by Ingrid Croce
“Those damn dope-smokin’ commie fags are ruining this whole damn country,” Frank told Jim. “I hope they don’t try growin’ that weed around here. I’ll shoot those sons of bitches. You don’t smoke that stuff, do ya? I heard you’re a folk singer.”
“Unh uh, not me,” Jim said shaking his head. “I don’t be hardly messin’ around with no dope. I just came down to buy some beer, man.”
In contrast with our dreary social life in New York City, we made friends quickly in the new surroundings. When our landlord told the neighbors, Carole and George Spillane, that a folk singer and an artist had moved in next door to them, they came over to introduce themselves. George was a warm and robust middle-aged Irishman with a ruddy complexion and a quick smile. Carole, his unlikely new bride several years his junior, was an attractive blond Italian from South Jersey with a sharp tongue. Both were professors at Delaware County Community College.
Eager to make friends, I invited Carole and George over to try my freshly baked bread, Jim’s favorite. I served it warm with churned butter and local honey. After Jim poured them coffee, he picked up his guitar, and they joined us at our kitchen table.
“Mind if I play for you?” he asked.
“No, no, not at all,” George quickly answered. “We’d love it.”
Jim played a few songs without stopping.
“Hey, honey”—George reached over and stroked Carole’s hair—“this guy’s good. He’s really very good.” Then he turned to Jim: “You’ll have to play at the Kaltenbachs’ get-togethers.”
“What are those like?” I asked.
“Well, living way out here with only two of their eight kids still at home, John and Ruth are starved for company. So a couple of times a month, they invite friends and neighbors in to feast on Ruth’s home cooking and share thoughts.”
“It’s a trip,” Carole said. “You might enjoy it, and we could definitely use some good music to liven things up.”
We soon became regulars at what turned out to be bimonthly dinners filled with talk about art, culture, religion, and politics. Our new extended family included farmers, teachers, poets, philosophers, fellow musicians, and artists. John was a stoic and an intensely driven convert. He ran the evening parties like a Quaker meeting and loomed over the gatherings, starting each meal with a theatrical invocation while everyone held hands around the table in prayer. After dinner we retired into the living room, where John gave a dramatic reading, and then he’d ask Jim to respond with a song. With no preparation, Jim always managed to play something that related directly—or sometimes inappropriately—to the subject. Afterward, the august leader asked others to respond with their thoughts or feelings. The ritual lasted several hours until friction, boredom, or fatigue overtook the crowd.
In no time, I joined other local artists and showed my work at the Kaltenbachs’ old stone barn, which had been converted into a gallery shortly before we arrived. I was happy to have such a convenient outlet to sell my work, and I began painting furiously and throwing a new line of sensual pottery. It was great to have vessels for the bunches of wildflowers I picked regularly from the nearby fields, and it was easier to sell the pots with the flowers in them.
The week we first settled in, Jim invited Bill Reid over to play some music and have a few beers. Jim lit a joint, took a toke, passed it to Bill, and, as he exhaled, asked, “Do you think you can get me a job, man?”
“Shit,” Bill replied with a grin as he inhaled, “you’ve got a union card, don’t you?” then paused to hold in the smoke.
Jim went to work the next day as a part-time truck driver for Sweeney Construction Company, hauling rock from a local quarry. Several days a week, he headed out by 4 AM to load and unload rocks or concrete pipe at the quarry near Chester. He always stashed a notebook to jot down ideas and phrases he picked up around the site. He also put a small cassette recorder in the backseat in case he came up with a tune. Jim liked handling the big rigs and, of course, being around blue-collar workers. And getting a paycheck revived his confidence. Still, he never imagined he’d be driving a truck for a living. He still hoped music was his future, despite the New York fiasco.
After work, I would greet him with a big hug and a home-cooked meal. I really enjoyed creating a warm, inviting home for us, tending our garden, and usurping Jim’s position as head cook.
Though Jim was in many ways an intellectual who devoured books, studying philosophy, history, anthropology, haiku, and art, he fit in easily at the construction company.
