove it.

George and I remained close friends until his death some years back on a July 4th. If George had to die, at least he picked a good day to do it. We lost track of Jean after George’s discharge when he returned back North to law school. The last time I saw her was in San Francisco, 1970. She was already heavily involved in the struggle, but we didn’t talk about that. We just chatted like old friends, but I sensed an anger in her that I hadn’t sensed before. She knew first hand what it meant to be excluded regardless of skills and intellect, and she was determined that this exclusion disappear from a nation that, since its inception, boasted otherwise. She was a major figure in SNCC and devoted herself to teaching Black students in schools from Alabama to Washington D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland, our home town. By that time, I was long gone. 

When I taught at West Virginia University, 1968-70, I directed a production of “Guys and Dolls”. I cast a Black student as Sarah Brown, not because she was Black (I had no intention of making a statement) but because she had the best voice in town and was a good actress as well. The head of the Drama Department asked me to cast someone else, someone white. I wouldn’t and didn’t. I never made a stink about it. Casting was all. Morgan was in my blood. No way was I going to betray the friends and teachers who taught me so well. It would have been so much more than wrong. It would have been treason. I was aware of the consequences. My student became a wonderful Sarah Brown, and, of course, I was informed my contract would not be renewed. Tell the truth, it was a relief.

 Jean had courage as did so many people I knew at Morgan. It took courage to even get an education full well knowing they would confront a world that did not want them in it. General Patton’s definition of courage was, “fear holding on a minute longer.” Jean Wiley was not fearless. She faced a real threat to her life but held onto her principles and faced that fear down. My commitment was paltry compared to hers, but how could I do otherwise and continue to live with myself?  My student deserved to be Sarah Brown. Although I hadn’t seen Jean for years, my guts told me I could not let her down. Her legacy, and Morgan’s legacy, was that strong. I have never been able to deny them. What kind of man would I be if I did?

RUBY TIRE - February 4, 1963

 Ruby Tire was the name of my father's business, pronounced "Rooby Tar" in Baltimorese, our native accent. Rooby Tar. Primarily retreading but also sales, normally used tires with little tread for fifty cents or a dollar. It stood on Fremont Avenue up from Baltimore Street, likely the most decrepit part of the city. A bar and package goods stood across the street. Jake the tailor was right next door across the alley.  Jake sat cross-legged in his window, head down, sewing with needle and thread. Louis the Greek's, where I ate about a hundred and fifty hamburger steaks with fries soaked in gravy, was around the corner on Baltimore Street. A grocery stood on the corner where Sporty and I bought a roll, a thick slice of onion, and a thick slice of bologna for a quarter. Who was Sporty? Given name, Gainwell Haines. I don't know where he slept but he did odd jobs for my father, had a walrus moustache, walked on the heels of his feet, and carried a dream book in his back pocket. Each week we'd put a quarter on the numbers but we never won.

I worked at the place in some capacity from the time I was eleven until Ruby died, April, 1963, the evening of the first Seder. It never was any big dollar outfit yet we ate well, lived in friendly neighborhoods, went to summer camp, and dressed Joe College. The University of Ruby Tire was as much an education as any other.  

Southwest Baltimore had the kind of poverty most people, most white people, never get to see. With all its crumbling buildings and narrow alleyways, it was nevertheless a neighborhood with a vibrant street life which most also never get to see. James Baldwin wrote about another country. This was it. It was a world that was a substantial part of my growing up, a world teeming with all kinds of characters living their lives, getting by. I grew up around the Black men that worked for my father. I grew up around the people on the street and in the neighborhood. Vernon Graves, an employee since I was a little boy, had a huge smile on his face to see "Little Stevie's" name and picture in the Afro-American Newspaper. I flowed back and forth between two worlds, and, while I was aware of the disparity between “us”, I also never thought of “them” as "other". It didn’t occur to me, didn’t even think about it, never crossed my mind. They were here. I was here. I am not free of bias. I’m not. You’re not. None of us are. It’s there. “No”, we say, “Not me,” but it is...Me. Deep and subtle. Cultural DNA. The point is: keep nosing in the dirt like a hog hunting truffles and root it out.

