Freddogg Off The Chain

I was sitting in POD class the last period of the day on November 22 in 1963, tapping my pencil and singing Big Boy Pete by the Olympics which 22 years later would ironically be covered by the Grateful Dead.
http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/introjs.htm?/~acsa/songfile/BIGBOYP.HTM

Father Wilfred affectionately known as “Tree Truck” red hair and face and molded of hard fat busted in on the intercom which was a giant speaker hard wired and molly bolted into the side wall.

“Everybody please stand up!” Bishop Egan’s two thousand students stood without question. “The President of the United States has been shot! In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. School is dismissed!”
The class of 50 boys mostly saw the humor in the sudden, terse and stark announcement. I looked across the hall into a classroom of girls in Honors Latin. They were smart and honest and they were crying while “me and my boys” were simply perplexed.

It took only minutes once outside before the news spread that not only was President John Kennedy shot but he was already dead.

Everyone went home and watched Walter Cronkite on black and white television. Around 6 p.m.my friends picked me up and we headed into the City of Philadelphia figuring there would be plenty of tickets available to the Celtics at Warriors game at Convention Hall on 34th street. This was the era of Russell versus Chamberlain, Guy Rodgers versus Bob Cousey and trays of brownies laced with hashish.

The city was totally dark. There was very little traffic. We pulled our 1959 Plymouth up to the curb and ask a 6’9“ Colored Cop-there were no Black People in 1963- what was up with the game.

“There’s no game here tonight, ”he said. “Don’t you boys know that the President of the United States was assassinated? The entire city is closed. Go home and start praying.”

We may have been underachieving catholic boys who drank often but not from the fountain of knowledge but we we’re also street smart and knew by instinct that one rule of human behavior was constant and that was “Sleaze never Sleeps.” We headed to 10th and Arch Streets and sure enough it was bustling with flashing lights, peep shows, sidewalk barkers including prostitutes who were real dogs.

The headline on the legendary Troc Theater of Burlesque read: “One night only, Virginia Bell.” And in small letters “No one under 18 admitted without a paper bag on his lap.”

I was emphatically opposed to the immersion into the perversion of stage strippers and dirty joke tellers but Leo nicknamed “Sidge” who would later play in many movies including Donny Brasco with his three day Italian beard went up to the window and bought four tickets.

We were inside “The Troc” on the evening of November 22, 1963 sitting in the center section waiting for what we weren’t sure. I would go on to live the life of a teacher, writer and story teller and every November 22 my students would ask where I was on that day and mostly I’d say “Home” because I didn’t mind casting myself in a bad light-how can students learn from us if we all edit out the real history- but such a sleazy story seemed better left untouched, paper bag or not.

‘Cheese and Crackers’ Hagan, a legendary vaudeville and burlesque comedian told jokes that were blue and nasty and we looked at each other because although we were capable of the same jokes we had never heard an adult say such things in public. Lenny Bruce would actually be jailed the following year for telling dirty jokes on stage.

Virginia Bell was the Head liner, pun intended I’m sure. The music played, the clothes came off, and there she was, my first topless woman without electrical tape covering her eyes like in my mothers nursing books. Virginia had melons before implants and the whole performance had a sort of barnyard quality to it, like someone should get up early to milk this person.

We were all athletes and were most impressed with the finale’ which just had to be some sort of optical illusion because as Virginia rotated her shoulders backwards and her head from side to side, one breast spun clockwise and the other counter clockwise

I got home and my mother asked: “How was the game?” I told her it was an up and down affair, a performance that would spin your head around” and she said, “I know they didn’t play so what was it that went up and down and spun around?”

Jesus! Mothers ask the toughest questions! Two days later I would be in the Capital of Washington for the Presidents funeral on the far side of multiple Black Labels.

That story under separate cover.