Platform H (Wednesday PM Commute I )

Going home I got the CD player to work. Sort of. It only played one song over & over. And only in one ear. If I tilted my head like I was thinking real hard, I could hear El Paso in stereo.

But El Paso was like the flashback music cue …
In 1961 I was the fastest gun in Belleville, N.J.
It ain't boasting if it's true.

Back in the day who would have challenged me and my two six guns?

My cousins Tommy & Bobby next door? They wore six guns over their PJs!

My cousin Billy Boy, that fan of Yancy Derringer? Not a chance. (I thought he lived near Montana in Rutana States and went to Styretowne to shop, but that's a local joke.)

I could act out the entire El Paso song by Marty Robbins. We got the 45 at Prosperi's Market on Bloomfield Avenue in Newark. It had that famous picture of Marty in mid-draw.

The famous Robbins

I’d start out as a hardened cowboy sitting there as “Felina would whirl.”

Then I’d be the angry cowboy who shot the “dashing and daring” young cowboy to prove my feelings for the “Mexican maiden.”

Then I’d hop on the arm of a big fat armchair and gallop off “to the badlands of New Mexico.”

But I’d be weak, like the cowboy in the song, pining away for Rosa’s cantina and Felina. I’d ride hard back to “the hill overlooking El Paso.”

I’d whup that chair to a froth, the hooves to the quick and head for Felina until I was surprised by “five mounted cowboys” and then “a dozen or more.”

I made a lot of noise firing my six-guns over the back of the couch into the big mirror at the men keeping me from Felina.

Some times I was reloading when I felt that “deep burning pain in my side.” I clutched myself and tried to stay on the arm of the armchair.

I could feel myself getting weaker, like all the TV cowboys did.

A wince and I struggled against the bullet “deep in my chest.”

Off the davenport now, the room getting dark, my pistols out of reach, “from out of nowhere Felina has found me…”

Then, that mushy part, “One little kiss, then Felina, good-bye.”

And with that I slumped back spread eagle on the rug, in front of our Motorola TV. Some times I was half-slumped in the toy box.

The song played over and over. In one ear mostly.

The blond and her mother, or maybe a best-friend, stood in front of me. The blond would have won ‘best looking on the crowded PATH car’ if there were a contest.

Her dirty-blond hair straight as an arrow & held in place by a wispy strand. Not a hair was out of place. She looked like she could have been a cheerleader not too long ago.

And when she carelessly ran her fingers through her hair it seemed like a Clairol commercial with Farah Fawcett or one of Charlie’s other angels.

Her pink top was as lightly colored as her rich deep ruby lips were dark. Her bling-bling and baubles were in all the right places, as far as I could see.

If she saw me writing she acted coy. If she saw how I wrote this she tried to act like she didn’t care.

I clung to the upright post and scribbled this, of course, in the hope I’d be able to read it later.

If the blond even looked at me, I probably looked like a drunk man scribbling nasty things to his ex-wife.

There, in the distance, the lights of Bears stadium and good old Platform H.

For me, anyway, H is halfway home "for one little kiss ..."

Copyright © 2005 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission. Updated May 2008

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Ballads & Trail Songs

Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs

Twin-Music Lyrics - El Paso

Bob Dylan - Desire

Romance In Durango

Walkman

Rain's a Coming (Wed. PM Commute III )

This September night looks like Ophelia headed our way and the sky is dark and menacing.

Finally the bus pulls up. It’s been here but only now put its lights on so we’d know if it’s the one we’re waiting for. The other busses sit with their lights out, the drivers on break. I suppose the riders need a union too?

There’s a good crowd but plenty of seats. I sit sideways in the old people seats behind the driver.

He weaves the giant bus off 5th Street through cars parked on both sides on Anthony Street to the light at Sixth Street.

Off to the left, you can’t see it now because it’s long gone, but once, before these senior skyscrapers came along, right over there, next to where the gas station is, that’s where the pony rides were located when I was a kid.

Did I tell you I was the fastest draw in the wild west city of Belleville, N.J., in 1961? That’s when Marty Robbins wrote and released El Paso. Oh. I did tell you. Wait until you get old and start to repeat yourself!

DRAW!

At the stop across the street from Clara Maass Medical Center, on gets Bam-Bam, a regular who hops this bus to Centre Street in Nutley to catch the 13 to Belleville which is where we are now. It’s a perfect example of “you can’t get there from here.”

The metal tip of Bam-Bam’s cane is bursting through the plastic cap. I don’t know his name, but when he talks to the bus driver, he ends his sentences with Bam-Bam. There are a lot of regulars on this bus, and except for Jimmy the magician, I don’t know their names, and that includes the few I have conversations with.