“It feels good to be back with Emil and Crazy Frank,” Jim told me one evening. “These guys are rugged sons of bitches. If I ever need anything, I know I can count on them. Not like those pussies up in New York.”
On mornings when Jim didn’t have to work, he’d sometimes go into the local bar about 7 AM to watch the “breakfast club” and pick up on the local color. Later he would tell me about the clientele.
“They sit around drinking shots and beers all day, Ing, and they look like they’re riveted into their seats and into the bar with little screws in their elbows. All they need now are brass plates on their backs. Like the ones they have under those old taxidermy, funky animal heads hangin’ on the walls. But I guess it’s not all that different from the folks down on Race Street in Philadelphia. I remember my father would take me down there, near where he worked, and tell me about those bums that were down on their luck. I wish he could understand that’s where I am. I’m just down on my luck, trying to find a way to make my music work for us.”
Nights at our home in Lyndell soon began to look like John’s Quaker dinners, but with more fun-loving and irreverent guests. Jim couldn’t resist inviting all kinds of folks from our new community. There were musicians, young girls and earth mothers, the chaste and the horny, sinners and saints. And because I always had a pot of soup on the stove and a loaf of bread in the oven, Jim knew that between the music and the food, there would be a good time for all.
Although our lives had been transformed, and we were happier, in the back of my mind I still wondered if we could ever completely resolve what happened in Mexico.
Jim’s rugged, chauvinistic friends at work joked about women and their wanton ways. These truckers were caricatures of the kind of men that myths are made of. And Jim taped hours of his talks with Reds, Emil, and mostly Crazy Frank. He knew how to listen and when to speak to add fuel to the fire. I understood, on the one hand, that Jim enjoyed hearing about the truckers’ escapades. As a songwriter, he gathered material from his pals at work that helped him understand and portray their lives, but I thought Jim was different from these guys who wanted “all the women.” I truly believed he valued monogamy.
Jim had been so supportive in helping me get through college. He’d encouraged my artwork and studies, helped me with harmonies, and complimented me when we sang together. Yet sometimes I noticed a moody distance or unwarranted jealousy on his part. I knew he was processing a lot of anger, and I hoped that somehow he could work it out through the music.
_____
In Lyndell, Jim’s old, loyal Volkswagen began to break down. Often he was left stranded on dark country roads on his way to or from work. With more than 200,000 miles on the odometer, the car was too far gone to repair. The Raisin had become part of the family, and Jim decided it deserved a proper funeral. When he covered it with a coat of black spray paint, he and I were surprised at how much better it looked. We were even tempted to postpone the burial and see if we could make any money by selling it. Jim cracked a bottle of Budweiser and poured some over the hood, blessing the worn-out old friend. Then we drove the car to a lot by our old home in Media and parked it, leaving a sign in the window that read, “For Sale. Runs. Best Offer.” Two days later it sold for $50. My stepmom took pity on us and donated the Oldsmobile that had been sitting in her driveway since my dad had died three years earlier. Jim and I graciously accepted the handout, tinkered with it, and got it running. It sparked and sputtered up the road to the farmhou
se, then died in the driveway. It never ran again.
Over the next few months, we went through a couple of $50 junkyard specials. In late spring, Bill Reid loaned Jim $100 for a down payment on a gunmetal-grey 1956 Ford sedan in great condition. But the thrill of driving the beautiful $500 four-door lasted only two days; someone played a dirty trick and poured sugar in the gas tank. The Ford never ran again.
By summer, the word of the Croces’ car jinx spread. Jim’s friend Ronnie Miller offered to let us trade in his old jeep for a more reliable one. Jim took Ron up on the offer, and we drove to New Jersey, where Jim bargained with a used-car dealer and traded the old jeep for a newer one, agreeing to take it “as is.” He thought the jeep looked perfect. We cleaned the sticker price off the windshield and headed for the Jersey Turnpike. A few miles down the road, the transmission dropped out. Two hours later, Ronnie towed the just-purchased jeep to our home, where it sat and never ran again.
