Excerpt: The Hard-Hat Riot - NYC 5-8-70

  On May 8th in his sophomore year, he went on his first march in Manhattan with Tony. The whole Social Action Club from Central High School went. Mayor Lindsey paid for their transportation to Battery Park in a black hearse limousine. The mayor’s office even supplied the print shop where they could make flyers. What a great mayor! Business people hated him

    A metal-hinged accordion barricade twined  around an open manhole. Its worn bruised circular bars one inch think and unbendable. Three tubes one foot from the pavement soldered smoothly, metal bottoms scratching the pitch black surface. On the manhole itself, three feet wide, a pair of think gray fabric gloves lay atop hefty pliers and a cardboard spool of thick black cable. To the side was a three foot passageway where parked cars had formally been before moved for the march. A heavy yellow metal chest sat on the side closest to the open manhole, the hitch extended out past  the one-wheeled power unit out into the street where marchers marched. One had to avoid it to make his way up Broadway.

      To the left of the work area lay the full breadth of Broadway; four lanes wide without cars parked at meters, thirty feet wide if you didn’t include the obstructive work area with open manhole. The legal march, originating in Battery Park a half mile down the hill at the southerly tip of Manhattan, proceeded by, the noisy procession punctuated by players banging thick dowel sticks on industrial strength white plastic containers punched with holes on either side where a rope strung around the neck of the primitive musicians. It moved on past the Consolidated Edison work-site until he caught it in sight out of the right corner of his eye.

      He held up the right rear of the cardboard American flag draped coffin, moved as briskly up the Broadway as the 60,000 Americans whose death was symbolized by the box of their final resting place.

        “Ho-ho-ho Chi-Min, the N.L.F. is gonna win! …”  bounced off the marble facades of the business towers on either side of Broadway echoing its way up the canyon, clashing with previous and preceding contingents high schools around the five boroughs. The march shouted, the march chanted, and the earnest youth joined to win like Ho would win.

      He could vaguely see, from the right corner of his eye, the work area and uncovered manhole cover which lay at its side, and he knew where to avoid walking. From out of the hole, a light blue hardhat emerged, and then a forehead, black eyebrows, bulbous nose, square opened mouth, strapped under chin, and the whole body of a workman. The face had a smile on it, a middle-aged smile with stubble beard around the lips of unshaven cheeks, a missing tooth around brown abused tiles. The mouth smiled but the eyes stared. That should have been a warning. He smiled back excitedly but he shouldn’t have. Within two feet of the five foot cage, cheeks sucked in, lips puckered, the chest expanded, and a large globule of discharge shot through the air. Solid gray phlegm coagulated by whatever soot the man had breathed into his uncovered blowhole below the street among the serpentine sewers of old New York. The gray matter flew through the air and found its mark like the dart of a cannibal’s straw into his right ear canal and dripped down the lobe like a stalagmite in a cavern. Some dripped down his right cheek and near his eye. Johnny Emerson, hands occupied on the coffin flinched but couldn’t remove it fast enough.

      “That’s for the sign of the American chicken; fuckin’ fagot retard!” said the workman as he continued marching, drenched from the ejaculation.

      “That’s taking one for the movement.”

      “What movement. Bowel movement?”

      “Yeah man; from the fat fool’s shitty gut.” 

       They called it the Hard Hat Riot. While Jonathan Emerson and another one thousand high school students were protesting the killing of four students at Kent State University a few days before, The American invasion of Cambodia, and the Vietnam War, about two hundred construction workers, brought in by bus by the New York State AFL-CIO, attacked them. Union workers from nearby projects and Con Ed workers on the street joined in the feast. He dropped the coffin he'd been holding and fled with the others with tool wielding burly men in pursuit. For two hours, He ran through the streets of lower Manhattan, from Broad Street to City Hall, trying to escape the violence. Escape he did by slipping into J&R Music World on Publishers' Row. He laid low inside, looking at the albums and listening to new releases on turntables in booths in the back rooms. More than seventy protesters were injured, but only four police and a smattering of construction workers who, people said, hurt themselves trying to beat up protesters. 