************

 I was at a Marine Corps Reserve drill. We were dressed in our gabardines, so it wasn't a field training session. I don't remember what it was, but I do remember a gnawing pain growing in my guts. Sick bay gave me leave to go home. My brother was shocked to see me pull into the driveway. 

    "How'd you find out so fast?" he wanted to know.

    "Find out what?"

     "Dad had a stroke.”

We sped to Sinai Hospital where my father was still in the emergency ward. I pulled the curtain aside to see him, touched his arm. He acknowledged me but he really wasn't there. I did not want to be the center of this drama so I waited until I couldn't wait anymore and finally I said I needed a doctor, too. Back then an appendectomy was a real operation followed by a three day hospital stay. Known to me but not to my father, I was given the room right next to his. Late at night the sound of a bedpan hitting the floor in my father's room woke me up.  Then the announcement over the hospital PA: “Dr. Black. Dr. Black, room number...All available personnel…” It was my father's room. Next thing I knew I was standing in the hall outside his room as people in white walked out and went to where they were before. I must have pulled out my tubing. I went into his room. He was propped up in a sitting position the way he used to sit up in bed when he read. His eyes were open, but they didn’t move. It was unsettling.  I  felt a chill. My mother used to say, when a chill flickered through our little bodies, that a ghost walked over our grave. Is that what just happened? I don't recall feeling anything but a sense of unease as I approached my father and closed his eyes, left the room, and came apart. To this day I do not understand the depth of my grief at that moment. We were together a lot but we weren't that close. I had memories. My first t-bone steak at the White Coffee Pot restaurant after seeing The Quiet Man at the Pimlico theater. We watched Friday Night Fights sponsored by Gillette Blue Blades. I remember quips and exchanges, but I don't remember a single conversation about anything. And yet. Not before and not since have I experienced the eviscerating pain I felt when my father died. I know it may well be coming. There are people I love so much. It will hit, and it will be terrible. I hope I can withstand it.

Two months after his death Ruby Tire went on the auction block. My father's partner's in-laws goaded him into running the business into the ground so they could buy it back debt free and give it to him to start over. 

The day of the auction came, a warm spring day. The auctioneer stood on the hood of a car in the alley. My Uncle Milton, my mother’s brother, was with me as were my two close friends from Morgan, George Barrett and Jean Wiley, two very smart people. The three of us always seemed to be together. They had been at the funeral and were now with me for moral support. Uncle Milton was ready to buy the business for me if I wanted. I believe he secretly wanted me to make the buy and settle in Baltimore, but that's a whole 'nother tale. The auction began. No one was bidding but those in-laws. My God, they looked a despicable bunch, Jabba the Hut in baggy suits and a dress, diamonds on fat fingers! It came down to the wire very quickly. Me or them.

    "Do you want it?", Uncle Milton asked.

Did I want it? Did I want it? His hand was in his pocket. He had the cash. Did I want it? No, I did not want it, no, I did not want it, no.  The in-laws nodded. The talons closed. Ruby Tire was gone. 

I could feel Uncle Milton's disappointment, maybe even his annoyance. He had come to Baltimore to be with the family. It had not turned out the way he imagined it would, and now his oldest nephew had made the decision to leave for good. George and Jean knew I'd made the right decision. They knew as well as I that we three were headed elsewhere, that taking over Ruby Tire would have meant driving on four flat tires for the rest of my life. It was not an easy call until it was. Two more semesters, and I'd be gone. Jean would win a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to University of Michigan. George was drafted, and the both of them were in Selma for the march across the bridge. George and I stayed close until he died. He became a state’s attorney. We lost track of Jean who was rumored to have become radicalized and even to have had a baby with Stokely Carmichael. We looked for years but never found her. 

A GIRL I ONCE KNEW AT MORGAN - ADDENDUM 1/30/2021

 A friend of mine from Morgan brought something important to my attention. My tongue-in-cheek observation of my cousin's father-in-law, the mayor of Baltimore, ordering the theater owner to open his doors to Black customers in a shopping center only a quick walk from school where students were not allowed to eat, not allowed to shop in the department store, certainly not allowed to try on clothes.  It made it seem as if it were the mayor's command and not the three weeks of blood, sweat, and tears endured by the students that broke down that barrier and integrated that place. No politician did this. Morgan did. It was an act of devotion and determination pulled off by a student body determined to be polite yet determined not to budge.

Go, Bears!