Excerpt: Oregano Fields Forever

He liked getting high as a child likes spinning in a playground. The liquor bottles in Mom's cabinet were now more water than booze from all the times he'd sampled and refilled them; Mom wasn't a drinker and neither were her guests. The only thing Johnny hadn't ever done on purpose was sniff glue from paper bags like some of the older boys did in the well of school yard near his apartment. He decided it couldn't be good for you after seeing the gang tripping over themselves and staggering out angrily; How could it be good for you if it made you stagger or angry?

      When his sister, Claire, came home with her hippie boyfriend one day, he had a role model. She had met Moses through a friend at her high school. Scraggly unkempt dirty blond hair past his shoulders must have taken months to get there; he wasn't an overnight hippie. If Johnny started that afternoon, he could look like Moses by the time he entered high school in September. He would have to shuck his white corduroy Nehru jacket though to get that grungy effect. Moses wore what could only be called Indian carpet bell bottoms. Johnny swore he'd seen the same pattern in a store on Atlantic Avenue once when his Mom had brought him to a neighbor's pet shop and they stopped in next door for mahmul and baklava. He could almost smell the incense drifting from Moses' pants, a musty scent he was told, as from the sex glands of a deer. The water buffalo leather flip flops completed the look. The ornamental belt wasn't necessary to keep Moses’ pants up; Johnny was impressed that a belt need not be worn for a function. 

      Moses asked Claire if he could do 'it' there and pointed to Mom's bedroom. Claire said "uh-huh" and went to the bathroom. Johnny followed Moses who removed a baggie from his pocket and waved it in Johnny's face like a hypnotizing charm. The contents were green shredded leaves, not unlike parsley. Johnny was excited about his first experience with marijuana. The 'it' Johnny soon found out was the rolling of a joint on Mom's night table. Moses sat on the bed and poured some of the content out. Johnny knelled at the table a few inches away, so close that Moses jokingly asked him not to sneeze, please. So that's what it smelled like. So that's what it looked like. Soon, he hoped, he would find out what it tasted like and felt like to have tasted it. 

      Almost reverently, Moses rolled yolk-colored paper, the kind of paper Johnny noticed covering tampons. Moses pinched a large amount of the green leafy bits and placed it on the crease of the paper, If Johnny had known about seeds and twigs, he would have been skeptical; there were none in Moses’ stash. Moses rolled and Johnny sat close drop-jawed as he licked the length of the end and fastened it along the side. "Voila," said Claire enjoying the experience of providing Johnny his first experience. 

      "Where to?" asked Moses when Claire returned from the bathroom.

      "We could go up on the roof? It's safe up there," said Claire, wide-eyed with anticipation. Johnny wondered if it were her first smoke, too, the way she acted. "No one goes up there except on the Fourth of July to see fireworks or to adjust their TV antenna."

      "The roof it is. Lead the way." The two pilgrims with their guru took to the stairs that Claire pointed out. Moses led the way. It was a no-brainer to reach the top; all you had to do was go all the way. They walked up five flights. He pulled the latch out of the eye screw in the door to the roof and light streamed into the dark echoed apartment halls. Out the three stepped onto the softened black tar of the heat blisters, careful to avoid wet spots. Over waxy brown wires that littered the roof floor like snakes and connected to primitive aluminum antennas with black electrical tape, antenna all facing northwest toward the Empire State Building in the far distance of midtown Manhattan. The three sojourners found a spot of sandpaper gray, dry roof paper, sat down in a circle. The joint was lit by Moses, puffed, held in Moses’ lungs, and exhaled in a flourish like the blowing up of an invisible balloon. 

      Then it was Claire's turn. Johnny was wrong about Claire. She hadn't smoked before, she indicated, and didn't want to this time, either. “How about you, Johnny?"

      "Sure!" Johnny didn't know how to take the joint from Moses’ fingers so Moses passed the joint, back and forth, from one had to the other, in demonstration mode, until Johnny got the gist of it. 

      "Let's go to Manhattan. There's a groovy place there that has twenty flavors of ices." 

