One Saturday night in late 1960 or so, the chief engineer phoned Haslam with a possible news tip. While fiddling with a short-wave radio at home, the engineer said, he had picked up a segment of Moscow Radio, a regular English-language propaganda program broadcast by the Soviet government. The program, the engineer told Haslam, was about Nazi war criminals living in Canada. And it said a man living in the Winnipeg suburb of St. James was a war criminal.
Haslam searched through the Winnipeg phone book and quickly found the man’s name: Alexander Laak. “It was a hell of a scoop,” Haslam told McLeod from his bed at Mercy Hospital. “But we knew we had to get the guy on tape first.” Using directory assistance, Haslam had reached Moscow Radio. After discussing Laak with an English-speaking man there, Haslam was told he would be sent the tape containing information about Alexander Laak. Within a week or so, as promised, the tape arrived in the mail. Haslam’s station checked the story. Laak was the owner of a bricklaying business he ran out of his home. Like a lot of Nazis, apparently, Laak immigrated to Canada after the war, where he lived more or less right out in the open with his family. Haslam concluded that Obersturmführer Alexander Laak had overseen the mass murder of thousands of German and Czech Jews at a railway station near the Jägala death camp. Later reports linked Laak to the murders of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Roma people at Jägala, too.
Haslam broadcast his big story about Laak, and Laak denied it all. “Shortly after we broadcast the story, Laak’s wife found him hanging in the garage of their home,” Haslam told McLeod. “There was an investigation of his death and the police ruled it was suicide, and it was. That was the end of it, I thought.”
It wasn’t. In the spring of 1978, months before Jimmy Cleary’s murder and nearly a year before he was attacked, Haslam was watching the news. Apparently the Canadian government had been talking about setting up some sort of an investigation into war criminals living in Canada, and the U.S. media wrote all about it. Ken Haslam saw one of the stories. A Canadian security official said in the story that they had “no knowledge” of any Nazi war criminals living in Canada. When he heard that whopper, Haslam was angry.
“It was a bloody lie,” Haslam told McLeod. “How can the Canadian authorities say they didn’t know about it when they questioned me about one of these people in 1961?”
Haslam called the city desk at the Winnipeg Free Press. He related his story to an editor, who assigned a reporter on the police beat to call him. Haslam told the reporter about Laak. The story ran just a few paragraphs with the headline: “Canadian Authorities Blasted by Maine Man for Nazi Claim.”
“The Canadian cops said there was absolutely no truth to the Alexander Laak story,” Haslam told the reporter. “They said it was something cooked up by the Russians. But three days after we played the tape on the air, the man went into his garage and hanged himself. Why would he hang himself if he was innocent?”
The Winnipeg Free Press story was picked up by United Press International and ran in the Portland Press Herald. It didn’t generate much of a reaction in Portland — I mean, who cares about Canada, right?
But someone saw it. And someone cared.
C H A P T E R 29
The Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge was a shit hole, basically, an old dump squatting on Church Street, near West Georgia. It wasn’t as dingy and dirty as Cambridge’s pit — where skateboarders and punks hung out and scared off the tourists — but it was bad enough. A half-century earlier, it had been a wonderful cabaret, a plaque out front said, “A popular place for dancing.” It had been shut down during the Great Depression and went through several owners and lots of bankruptcies in the years that followed.
While the Harvard might have been something amazing when Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey played there, it was now a shadow of what it used to be. It looked like a good place to be mugged, not see a memorable show.
But on that fateful night, no one much cared — not the hundreds of punks swarming the place, and definitely not the dozen or so punks from Portland, Maine, who had coughed up a fair amount of dough to get tickets. To us, the Harvard was the perfect place to see the Clash perform one of their first-ever North American shows.
“Pinch me,” I said to X, staring up at the Church Street marquee, and the Clash’s name. “I can’t fucking believe we’re here, brother.”
And I couldn’t. The show brought out punks and wannabe punks from all over the East Coast. Some of the people there looked totally ridiculous — fake punks with Sex Pistols T-shirts and mustaches (which X would later suggest was a punk rock oxymoron) — but most of the others were the real article, real punks. We had never before been surrounded by so many people who were like us. It was profoundly weird, but also totally awesome. For years, we had always been part of a tiny minority, and then — for one night, anyway — we suddenly became part of a majority. It was a weird feeling, but it made for a fucking glorious night.
At the big rock ’n’ roll gigs in the ’70s — at, say, the Rolling Stones or the Who or Led Zeppelin shows — there was always the smell of dope drifting through the air and lots of mellow, well-behaved long-haired fans sitting in their assigned seats. “Smiling. Singing along. Sharing gourds of wine,” I said, grimacing as the Upchucks laughed. “They’re enough to make you puke.”
At the best punk gigs — including this one — the air was thick with a kind of edgy expectation, not dope smoke. The drugs of choice that night were cheap beer and speed, and lots of both. As a result, there was a thick vein of menace throbbing just below the surface. It had the four of us feeling like something crazy might happen at any moment, in an explosion of sweat and spit. It honestly seemed like someone could reach out in the dark and throttle you. “Which, in a punk way, has a tendency to make you feel more alive,” I suggested over fish and chips at Bartley’s in Harvard Square. “Gimme danger!” The Upchucks laughed some more.
Everywhere we looked, there were punks — punks in biker jackets, punks with tattoos, punks in chains, punks with safety pins gouging skin that looked abscessed. More punks, in fact, than I, or most of us, had ever seen in one place at one time. Between the occasional moments of uneasiness, it felt thrilling, like a historic night was unfolding. It felt electric. It felt like the ideal night for a show by the Clash, the biggest punk band in the world.
Let me try and explain. The Clash, you see, got us all hooked with their first amazing album in 1977. On it, they hollered about racism, and youth unemployment, and the hippies who hung out at Strolling Bones shows. To us, the Clash were the most important punk band. The Sex Pistols were more famous; the Ramones invented the genre. But the Clash actually were, just as their record company declared that year, THE ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS.
As X wrote in The NCNA:
Members of the Clash are the ones who actually read books — and push their fans to read them, too. They write songs that say that politics are important. They demand your attention. They are the first (and the only) band that tries to be the biggest and the most radical band, all at the same time. Somehow they make those two opposites work.
When the show was over, hundreds of punks stumbled out into the crisp Boston night. X, me, Patti, and Sister Betty, meanwhile, loitered on the main floor at the Harvard Square Theater. We were exhilarated and exhausted. The band’s performance had been incredible, incendiary. It made us feel happier than any of us had been since before Jimmy Cleary’s death.
It made us feel part of something.
After the show, we didn’t particularly want to leave. X had secured beds for us at the closest youth hostel in Cambridge, but going to sleep right then was out of the question. We were wired, not tired. As we stood there, a sinister-looking older guy stepped up. “Hello, kids,” he said in a thick British accent. “Where ya from?”
“Portland,” said Patti. “Do you know where that is?”
“Oregon?” he asked.
“No, t
he Portland in Maine,” they said. He shrugged.
“Well, whatever,” said the man, who turned out to be named Johnny Green and was the road manager to the Clash. “Where ya stayin’?”
“Well,” I said, looking at my watch, “we’ve missed curfew at the hostel, so we’ve got nowhere to stay, now.” X raised an eyebrow. This was a flat-out lie, but he didn’t correct me. Patti and Betty giggled.
“Nowhere to go?” roared Johnny Green. “Then you must come with me, children!”
Johnny led us through a dark corridor to a back room, which was basically nothing more than a narrow, stinky closet deep in the guts of the Harvard. The four of us edged into a room thick with the smell of dope. Off in a corner, a ghetto blaster was playing some dub reggae and people were laughing. Everywhere on the walls there was band graffiti, and a prehistoric and grubby couch was up against a wall. And sitting on and around the couch — looking pink and sweaty and flushed — were the Clash.
