Skid Row

My first experience unchecked by the ties of home and family came in 1972 when I matriculated at Siena College. There I found kindred spirits affected by writings of the Kerouac, Rimbaud, Verlaine, etc. We desired to experience life outside of our shared, conventional, prep-school blazer background.

Leaving the collegiate cocoon, we plunged into the skid row experience. The run down sections of Albany, Schenectady and Cohos, NY became our hang outs. Along with a lot of cheap beer, wine and whiskey, I drank in the ambiance of the derelict. Sometimes I'd talk to these old-timers, but mostly I'd just look at their faces. In them, I understood Kerouac's desolation angels, "beat and down in the world," yet beatific also.

Last night I stumbled on a 1956 movie, On the Bowery. This moving piece of "docufiction" portrayed three days in the lives of New York's skid row denizens. The film had no actors, but actual Bowery residents trying to eke out an existence in gin mills, flop houses and in the streets.

The two main characters where the old man, Gorman Hendricks and the younger, Ray Salyer. During the filming, Gorman was ordered to stop drinking for health reasons. He did for the remainder of the shoot, but when filming ended started up again. He died before the film was edited. Ray became a minor celebrity. Life Magazine interviewed him, and Hollywood offered him a contract. He turned it down claiming all he wanted to do was drink. He slipped into the obscurity of the Bowery.

What struck me most were the faces. Full frames of careworn, grizzled faces filled the screen. Watching transported me four decades. Again I looked into the rheumy eyes of men; the windows to their souls. For whatever reason, life and alcohol had trampled them; however, an unfailing kernel of humanity remained. As ever - BB

     “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved..." - Jack Kerouac