        What was George Meany, the AFL-CIO President thinking? He couldn't understand how a union man could be anti-communist since communism meant the workers' had taken over the state. Most labor leaders supported the US military involvement in Southeast Asia without realizing American was clearing a path for sweatshop workers to take union jobs away in the new America. Emerson really thought that Con Ed worker coming out of the manhole was there to welcome the protesters, not spit on them! Peter Brennan, the President of the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York was at the heart of the betrayal. He became Republican as the skilled labor unions lost their power; he wanted to save his own job so he capitulated. He had heard the pleas "AF of Hell" from Pop. When he was a student at Joe Ettor Junior High in Lawrence, he heard how the AFL-CIO of Gompers had turned their backs on the textile workers of the mills there saying they were un-skilled foreign workers and didn't deserve to be in a union; that's what Pop told him. The AFL-CIO hadn't changed that much in sixty years.

     The rally began at noon. While he was further up Broadway getting ready to march, unbeknownst to him and the people around him, two hundred construction workers converged on the rally at Federal Hall from four directions carrying signs that said "All the way, USA' and "America, love it or leave it." They broke through a skimpy police line and started chasing students. The police stood by and did nothing to stop them.

Mayor Lindsay, who had helped the high school students by permitting teachers to join the rally that day, severely criticized the police for their lack of action. The police leaders later accused Lindsay of insulting their integrity by his statements, and blamed him for being unprepared for the demonstration. Brennan, on the other hand, was welcomed to the White House where he presented Nixon with a hard hat souvenir.  www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

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Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

Ch. 7: Introducing Johnny Livewire

Tattered wooden benches lined two sides of "The Square" triangle; only subway riders alighted there and moved on. Old Italians went home at dusk. Pigeons grabbed their last morsels. At dusk, teenagers took over. Psychedelic music took benches facing Ft. Hamilton Parkway and glue-sniffers found the New Utrecht Avenue side by the el more to their liking. Ethnicity determined crossroaders, acid or downers, scouting both sides for friends and dealers. Musicians like keyboardist Jimmy Molica who went on to Blondie, and bass player, David Canola, were Italians with an affinity for pot and Quaalude. Johnny Davinsky was referred to as “Livewire” for his off the wall antics; the only Jew among them, an emissary from the Jewish fringe nearest the Scandinavians to the west, one of the few Jews not afraid to mix in.

Johnny knew every Cream and Doors song by heart; he could sing the words to every one. Jimmy loved Jethro Tull, Procol Harum, and copied Gary Brooker to a “T” when Carl Stein introduced him to a chick from Jersey named Debby Harry. Jimmy later changed his last name to Desdri; ethnicity was not cool. Jimmy’s friend, guitarist Teddy McCracken, loved Clapton and Beck and memorized  their lead breaks. He was introduced to Johnny one night on a run for weed. Vinny Appice played drums like his brother, Carmine, who found stardom in Vanilla Fudge. But Tony Benedeto stopped playing rock after he OD’ed. He had been a local favorite from Pecker Frost; he played with a landsman from Queens named Leslie Weintraub, later called Leslie West, in a band called the Vagrants, later to form the internationally famous Mountain. 

All the musicians played instruments well. Johnny sang, played the tambourine, cow bell, and harmonica. None of the musicians could sing or write lyrics. Johnny Livewire could; he put his poems to the blues music he loved and covered standards like “Born under a Bad Sign.” He started a band with Canola, McCracken, and Palermo named “Holy Shit” because that is what they wanted people to say when they heard them play. Johnny Livewire on vocals derived from hero Jim Morrison, astute lyrics like it was he with them in the beyond of perception. Holy Shit would became the best band in Brooklyn, so he thought, so he felt. 

      Johnny Livewire knew The Blues. He wrote the blues of the day about young men who had nothing in the world, “Brand New Ray” about revenge, “Free Fall” about disillusionment. “Hitch-Hiker Blues” getting away. “Garlic Gargoyle” about liberation through mind altering drugs.

The radio played FM; WNEW, WPLJ. The records were twelve-inch, seven. The revolutions were thirty-three-and-a-third or forty-five. Johnny Livewire was non-commercial, no station breaks. The smoke couldn’t be bought in candy stores. Johnny Livewire and Holy Shit were going to be the hottest band in Brooklyn, Everyone in his high school was talking about them, but you can’t have smoke with no fire; Johnny was hot but not hot enough for a label to handle. 

     The glue-sniffers played cruel jokes against the Jew. “Hey fuck-face, Jimmy tells me that you called him an asshole,” called out his buddy, Tony Gork.

      “I didn't,” Johnny replied. He sensed trouble coming from this worthless junkie.

      “But he says you did, didn’t you tell me that Jimmy?” Jimmy kept a straight face as Tony Gork guarded, in the vestibule of the store front.” Jimmy didn’t mind Gork picking on anyone. 