“My head is going to explode,” I whispered, transfixed.
Green waved in the direction of the band. “There’s Mick, there’s Paul, there’s Topper, there’s the gang,” he said, indicating soundman Mickey Foote, plus a group of huge Rastafarian guys. “And there’s Joe. Get yourself a beer or something and make yourself at home.” He ambled off.
In photographs in the NME or Creem, Strummer had always looked to me like a slightly older version of X, but with short hair. Strummer was pale and intense, with a squared jaw, an off-center nose, and this penetrating gaze. But when he stood up, we saw that he wasn’t very tall at all.
Strummer had an easy, affable manner. We tried not to stare at him, but it wasn’t easy. He was one of those guys who became the center of every room. He certainly was for us.
Joe fucking Strummer!
When we shook it, Joe Strummer’s hand was moist and warm, which made sense — he’d just been playing his heart out on stage, and he was drenched with sweat. He grinned at us, revealing a mouthful of broken, greenish teeth. Strummer’s eyes were a bit glassy, a side effect of the massive spliffs that were making their way around the room.
The other members of the Clash didn’t seem all that interested in us, but Strummer greeted us like long-lost pals. “Welcome,” he said. “Where y’all from?”
We told him, and Strummer paused, frowning. “Portland?” he said. “In Maine? Isn’t that where all that shit has been going down?”
Fuck. He knew. He knew. I started to respond, but X shook his head: Let it go.
So I did. “That was an amazing show, Joe,” I said instead, trying to change the subject. “Can I be a typical fan and get your autograph?” I whipped out a notebook I used for sketches I donated to The NCNA.
“Typical?” Strummer thundered. “There’s nothing typical about my signature, young man!” He scrawled away in my notebook while the Upchucks scrambled to get his autograph, too.
X didn’t ask for one, so Strummer squinted at him, then looked at his chest.
Under his black leather jacket, X was wearing his homemade Clash T-shirt, the one on which he had recreated every single detail of the famous logo found on the cover of the first Clash LP, the one we all fell in love with. In 1978, there weren’t too many stores to purchase punk rock gear. So we Portland punks made our own stuff: buttons, T-shirts, stickers, and so on. We even narrowed the flared jeans our mothers had bought for us, by hand, so they’d be as skinny and as tight as the trousers the Clash wore.
“Where’d you get that?” Joe Strummer said, jabbing a finger at X’s T-shirt.
“I made it,” he said, shrugging. “It’s not a very good rep —”
“It’s bloody great, man,” he said, cutting X off. “You did that yourself? That’s bloody great. It’s great you did it yourself. Keep control of the means of production, ya know?” He laughed — a raw, deep-throated laugh.
Back then and even now, punk frowns on the sort of bullshit hero worship that you see in traditional rock ’n’ roll. Punk was against hierarchies, and it was always trying to break down the invisible wall between the performer and the audience. But at that stage in our lives, truth be told, Joe Strummer was a fucking giant to us. He towered above most other mortals, because he was so passionate, and so political, and so incredibly cool.
On those many days when I don’t want to be me, I will always try to be Joe Strummer.
Autographs obtained, I snapped some photos of the band on my Polaroid. When it was time for the band to depart for the next night’s gig, at the Palladium in New York, Johnny Green led the four of us out a side door and onto Church Street. After exchanging a few more good-byes, the jail-like door clanged shut behind Green. While me and Betty kept busy flipping through the Polaroids, Patti asked X, “Why didn’t you want Kurt to tell him about Portland?”
X shrugged. “There’s been enough stuff that’s sad,” he said. “We deserved at least one night that wasn’t.”
Fucking right.