A neighbor’s brother leaving for Vietnam also wanted to help us out and lent us his beautiful 1968 Peugeot station wagon. We scored a perfect three days on the new wheels. In the middle of the night the emergency brake mysteriously released. Early the next morning, when Jim went down to Frank’s Folly to get the paper, he discovered the car had crashed into a cement bridge abutment right in front of the store. The wrecked Peugeot never ran again.
Mercifully, because Jim was working, even though it was a blue-collar job, Jim’s father bought us a navy-blue Opal station wagon. Embarrassed by his need, Jim didn’t dare tell his father the car was a lemon. He had to park it on hills to jumpstart it. And the second day we got it, the passenger-side door fell off the hinges. Then the front seat came loose, and the outside mirror fell off.
“I swear they delivered this car to the wrong address,” Jim told me. “This one was intended for the clowns at Ringling Brothers!” He laughed outwardly at our “car curse,” but perpetually penniless, he grew angry and frustrated at his inability to get ahead.
One day after seeing Jim jumpstarting the Opal, Bill told him about the time he had towed his brother’s car at seventy-five miles per hour. The next time our car broke down, Jim persuaded Bill to go one better and tow him at eighty. They roared down the winding highway, Jim shouting encouragement the entire way.
That was the childlike way Jim and Bill always acted together. Bill brought out a playful, competitive streak in Jim. One afternoon, they started on a wild hot chili pepper challenge. Jim ate one, then Bill ate two, then Jim ate three—until both men had grueling stomachaches. Another time it was raw eggs. Then it was homemade dandelion wine. Like two misbehaving kids, they drank themselves under the table and laughed until tears came rolling down their faces.
The two men also bartered their “prized” possessions with one another, each trying to get the better end of the deal. They traded mandolins, banjos, gadgets, guns, and knives. Each tried to outdo the other. The monetary rewards were negligible; initially they did it for sentimentality. But when work was slow, and with multiple car payments and basic expenses, Jim swallowed his pride and sold his guitars to Bill or anyone he could.
“I’m like an old widow selling off her jewels one at a time to pay the rent,” a dejected Jim told me one fall night. “I need to do more than just play for my dinner and my 25 bucks at the Riddle Paddock.”
One day in late September, after driving his truck to Chester and back, he came home to change clothes.
“Look what came in the mail today,” I said. I hesitantly handed him a letter from Phil Kurnit in New York. As Jim read, he began biting his lower lip. He bit harder, until he drew blood.
“Kurnit says they’re exercising their second option on our contracts.” Exploding in anger he slammed the letter on the table. “He can go fuck himself!” Escaping from New York and working at the quarry had toughened him. I watched him march to the phone. “I have no intention of ever playing again for Cashman & West,” he shouted into the receiver.
The lawyer was not intimidated.
“No matter where you or Ingrid play or what you write,” Kurnit told Jim coldly, “even if it’s written on toilet paper, it’s ours. That’s the way this business works.” The two shouted back and forth until Jim slammed down the phone in a fit of anger I had never seen before. He brooded for hours after the call.
“I can’t understand how they can renew the contract. The renewal option is ours. That’s what Tommy told us, and Phil too. Why the fuck don’t they leave us alone? This is just fucking bullshit!”
_____
On the advice of Jim’s parents’ friends, we hired Robert Cushman, a Philadelphia lawyer, to help us resolve the contract dispute. The lawyer’s $500 retainer fee was five months’ rent and seemed like a fortune, but seeing it as a necessity, I borrowed the money from my stepmom.
“Do you have copies of the contracts you signed?” the attorney asked.
“No,” Jim told him.
“Was there an attorney present when you signed them?”
“Only Kurnit.”
“The same Kurnit who represented the company you were signing the contract with?” our attorney asked.
“Yes,” Jim answered sullenly.
“What about Gene Pistilli, the other partner?” Cushman asked.