      “Are you calling me crazy?” Tony Gork and Johnny sparred with words, Jimmy sneaked up behind him with a tin of lighter fluid onto the back of Johnny’s long brown hair. The next thing Johnny knew, his hair was on fire. He frantically patted down his head before the flames singed his scalp. He saw Jimmy with the tin.
        “Get out of my way, Gork," 

      “What do you think you’re doing?” Tony Gork stood in front of Jimmy who cowered in the store vestibule. “You lay a hand on my friend and I’ll kill you.”

      “Get out of my way, Tony.” Tony laughed and dodged Johnny left and right in front of Jimmy laughing.

      “Okay for now,” Johnny was heaving and panting with anger, “but you’re gonna get it, Jimmy. I’m gonna fuck you up some day.”  Some day never comes.                                    ***********************************************                               

        It didn’t take much to break up a band; the leader left saying he didn’t want to do it anymore. Bands were not groups of musicians with equal power. Johnny Livewire found himself the leader of most of the bands he played in; the singer usually was.. The general consensus was that although the musicians made the music, the singer either wrote the music or chose the songs he wanted to sing; he was the leader of the band. Sometimes Johnny would throw his hands up and give up because the other band members didn’t like the music he had chosen or written. “You tell me what you want to play and I’ll sing it!” Sometimes democracy prevailed; each band member chose his own; preferences were so divergent that one couldn’t see doing another's selection. The band that stayed together liked the same kind of music.

One could tell if the band members were right for each other if they liked the same rock groups. Johnny Livewire’s liked Cream, Bloodwyn Pig, Jeff Beck, The Doors. Johnny’s band mates liked that his role model, Jim Morrison. A band would stay together with competency; not only what you liked but how you played your instrument. Longevity hinged on ego-tripping, a chip on a shoulder, a prima donna not wanting to play until he was good and ready. It was then the arguments began. Members took sides, someone quit, and the band fell apart. Sometimes all it took was a girlfriend.

“Go stick a hair in it!” said Pat over the phone to Johnny. “No, I wasn’t talking to you.” She was screaming at her brother. “What did you say?” She wasn’t listening.

Patricia Falcón put Johnny behind her in manage-et-trios, Billy in front. Johnny didn’t know the music was not enough to make it to the top. He found out that Jimmy Molica and other Italians at the Square may have had assistance. If Johnny did a favor for them, he might be in the music business, too.

Johnny met Patricia at The Square. She was a slut, but Johnny would make a girlfriend out of her. It didn’t work. She was dirty blond, pure Brooklyn, with big brothers and a heavy crucifix chains to prove they loved Jesus. Her mother and father talked dirty. Patricia begged to get out of the house. 
“Johnny, take me away from these stugots, marone! She heard the church bells on Sunday but didn’t listen. She was busy banging Johnny, but she used sex to get what she wanted. Her chunk of body, brown to match eyes and hair that thrust wild stuck to perspired face when she pouted and she pouted often. 
“Johnny you couldn’t get dressed and get me a Seven-Up float, could you?” Johnny jumped thinking he'd be rewarded like a dog. “Oh that’s so sweet of you. Here, let me give you a kiss,” Johnny would have taken a long walk off a short pier if she asked him to. 

When he got back to his bedroom, he threw off his clothes, grabbed a bass guitar, amp loud. That’s the kind of girl that loves rock stars, Johnny thought. 

    A high on grass wasn’t the same as falling out on reds and yellows. Johnny was a fifth wheel with his own girlfriend. After a few awkward moments, the two men hugged Pat. If he was a rock star, he had better get used to whatever goes.

      Coming up for air and seeing Johnny on the chair was surrealistic. Pat was better lying down. Weeks later, Johnny called Maimonides Mental Health Center when Holy Shit was playing in their parking lot. He saw a sign: "Encounter group, no pressure." She joined.

      “Johnny, please wait outside,” the counselor said.

      “Yeah, Johnny, I’ll be alright,” whispered Pat as she let his hand go. She was becoming a girlfriend. She’ll stop her drugged-out behavior, but Johnny was wrong not acting like a rock star.

      The next week The Doors at Singer Stadium. Johnny had two tickets, one for him and the other for Patricia, but Pat didn't care by then.

      “I’m going out with Billy; could you stop calling?”

      “Slow down and reconsider, will you?”

      “Okay, but give me some time.

      “We’ll have fun at the concert, you’ll see.”

      “About that concert, could I have your ticket?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I’m not going with you, don’t you understand? Johnny, could you do me a favor?”

       Johnny gave Patricia his Doors ticket rather than go alone. 

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Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved