Temptation

The evening of Wednesday, July 15, Baltimore's Harbor Tunnel closed for several hours. It wasn't a vehicle accident, nor a construction issue. An armored car's door flew open and thousands of dollars littered the roadway. Authorities closed the tunnel while the money was collected. This story on the morning news reminded me of a similar situation that happened in Philadelphia.

The Ben Franklin Bridge crosses the Delaware River from Camden, NJ to center city Philadelphia.
The Walt Whitman goes from Gloucester City, NJ to South Philly. They are only a couple of miles apart.  Depending on traffic you can take either bridge and cut through the city to your desired location.

One February day in 1981, a Purolator Armored Car was taking money from Atlantic City casinos to a bank in Philly. The Ben Franklin would have been more direct, but traffic dictated the armored car take the Walt Whitman then drive through South Philly to the bank. As anyone who drives those streets knows, the constant traffic and bad weather turn them into potholed obstacle courses.

Several Purolator employees had complained about that truck's faulty latch. This day, the vehicle hit a deep pothole, the door opened and out fell a bag with $1.2 million of untraceable cash. Driving behind the armored car was Joey Coyle, an unemployed longshoreman from South Philly. He stopped, put it in his car, went home and counted the pile of cash. He could not believe his luck, and just days away from his 28th birthday!

Joey did not have an easy life made harder by his methamphetamine addiction. He took a little of the money, scored some meth, then went home to hide the rest. In his frenzied state, he hid and re-hid the money over and over again in his small row home.

Not a criminal mastermind, Joey took a couple thousand to his local bar, started buying drinks for everyone and giving friends $100 bills. He rented a limo and took several of his buddies on a trip to Atlantic City.

It didn't take long for this unusual windfall to attract attention. Within weeks Joey was arrested. At his trial, Joey's attorney pleaded temporary insanity caused by the unbelievable bonanza enhanced by his drug problem. The judge was sympathetic. Since most of the money was recovered, he found Joey not guilty, but remanded him to a drug treatment center.


Joey became a local celebrity, and his story was made into a movie starring John Cusack. The movie upset many in Philadelphia as it was filmed in Pittsburgh. The film treatment glossed over more of the unsavory details and was just not very good.

Things did not go well for Joey. He never shook his addiction. Depressed over his mother's recent death and facing jail for another drug conviction, the poor soul hung himself in 1993 just before the movie was released.

Many in South Philly thought of Joey Coyle as a hero. That is absurd, but he did experienced something about which many working stiffs dream. At times I wonder what I would have done if it had been me driving behind that armored car on that cold February day. As ever - BB

"I can resist everything except temptation." - Oscar Wilde

Cant

That isn't an typo; no apostrophe is needed in this "cant." I came across the term while researching the Celtic root of another word. It comes from caint, old Gaelic for word. Cant is slang used by certain groups, so outsiders won't know what is being said.

It's no surprise that I am fascinated by language.  Slang represents the most colorful and creative use of verbal communication. Often employed by the more disreputable members of society, cant flourished among thieves, musicians and the drug subculture.

My attraction to the criminal element began with a love of film noir. Those movies led to novels by
Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and others. The slang in these books paint images more striking and lurid than the King's English can. Compare the difference:
I figured the canary for a good egg, but was conned by her gams and warble. She cheesed me vamoosing with my butter and egg man along with all the cabbage. Now I'm on the lam with nothin' but a roscoe and a ducat for a rattler outta this burg.
Translation:
I thought the female singer was a nice person, but was fooled by her legs and voice. She robbed me, leaving with my money man along with all the cash. Now I'm on the run with nothing but a gun and a ticket for a train out of town.

Prohibition not only gave impetus to organized crime, but forged a relationship between criminals and musicians. Making liquor illegal created the need for speakeasys. Musicians will play where ever they can. The illegal clubs in the urban areas became the greenhouses for nascent jazz. The more rural juke joints provided
the same for blues music. Both styles thrived during prohibition.