“Somehow they got him out of the partnership,” I said. “But he told us that he always felt the partners had taken advantage of us and of him too.”
“Ask him to put his position in writing and send us a letter,” the attorney advised.
Armed with Gene’s letter, Cushman suggested meeting with Cashman, West, and Kurnit in their office in New York. In the days prior to the meeting Jim became nervous and upset and began to fear the confrontation. His earlier bravado evaporated by the time we reached the intimidating atmosphere of Kurnit’s New York office. Jim kept his anger bottled up and sat biting his lower lip.
Cushman stated that he wanted Jim and me to reason with the partners and reach an amicable dissolution of the contracts.
Jim didn’t reply, but I pleaded with Kurnit: “Jim and I understood, based on what you told us, that we would be able to cancel the contracts after a year. Won’t you please just let us do what we all agreed to and let us move on?”
“You signed the contracts,” Kurnit replied, “and we intend to hold you to them.” He pointed an accusing finger at me and then threw down an invoice for several hundred dollars. “This is for promotional photos. You can expect to receive other bills for management fees and commissions,” Kurnit said, and walked out coolly.
Jim and I sat there stunned. No one had ever mentioned we would be responsible for photo sessions or that there were unpaid management fees. Kurnit not only flatly denied our request to break off the relationship but handed us bills we didn’t know existed.
We left the meeting in horror, and over lunch our attorney told us, “Unless you can afford to pay thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars, and are willing to endure a few years embroiled in litigation, well, you’re going to be bound by their contracts.”
The train ride home to Lyndell was dreary. Jim sat in silence most of the way, staring off into the distance. I felt betrayed by everyone: the partners who didn’t keep their promises, Jim for not standing up to Tommy, and myself for signing the contract in the first place.
The train passed through city after city, and a half hour went by before I said, “We don’t have the money to fight them in court, Jim.”
“We’ll just have to wait them out,” Jim responded. “Maybe if we fade into the woodwork and don’t sing or write music for a year or two, they’ll lose interest and forget about us.” He vowed to play exclusively at small clubs and parties, and write music only in the privacy of our kitchen. Not able to share his music the way he had always dreamed, he felt his parents were being proven right, and that hurt even more.
_____
When we returned to Lyndell, Jim immersed himself deeply in the blue-collar world. Although he enjoyed the Kaltenbachs’ intellec
tual circle, he associated more and more with the tough guys he worked with. He enjoyed visiting with Ronnie and his hardcore biker and stock-car racing buddies like Roy Harris, who had grown up in Jim’s neighborhood. The stock-car drivers had tattoos and kept cigarettes rolled up in their T-shirt sleeves. Jim was attracted to the men’s macho attitudes and appreciated the chance to dive into the world of stock-car racing. The “pits” were a far more subversive world than anything he had ever encountered before, and the challenge of being accepted in it was irresistible.
As much as watching the races, Jim liked talking and mingling with the motorheads at the track. Most of the drivers were hardworking, tough-talking, outspoken individuals. He loved their colorful personalities and the uncertain dynamics of the racetrack, where a fight could break out any minute.
He began to hang out at the track for longer periods of time.
“You always know where you stand with these guys,” he told me. “If you don’t, you’ll find out pretty quick, because somebody will knock you flat on your ass.” The drivers became his inspiration for his song “Rapid Roy.”
Rapid Roy that stock car boy,
He too much to believe
You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes
Rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve.
He got a tattoo on his arm that say, “Baby”
He got another one that just say, “Hey”
But every Sunday afternoon he is a dirt track demon
In a ‘57 Chevrolet.
Oh Rapid Roy that stock car boy
He’s the best driver in the land.
He say that he learned to race a stock car
by runnin’ shine outta Alabam’
Oh the Demolition Derby and the Figure Eight
Is easy money in the bank,
Compared to runnin’ from the man
In Oklahoma City with a 500 gallon tank.
Yeah Roy so cool, that racin’ fool,