Bam-Bam looks like the actors Herb Edelman and Herschel Bernardi. He talks loud and clear and doesn’t care who hears what he has to say.

I got up from the senior seat for him and took a seat further back as Bam-Bam climbed aboard. Ahead of him a guy who seemed okay gets on and takes the seat I left.

Someone else got up from the opposite senior sideways seats and Bam-Bam plopped down, looping his cane in the hand-hold bar.

Bam-Bam thanked the guy who got up. I nodded as if to say ‘don’t mention it.’ But I don’t think he ever saw me either get up to give him my seat or nod back to say not to mention it.

My first wife calls that putting bricks in your house in heaven. All I did was give the guy a seat.

The 6:53 No. 74 Bus to Paterson is flying me home in the early dark of the night. I’m wondering if I’ll beat the rain. I know my umbrella will stay dry – it’s hanging on a doorknob in the basement.

In the silhouette of the night the few remaining buildings are backlit by the fading light as they wonder will they too be part of the Essex Park housing development or turned into rubble before the leaves change colors.

I turn off El Paso and pack up the Walkman.

Against the odds I sat safe and dry in my little red wagon. Before I could pull away from the curb the sky opened up. Driving home was not unlike a long ride through a car wash tunnel.

Copyright © 2005 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission. Updated May 2008

Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs

Twin-Music Lyrics - El Paso

Bob Dylan - Desire

Romance In Durango

Walkman

Herb Edelman

Herschel Bernardi

Lady in Blue Shoes (Morning Commute)

Tapping her well-manicured fingernails on her expensive black skirt, the woman in the powder blue blouse and vest held her other hand back and the source of the music only she could hear and the wires that delivered it to her ears were invisible.

Every full PATH car has at least one beautiful woman on it. She's usually surrounded by so many sleepy people - men and women, night and day - that her countenance is unnoticed. But sometimes you can spot her.

This morning, this woman stood in full view & I could see had no wrinkles in her clothes or skin. A brief glance revealed a perfect young face framed in perfect brown hair.

The young man standing to my right was staring at and through her. He was amazed at his lot in life this morning on the Newark PATH to Jersey City and beyond.

She, meanwhile had perfected the invisible stare that all beautiful young women must master (or be overcome by their own beauty) and she tapped her fingers against her rich black skirt listening to music that must have made her happy way down yonder in her soul.

I fumbled with my free paper, squished my AM New York into my backpack and retrieved the tattered and battered old Walkman.

I tried to juggle and jiggle the antique CD player and the mismatched earphones from some long ago trashed player.

Spinning around there the Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs wailed and gurgled in one ear or the other then blasted in both ears before cutting out all together.

With each bump in the rickety PATH rail the music popped, chopped and crackled in my head.

Stereo sound strained out of my earpieces if I tilted my head & looked off into the distance like someone sitting for a senior high school yearbook picture.

The noises I heard were not comforting the savage breast, but most irritating.

It took me back to long ago when vinyl record albums skipped - instant headache - & the only earphones you could get were huge and made you look like a pilot on Twelve O'Clock High.

Twitching with the odd sounds in my head - a woman off to our side held a nonstop chat at the door facing off into the spacious mews oblivious of all around her cringing on each word like fingernails dragged across a blackboard.

The beautiful young woman before me traveled through the meadows with all of us but you could see she was alone somewhere swell as the music played through her head.

A blast in my head said, "I caught a good one it looked like it could run ..."

And I saw before me a young woman whose beauty could start a war, who could make a bishop punch his fist through a stained glass window.

Her blue shoes seemed like sneakers but anyone who spent what she did on the rest of her fine clothes would never wear SNEAKERS you know.

Anyway her shoes had a blue cloth cover and no backs so they looked like a hybrid sandal tennis shoe when I knew I’d seen something like that on the incredible shoe show on late night TV when they sold Birkenstock shoes as if they were the latest thing.

Those shoes were around 30 years ago. I think I read about them in a novel called Housewife that was written back in the 70s. It’s about a woman who is less than satisfied with her weight and her husband. But when I read it a while back, I saw that it mentioned Birkenstocks and I thought that everything old is new again.

"Aloha, pretty girl," I wanted to say, “do you ever weary of the weight of your beauty?” But, alas, Exchange Place flashed in the dirty windows. Every man & woman for himself as we melded towards the escalator.

Up she walked ahead. She was much shorter now that I was standing too.

A skinny man with lint on his pants' butt walked ahead and between us as we scaled the moving stairs.

At the top I went north and she went south to the place where forgotten names, memories and faces go.

Copyright © 2005 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Support this web site, shop at Amazon through this link, thanks

Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs

Twin-Music Lyrics - El Paso

Bob Dylan - Desire

Romance In Durango

Housewife

Twelve O'Clock High

Birkenstock

Walkman

AM New York