ERMINE PEARLS AND ALL THE REST

253. ERMINE PEARLS AND ALL THE REST (Harley Hedge, nyc, 1967):

Ermine pearls and all the rest - I would have never sung for MY father and the only scoundrel left alive I knew of was living on a coal-heap off the side of 28th Street doing no good by no thing - his name was Harley Harry Arvage Hedge - true name like some old-money ultra-rich New Yorker family of old but a bum complete and through and through playing pool ten times a week with knives for toothpicks and grimy wet hands for gloves landing broad punches to any lady's face whenever he could bribing the cops for bribing him holding hostages at every turn riding the Coney Island loop-de-loop over and over until it was dead : he often walked on water even if it was salt - and was known the break into the poor box at St. Ignatius Church of the Little Flower on holidays and feastdays and Sundays and birthdays too - which is pretty much whenever in that neck of the soiled old woods : there wasn't a laundry basket safe with him around and foodstuffs galore would disappear and the guy was like gold that had once been in a tooth - already annealed and pounded and worn and used but (maybe just maybe) still gold - he'd done small-time for robbing a crowd of movie-goers in line to see West Side Story or something and he'd claimed to be holding them up so as to 'give the local thrill ya' all came here for you stupid bunch of bus-bound Broadway tourists' but he was apprehended just that quickly and taken off and did (he said) two weeks in the 16th where he soiled his pants twice just for spite and stank them all out 'so's they couldn't do their fuck-ass paperwork' and that's the sort of thing he took pleasure in BUT thinking about it I did too - it was kind of funny - but Harley was magical in his own way too - even though it was all cliched and stuff I'd often think of him as the big bear with a heart of gold made angry by all the circumstances of all life itself around him 'born in poverty kid back when they didn't reward you for it - born like a crippled Jesus in a stolen manger and for my very first Christmas - Christ almighty I got a gun!' he'd told me that once or twice and I never believed him and he was always talking about 'setting out over the river to the west - Pennsylvania and the mountains - over to where other people can breath and eat almost for free and the stories I hear are always good ones - and I'm going too' and actually it was odd because in NYC you never really heard of anyone talking of anything 'country' unless they meant north or upstate meaning the Catskills and Troy and Kingston and Albany and all that - right up to the Adirondacks - and really anything 'Pennsylvania' never clicked because it was thought of as nothing but like polka and beer and places where men really labored to make steel and dig coal - so you see the difference right there already was all his and I guess somewhere deep inside him that's where his family had come from or been originated or something but I never asked and he did eventually run off to some far-away area of greater Pittsburgh but not city Pittsburgh just the old dark hilly woods out around it : so sometimes you see I really did know people who made good on things they intended to do and he was a Korean War veteran he said and only sometimes went on about that but I never listened much - I always hated and still do hate all that 'veteran war-story combat what I seen' crap because you know sooner or later it's running up to some plea for sympathy or extra help or consideration because all those guys they never were right in the head anyway as I see it - the reason you get involved in that Army shit is because that's where your head is at and then if combat or whatever it is then screws you up all you want is help and attention and understanding for the rest of your days but hey the way I see it was that's all part of the game and the game is what you chose so shut-up about it already and even if Harley Harry is dead by now I guess he'd be happily well-put in some stupid veteran's cemetery somewhere near him : that's how they all end up : and I always figured it was a real shame how Nationalism and the 'State' can just cavalierly get into people's lives and claim for this or that their own dues and ownership factors and all that and never for one minute did I or would I ever subscribe to any of that crap - the State's the enemy no matter what and if for one second you first give in and cede something away they're never gonn'a stop taking from you more and more and then they start talking it up all positive and nice-like and saying they're helping you and society too and it's all bullshit and glamor-crime-theft and the rest and as far as I was ever concerned every politician should be rounded up and shot in the forehead but that's just my opinion and Harley Harry Arvage Hedge was a perfect example of the detritus and the shambles that's left after you let them get a piece of you : too bad on that count : but he never got any sympathy from me and neither did any one of those Vietnam War vampire pigs either - and they were always skulking around trying to round people up or take in draft-dodgers and other rebellious types as if army service was to be enforced as correctional training or something - which was a totally bogus and bullshit idea anyway as it was and all that military crap ever was was a grinding death-mill of losers and anal-retentives intent on following rules and orders and making regulations and putting everyone into a straitjacket and lining all of society up in perfectly straight lines and everyone following instructions and never asking questions and all that - just like some Communist Fascist Bullshit horde and all that shit was ever the same to me and any rattletrap debate that ever went on about it and about which 'system' as better and all that was a total crock of shit because they were all the same and NO MATTER to anyone...Harley Harry once cut a guy's neck open with a three-inch blade and watched him writhe on the ground with the blood just pouring out of him until he was essentially motionless and I guess dead too and it was all for about one hundred and five dollars that the guy was carrying in his coat pocket - that somehow Harley Harry had seen him stash into the pocket or something and the guy didn't fight didn't holler just went willingly like a lamb and that scene always stayed in my head because if you ever saw someone with blood pumping out of a hole it's like a living florid shower of life and glory itself just pouring out onto the ground in a grandest most glorious fashion as if it was a celebration of life but actually is nothing but the saddest most fraught with horror bloodletting of all God's creation could ever be - and pity the lamb or the pig or the ox or the cow that's ever been sacrificed to some God above let alone any human who was sacrificed for the same cruel purpose WHATEVER the definition or the cause.