      Moses had a Karman Ghia convertible. Claire naturally sat at on the other side of the stick shift and Johnny squeezed in sideways in the back seat, if you could call it a seat; more like a plank to keep the front seats connected to the back and a space for the lowered convertible top. The weather was fine and the air was a fresh breeze down Ft. Hamilton Parkway along Greenwood Cemetery to McDonald Ave and a right at Bishop Ford Parochial school and onto the entrance of the Prospect Expressway. Everyone's hair blew in the breeze across the Gowanus and Johnny kept on saying, "What will it be; Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, or the Battery Tunnel. Yeah, the Battery Tunnel! Wow, going through a tunnel like this. He had never seen the roof of the Battery Tunnel before and now, for the first time ever, to see it like this; wow! "Take the tunnel, take the tunnel."

      "Sounds good to me," and Moses maneuvered to the left lanes that brought him to the Brooklyn side toll booths. All the cigarettes, alcohol, roller coasters, and even the holding of breath with nose pinched could not equal the phantasmagorical rush of bliss that this was. Johnny’s kept thinking about the Crystal Ship; how it was being filled with a thousand girls, a thousand thrills and a million places to visit. This was the first of a million. Life was all about living to be a million. 

      No music in the tunnel, and what a time to enter. With "Penny Lane" on WMCA just beginning, it was a double Beatles block. Johnny, Moses, and Claire joined in just as Paul sang "…of every head he's had the pleasure…" “…to know," they all continued," and the people that come and go, stop and say hello." Johnny made the noise of the piccolo before the next verse. "…never wears a mack in the pouring rain, very strange." All three went “brump bump bump, Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes." Johnny simulated the piccolo trumpet and they all joined in, in harmony, “there beneath the blue suburban skies....” Three minutes later, the song ended, mid-tunnel, but Johnny was a Good Guy DJ, and he started right in with the second half of the Beatles block. "Paperback Writer," then all "writer, writer…writer…" Claire and Moses were George's guitar as they sang: "Dear sir or madam would you read my book…" Amazingly, they all admitted later at the park, unbeknownst to them, when the signal on the radio returned as they left the Battery Tunnel in Manhattan, what was on the radio but "Paperback Writer" itself! Johnny learned what it meant to be 'tuned in and turned on' that day.  

      The Karman Ghia made a right under the Westside highway and followed Hudson Street to Waverly Place. They parked near St. Marks Place and walked to the ices cart near Washington Square Park. Johnny was amazed how Moses knew how to go everywhere he imagined. He couldn't have imagined better. 

      "Oh, by the way, Johnny, that was oregano you smoked," said Claire in front of Johnny, arm in arm with Moses.

      "What did you say, Claire?"

      "That stuff you smoked on the roof? It was oregano."

      "Are you sure? I got high from it?"

      ""She's sure, Johnny," said Moses talking over the shoulders between them" We weren't sure how you would react."

      "It was a test," said Claire apologetically. “I wouldn’t smoke that for anything.”

      "A test? What kind of a test is that? Thanks sister."

      "Are you okay with that?"asked Moses.

      "Of course I'm okay. What did you think I am; a cop?"

      "Okay okay, we're cool," and Moses reached into a sachet he had over his shoulder. "This one is for real."

      "Don't get hung about it, dude, It's strawberry fields forever for you."

      Johnny went home and started an imaginary radio station.

 He saw Moses after that day; He guessed his sister had broken up with him. He never saw his sister smoke again after that; maybe that's why they broke up. The next outfit Johnny remembers Claire doing something with was the cheerleaders at her high school, her next boyfriend on the football team. Johnny, on the other hand, got off the soul train at that station and never looked back. The tone arm was on the record for good. 

Excerpt: Red Shellac Discs

In his earliest memories, he was dancing around a pole to Yiddish Klezmer ‘78’s in the cellar with Sister Claire. The leathery brown portable wooden record player, looking like Pop’s winged-tip shoes, seemed dug up from a Bolshevik battlefield. With power on to volume, getting electricity though a cracking power cord, the earthed wall replacement plug threw off sparks that threatened a power outage.

A slippery, felt, mustard-colored turntable top spun madly. The original iron tone arm, stiff like Les Paul’s elbow, had a twist screw that locked in place a needle. Sound, through primitive electrical amplification shrieked out from behind an oval, wood-mesh facade covered with course fabric; a speaker still pumping sound after sixty years of wear. Red shellac discs with ancient Hebrew lettering around the center spindle hole were new when first placed there. Like a loyal wife, was laid not on any other spinning table.

