Sunday, March 11, 2012

Song #93. In Between Kingfishers



Kingfisher's Sam M. Walton will ‘splain you from his grave
Just why he can’t be undersold
He's was where I bought this brand new tent
Run me less than one month's rent
Or a-tenth the mortgage I used to owe
‘Til that paper was worth more than the house and the bank said: “Go!"

Still, winter and Fresno won't meet up again until sometime late Halloween
But by then who knows just how bad things just might be
So for now, like the other families
In all those other tents
We’re just got caught up a little in between
A little in-between.

Folks say California’s a garden of Eden Abhez ‘Nature Boys’
Clever as their tans, and beach-stoned to a man
But here in this inland No-Town, lives remain
‘Bout as easy as fallin’ 'neath a train.
Gov’ner closed New Jack City, but said we can move on up to his state fair
Where his state cops can watch us closer there.

Summer and Sacramento bake you drier than a stone
200 miles north of all you had and all you’d known.
Strung out like a wire hung
From what your future was to where your future's gone,
And you’re left hanging in between and on your own
Forgotten and alone.

The Kingfish Huey P. Long sang there’s ‘nough for folks to share
And if you work hard ‘n play fair you can even be a millionaire
They called him a demagogue, communist, cracker and clown
He sang “Every man a king but no man wears a crown”
He built bridges and highways and the hospital at LSU
'Til a doctor shot him in 1935 and he bled to death at the age of 42.

Woody Guthrie and F.D.R.
Sit with Sam and Huey in an abandoned car
Behind a vacant Wal-Mart in a town like them that’s died.
Huey strums Woodrow’s guitar
And sings a song for working folks with kids who gotta live in their cars.
Franklin whispers sweetly, “In this light, Samuel, you look just like Eleanor.”
And Kingfisher’s Sam M. Walton can’t recall just what the hell his whole life was for,
Although he’s sure it was gold
Or maybe it was green
Or maybe something in between.

-April 2009

The notes were made on 3/11/2012.  I think there is a great deal here in this one.  I began thinking about this problem really once I became unemployed.  Like all doctors and a lot of other folks, I never thought I experience unemployment in my life.  While I was looking for a job in January of 2009, I thought I might be landing one in Fresno, California. I saw the pictures in the paper about the tent cities in Fresno, and in Sacramento behind the Blue Diamond Almond Factory (never knew almonds came from factories…go figure).  I heard about how Governor Schwarzenegger wanted to move all the tent cities from what the homeless had named “New Jack City” to the California State Fairgrounds. I thought about the old 1930's Hooverilles of sepia tone photographs, and about the New Hoovervilles, and where did those newish brightly colored tents came from.  I figured they came from Walmart, where they would have been cheap.  That led me to research on Sam M. Walton.  I learned he was born in Kingfisher, OK.  Then I thought about The Kingfish, Huey P. Long,  I don’t think one can come up with two more different views about Capitalism than these two men.  So all these ideas got rolled into this song.


Also here a link to something I wrote I posted on facebook called Folks Say California's a Garden of Eden (Abhez Nature Boys) - Loaves & Fishesand an earlier essay I had originally posted on myspace  called “All The News That Gives Me Fits...”