Early jazz musicians took gangster slang added their unique twist giving birth to jive. Singer/bandleader, Cab Calloway, wrote his own Jive Dictionary. Phrases flourished: teeth became crumb crushers, a guitar was a gitfiddle, fine drapes were good-looking clothes and so on.

American youth took to jive. They enjoyed having entire conversations that parents and other L7's could not comprehend.  (Make an L with the index finger and thumb of your left hand. Make the same shape with your right hand and put the thumb of the right hand on tip of the left index finger and the index finger of the right hand on the tip of the left thumb. It's a square - get it daddio - an L7.)

Along with illegal hooch, musicians experienced drugs in the speakeasys and juke joints. To keep the authorities and the non-hip patrons off guard, drug users created their own cant. A great source to learn about early jazz and the developing drug scene is Mezz Mezzrow's, Really the Blues.

Milton Mezzrow, born in Chicago in 1899, fell in love with the musicians and lifestyle of the jazz age.  He professionally played the clarinet, but his fame came from the potent marijuana he sold. In fact the word mezz became cant for marijuana. Later calling anything the mezz meant it was the best. Really the Blues has an entire chapter in jive about selling drugs on the streets of New York. The succeeding chapter translates the jive into standard English.

Slang shows the beauty, creativity and fluidity of language. It also shows our adaptability as a species as we try to hep the straights about the righteous racket to be had during this interplanetary killer-diller. As ever - BB

"He took her down to Chinatown and showed her how to kick the gong around" - Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher  - Kick the gong around was jive for smoking opium. The rest of the song about the dream of the King of Sweden, platinum car with a diamond wheel, etc. are all parts of Minnie's opium fantasy.

Happy 239th USA!

239 years ago in my birthplace, Philadelphia, the Declaration of Independence was signed. It was adopted on July 2 which John Adams thought would go down in history as the auspicious day. It was proclaimed on July 4. Americans chose that day as our birthday.

I abstain from pronouncing America as the world's greatest nation. We have too much hatred, divisiveness, ignorance, inequity and apathy to make such a grandiose declaration. Despite this, I love my country. I try to focus on the facts rather than the myths and folklore. I was told that during the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther once said, "I have no problem with Catholicism, it's Catholics I can't stand." While this is apocryphal, it eruditely explains my feelings towards America and Americans.

Red, blue, liberal, conservative, right, left - the terms of demarcation run on ad nauseam. I strongly
defend the country's freedom of speech and admire my fellow citizens' differences of opinion. All viewpoints must be considered as this republic* thrives on compromise. I believe the recent disdain for compromise represents our nation's biggest dilemma.

*Trivia side note - the United States is not a democracy; it is a republic. While a democratic form of government, it differs from a democracy in that elected officials represent the views of their constituents. As Mark Twain stated, "We have the best government money can buy." Will Rogers focused more on the individuals saying, "We have the best politicians money can buy." Special interest groups and single-issue politics form the antagonists of our system.

The United States bears many blemishes of dishonor in its history. At first only white, male landowners could vote, then just white males, decades past before people of color and woman could vote. Many nations, including Russia, abolished slavery before America did, and that was only after a four-year war. In 1953, the CIA with support from President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers overthrew the legally, democratically elected government of Iran to protect U.S. and British oil holdings. The following year, the CIA did the same thing in Guatemala to keep that country's fertile soil in the hands of American owned, United Fruit Company. These are just a few examples.

Regardless of said blemishes, the United States remains a beacon of freedom for the world. Those escaping from intolerance, hatred and economic servitude yearn for our shores. The ideal of the United States draws them. It is this ideal we celebrate on Independence Day.

I eschew a jingoist, chauvinist view of America. I love this county in spite of its florid history. Only by seeing what we truly are, can we strive to live up to the words written by our forefathers:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." As ever - BB

“As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said 'No Trespassing.'
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me."  - Woody Guthrie This Land is Your Land