Pop pushed the swollen door upstairs open and came down the rickety steps to the cellar; he had to check why the furnace was giving not enough heat. Northern winds swooped down on Brooklyn blowing out the pilot through the chimney. Behind the stairs in the low-ceiling, 20’x40’ cellar space, a sinister-looking shack of grimy nailed hinges creaked open in the darkness of bogeymen where no grandchild would dare go alone.

Jonathan Livinsky and his big sister, Claire, were spinning around, hands-on tight, to a wrought iron support cylinder, in the center of the front room. Pop paid them no mind. In their own merry-go-round, a primitive pole dance, the tossed-back heads of glee and laughter ringing out to a Klezmer instrumental, clarinet honking over a sawing string section; it was spiffy! It was music, and it was Rosetta stone for Johnny Livewire. “Tootsie Mootsie darling dear…” Even the inner grove was danceable. Johnny and Claire spun around the pole after each other until, dizzy, they dripped to the dusty cement floor. They could hear the upstairs door open and a woman’s voice call out:

“Se-dra-ter kinder,” she shrilled. “Shiman, make it slower!” Bubby was not coming down; she had more important things to do in the kitchen. The old house was rocking. Shiman didn’t hear in the noisy furnace stall. Claire obeyed and turned the record player off. Dim light filtered in from the small front cellar window. Bubby had prepared dinner the day before the Shabbos and was going to “bench lich,” light the candles; the food would soon be warmed and dinner ready. Bubby didn’t mess with electricity or music on the Sabbath but it was okay for the kinder to do so, up to a point; no music or TV during candle lighting.

“Oy Rosie, I’m making heat,” called back Pop when the children went to tell him. A few steps across from the furnace bin, there was another forbidden room of darkened planks. Johnny and Claire had a chance to enter and explore it behind Pop. Behind him they slipped in and zipped under his arm. Pop went to get the homemade sauerkraut he had fermenting in a cool jar on a casually made wooden shelf near his workbench.

Saturday evening after a walk through Scandinavian Bay Ridge with Mom; Dad on shift at Idlewild Airport coming later. Leaves on the maple trees in Borough Park had turned golden and fallen well before Rosh Hashanah eve. They passed the row of white stone town houses with high patios, passed the roller hockey rink where the goyum boys made noise knocking their rolls of black electric tape around, across the street from the Monastery of the Precious Blood, a massive medieval church and retreat, a forest of tree limbs over red brick walls, perhaps tainted with the precious blood itself. It was enough to make Johnny and Claire shiver as they skipped and sang, “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.” Down a block of trashy little apartment buildings near Ft. Hamilton Parkway they went and into the Yiddish side of town. Straight from the Lower Eastside, the theater awaited with “Galloping Comediennes” with 78 RPM’s on Bubby and Pop’s Victrola; “The Good Ship Lollipop” with “Peter and the Wolf.” She was eight and he was six, they rode on horses made of sticks. Later, she would laugh and say, “Remember when we used to play ‘Bang Bang’?”

When Johnny slept over, on those rare nights his parents went to an affair, she sang him to bed with a lullaby. “Ahh-ahh-Joniliah,” sang Bubby. In the late afternoon, around tea time, it was Bubby singing “Yisroael, Yisroael, Du vas leban du vas blean…” All he knew is it was a song about Israel. The TV played Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour and Lawrence Welk, and sister Claire took to playing the accordion. There was never any radio on, and only Mitch Miller’s choir singing “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” on a portable record player his aunt had gotten free for opening a bank account at a new branch, but Johnny has music etched into his soul at an early age.

At Shabbos service for children, he lit the menorah candles sang the Hanukkah prayers and songs, though never as well as Claire, and he learned the Hebrew verb conjugations musically at Sunday morning lessons with Miss Greenspan.

Such sad melodies so many of the songs seemed to have. The melancholy melodies were his first blues songs, the half tones of Jewish prayers, the crying voices of the great cantors on those large 78’s, all seeped in. They opened doors in his mind that let the dim light out, but not the bright sun in. Johnny understood immediately his predicament in the world: the blues couldn’t be washed away.