C H A P T E R 30
The next morning, X, the Upchuck sisters, and I checked out of the Cambridge hostel and walked up Stuart Street, in no particular rush to get to the Amtrak station. Along the way, the Upchucks decided to check out some Chinatown gift shops before we boarded the train for the ride back to Portland. X, however, saw something else that caught his eye.
Across the street, a large poster had been taped in a street-level window, with the words “WHITE GUILT” printed across a large stop sign. Beside the stop sign, someone had taped up another sign: a circle superimposed on a cross, with what looked like some Viking symbols, or something, at the center. On the train ride to Boston, X told me he had read an investigative story about the growing European neo-Nazi skinhead movement, in a copy of the Searchlight, the British antiracist magazine. They had published a sidebar story about various Far Right symbols, including Viking-style “runes” and what they called “the Celtic cross.”
To Celts, apparently, the Celtic cross was basically an ancient Christian symbol found on old tombstones and stuff like that. To neo-Nazis and white supremacists, though, the cross had a totally different meaning: it was Odin’s Cross, this swastika-like symbol, which was about the division of the four main racial groups — and the triumph of Christianity over Judaism. The symbol had been banned, X told me, in Germany and Italy for its connections to organized hate groups.
X and I crossed the street to check it out. A sign advertised that it was something called “The European Culture Institute,” and another hand-painted sign said that it was open, so we stepped inside. A bell rang. At the receptionist’s desk — which was abandoned — there was a typewriter and a phone. Beside the typewriter was a manual giving instructions on how to make a bomb. On some messy shelves, there were books with titles like High Speed Math, Constitutional Law, and The Magic Power of Witchcraft. On one wall, a small poster was stamped with the letters Z.O.G., and a red slash through them. This, X later explained, was the acronym for the Zionist Occupation Government — what the neo-Nazis called elected governments, who they believed were controlled by the forces of “international Jewry.”
I’m not making this shit up, by the way. Wish I was. But I’m not.
“Hello?” X said, easing his backpack onto the floor. No one answered.
Four offices opened onto the reception area at the European Culture Institute. Off to one side, X could see a mimeograph room and a small kitchen. In the reception area, there was a lectern thing, a stage, and about fifty chairs.
X walked to another bookshelf, near the reception desk. Hundreds of “British Israel” texts and pamphlets were stacked alongside dust-covered histories of the two world wars by authors like David Irving. The books and pamphlets had titles like The Real Jews and Migrations of Israel.
X opened a copy of Migrations and read: “In truth, there can be no denial of the fact that the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian, and related peoples are
indeed the descendants of the ancient Israelites. Down through countless centuries, and across the face of Asia and Europe, our forefathers trekked to the new Promised Land to fulfill the numerous prophecies of scripture. One of these prophecies was that the Jews, or the House of Judah, would be exterminated by God on Judgment Day.” X stopped and turned when he heard a sound.
“May I help you?”
X closed the book. In the doorway to the largest office, a short, overweight guy stood watching us. The man was stuffed into a dress shirt, dress pants, and black bowtie. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent. His short, dark hair had been slicked into place, almost like Hitler’s, which I suppose was the desired effect.
A Hitler haircut! I mean, who does that?
“Who are you?” the man said, in a nasal voice.
“I’m sorry,” X said. “We’re from out of town, and we saw the signs and saw that you were open, so …”
“It’s all right,” the man said, “visitors are welcome. What brought you here?”
“The signs,” X said. I said nothing, not sure where X was going with this.
“Which one?” the man asked.
“The Celtic cross was interesting,” X said. “It’s an interesting symbol.”
“Yes, Odin’s Cross,” the man said, grinning like it was some big conspiracy. “It’s rather important. I take it you know what it means?”
X nodded.
“And you are of Western European heritage, then?” the man asked.
“I guess,” X said. “We’re from Portland.”
“In Maine? Of course. I know many, many people there,” the man said, closing the door to his office, but staying where he had been standing. “Many interesting things are going on in Portland, these days.”
Recipe for Hate Page 12