Sacramento California Tent City - The New Hooverville
I seem to remember that it was during the Reagan Administration that the homeless in this country unsubmerged from the netherworld of "stuff that we can safely ignore" to "a nuisance shame to reproach and annoy us". Folks stopped referring to those on the street as "bums", "winos", "beggars" or "hoboes", and began labeling them as "homeless" or "street people"...a Lamarckian approach to reclassifying these folks as a rather different sort of pest.
So this all brought up lots of thoughts:
Heading to work early one Sunday morning in 1986, driving past the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and watching a guy wake up on a park bench."
Jack", an old song of mine which came from that observation.
Thinking about William Carlos Williams' poem "The Young Housewife" and its important idea that as writers we "use" our subjects...his comparing the woman to a falling leaf and then later his grinding up leaves under the tires of his passing car.
Tearing that poem out of my copy of the Abridged Norton Anthology of English Poetry and giving the pages to Hugh Blumenfeld in the field in Kerrville,Texas where I first met him. Living in a tent in those fields myself, albeit voluntarily, for a week or so at the end of each May for about ten years in a row while so many new friends lived around me in other tents. Playing "Jack" at the ballad tree at Kerrville...although it wasn't the on the hill but in their little theater because of an incoming rain storm, how a bunch of other performers came over to me after asking after the song. Debuting "Jack" at Earl's. Chris Farrell's telling me that it really was something'.
Volunteering at The St. Martin de Porres homeless shelter run by Sister Connie and Sister Theresa and really how very little I contributed. 
Living with my wife's terror about our losing our home if my own unemployment continues.
Hearing Phil Ochs' song "There but for Fortune". The first time I remember ever hearing a Phil Ochs' song, "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", performed by Todd Kelly with his twelve string at Earl's Pub open mike. Thinking how great I thought that song was and how much I enjoyed his version. How incredibly annoying Todd Kelly really was, and all those crap quality cassette tapes he would fob off of him and Dwain Story. Later hearing about his last job delivering pizzas and that one day he just sat down on an apartment stoop after delivering a pie and dropping dead.
Dwain Story
Thinking about the day he and Dwain Story coming over to my house to sell me Dwain's Guild for 200 bucks so he could get his Martin. Learning about Dwain's years with the Knob Lick Upper 10,000 and those old LPs on Mercury and his being managed by The Albert Grossman!
The Knob Lick Upper 10,000 two album covers on Mercury
- Pete Childs, Erik Jacobsen, and Dwain Story.
The back covers with original signatures from
Pete Childs, Erik Jacobsen, and Dwain Story - Produced by Al Grossman!
I still remember Dwain's songs “Wendigo” and of course "Good Pussy 4 Sale", whose heroine's seven-inch clitoris that could ball the jack. Dwain played great even after having been institutionalized for years for schizophrenia which turned out to be bipolar disorder. He needed a different medication. First time I hung out with Dwain at a short-lived open mike in Wicker Park (pre-Liz Phair, pre Urbus Orbus). I have loads of memories of this…my buying him and me a pizza while this really really awful comedian-cum-lately did about forty minutes laughing at his own pathetic jokes all about his wife…Dwain telling me about the transient hotel he lived in…Dwain complaining about how Detroit Junior got the gig the previous weekend at Earl's earning himself fifty bucks…Dwain telling me that if he had that fifty how he could afford to take a prostitute. How wide my eyes got listening to him talk. I also recall how the kitchen staff came out to hear me play that night. Did I play "Jack" that night? Naw...I couldn't have. Hadn't even written "She's Crazy on You (Shiela)" about Dwain and that conversation.The Dysfunctionells were playing "Sheila" with the great Peter Stampfel in Philly after Vence's car nearly caught fire.  When I mentioned that the song was about a songwriter in Chicago, and that the Guild I was playing I had bought off him, Peter asked who I was talking about. I told him it was Dwain and he jumps up…”I KNOW DWAIN STORY!” Wow. Dwain came to hear us play with Pete at the Lunar... a bit of a reunion. I even once had " to repair" that old Guild using a stick I found on the campground at The Kerrville Folk Festival. In 1998 I saw Dwain sitting on a Lincoln Park Zoo park bench case open for tips. Not much in his case. Dropped a twenty in as I left.
And Dwain is still with us, too.  He used to hang at The Gallery Cabaret, but apparently he got band.  I hope he is still doing okay.  In 2010 I made about 25 copies of the CD with his two old Mercury LPs on them, with covers and all, so he could sell them as he busked.  I hope he is still doing okay.
Wendigo was his big song. Remember studying way early one morning during my pysch rotation in 1989 and finding out that wendigo is an American Indian form of psychosis.
So now I have been thinking about tents and rents and mortgages and park benches and the weather and capital punishment and raising your own chickens and as it turned out I was writing another song at Winning's last night...
Kingfisher's Samuel M. Walton shouts from his grave "Won't be undersold". Got me this big brand new tent
At only 'bout one month's rent
Way less than half the old mortgage if truth be told
Sure, we loved that house but the roof was too old
Winter and Fresno won't meet up again until late Halloween
Like the other families in all the other tents we're just a little in between
Times just caught some us up a little too in between
California Eden Abe's nature boy has grown up insane
Living here's just about as easy as fallin 'neath a train
This morning's cops spread the word
Quick as Hollywood polishes turd
"Take your tent down you're off to the fair"
The Austrian's muscle made room for us there
The water there's safer and clean
For those here who found themselves caught up and in between
Times just caught some of us up a little too in between

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