Excerpt: On the Roof With Patti Smith

It was 1973. Johnny and Ferine had been steadily at it for two years. Ferine and Johnny cut out of school and spent the day listening to the Doors on Johnny’s dad’s stereo. It had been a year since Jim Morrison passed away from the stage of life. Johnny was looking at the back page of the Village Voice when he noticed something interesting: Memorial to Jim Morrison, Saturday, on the roof of a tenement on Greene Street in Chinatown. It would be held by someone named Patti Smith.

On Friday, the thirteenth of July, 1973, Patti Smith was giving a poetry reading on the roof of underground filmmaker, Jack Smith’s loft at Greene Street near Canal Street in Chinatown, Manhattan. Johnny went with Ferine to celebrate Jim Morrison on the second anniversary of his passing. Jim Morrison was Johnny’s hero and he was curious to see how another poet would pay tribute to him. Johnny had spent July 3^rd, the day Jim Morrison disappeared (Johnny had refused to believe he was dead) playing every Doors record he had, inviting friends to sit Shiva with him, drinking beer, smoking grass and hash, the way Jim would have wanted it to be.

Johnny didn’t know or care who Patti Smith was; she had yet to record and was not known to anyone but a few underground artists in the Andy Warhol scene. He just hoped she would do justice to Jim and maybe sing a Doors song or two, Instead, Johnny ended up being the star that evening.

Twenty odd people sat on the floor of the hot flat roof. The wait was indefinite as the artist, unbeknownst to all, sat with friends like a spectator, and said nothing. Finally, a man with a camcorder turned the light on Patti. She stood up and started reciting. The camera followed her as she moved laconically around the small roof like she was on downers, occasionally looking up and striking poses. Everyone seemed fascinated watching the tall skinny chick in a death shroud that couldn’t carry a tune when the poems she sang. Did she know someone? Who was this Jack Smith and why would he let her up on his roof? Where did she get the nerve to put on this poetry reading? Johnny and the onlookers were expecting something more, at least a Doors song.

In between poetry readings, a young woman came around the squatting audience with a wicker basket asking for donations, donations Johnny doubted she really needed. He clapped his hands; he started clapping his hands, slowly clapping his hands. Ferine joined in.

“My wild love went riding; she rode all the day-ay, she rode to the devil, and asked him to pay-ay…” Others sitting on the roof joined in clapping along slowly. “The devil was wiser, it’s time to repent, he asked her to give back, the money she spent…”

Patti Smith looked over, hesitantly, and then deliberately paid no attention to Johnny. She turned to chat with a man whom she knew. Johnny later, after Patti became famous, recognized him as her guitarist, Lenny Kaye. It seemed like they were discussing what they could do about stealing back the audience from this young man with long brown hair, in the black t-shirt, black jeans and construction boots.

The camcorder shut down. The light was turned off. Johnny wasn’t filmed or recorded. He remained in the dark, singing with others clapping and humming along with verbal percussion. “She rode and she rested, she rode for a while, then stopped for an evening, and laid herself down…” Patti went downstairs through the tarred roof well, probably to the piss factory. She got back just as the small crowd was applauding Johnny.

Patti graciously thanked the anonymous donor with the impromptu song and went back to her agenda. Someone in the crowd requested that she sing a Doors song or a selection from The Lord and the New Creatures. She relented but refused. “There’ll be a surprise, but wait,” she said, like a mother scolding her naughty children, and she went into a reading of a poem she said she had just written for Jim. The audience behaved, sat back on their graveled tar sheets, and listened politely. Johnny was surprised at how contrived it was, how so non-spontaneous while pretending to be so

Johnny Livewire’s fire was extinguished; all that was left was the smoke. Everyone could see there was something hot there, but the source was snuffed out. Ferine felt badly for him; but life went on.

Johnny had a strange reaction watching Patti Smith that evening. The same way Patti felt in recalling her experience her book, Just Kids, in seeing Jim Morrison for the first time:

“Everyone around me seemed transfixed, but I observed his every move in a state of cold hyper-awareness. I remember this feeling much more clearly than the concert. I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that. I can't say why I thought this. I had nothing in my experience to make me think that would ever be possible, yet I harbored that conceit. I felt both kinship and contempt for him. I could feel his self-consciousness as well as his supreme confidence. He exuded a mixture of beauty and self-loathing, and mystic pain, like a West Coast Saint Sebastian. When anyone asked how the Doors were, I just said they were great. I was somewhat ashamed of how I had responded to their concert.” (P.59) Johnny knew just how she felt.