Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band RACING IN THE STREET - Live at Ullevi Gothenburg 06/26/2023

Live at Ullevi Gothenburg 06/26/2023

Uncle Jake and His World of Stories

by Gregg Chadwick

My Uncle Jake looms large in my life. And not only because he has the build of a defensive tackle on the San Francisco 49ers. When Jake walks into a room he fills the scene like James Gandolfini in the Sopranos. Then the stories begin. 

Jolly Green Giant

Jake sets the scene. Imagine he is on a covert mission during the Vietnam War. President Nixon has launched a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia and Laos. From March 18, 1969 until May 26, 1970, code name Operation Menu targeted resupply areas that the North Vietnamese and their allies the National Liberation Front and the Viet Cong were using as bases of attack against the South Vietnamese and their American allies.  Heavy B-52 bombers from the US Air Force carpet bombed the Laotian and Cambodian borders in an attempt to interdict North Vietnamese supply lines. 

Airman Jacob J Desch (Vietnam Era Photo)

Airman Jake Desch was deployed in Thailand where the massive B-52s were stationed at U Tapao Royal Thai Air Base, and smaller bombers at the secret Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Navy Base on the Thai/Laos border. The story goes that Jake was onboard an aircraft collecting signals intel, possibly a C-123 Provider used for special ops over Laos, when the plane encountered difficulties. Engine failure, enemy anti-aircraft fire, pilot error - all possibilities. Jake is fuzzy on the details, but he definitely wasn't the pilot. Jake assures us that he was adept at airborne insertion and geared up quickly in his parachute gear. Soon Jake was out the door and free from the aircraft. The plane was flying low, so Jake's drop was fast. His parachute barely unfurled before he slammed into the Laotian jungle. Jake blacked out from the force of the descent and his abrupt landing. When he came to, Jake found himself caught high in a forest canopy. Jake was lucky, unlike many airmen whose planes were lost during the war. Jake had survived. Jake was a tech specialist and his quick thinking saved his life.  Trapped in the branches, Jake used the serrated edge on his survival knife to cut himself clear from the tree. 

A rescue team had taken off from a nearby base, perhaps Nakhon Phanom. Hope was on its way.

Fitting that Jake, a red headed giant of a man, would be rescued by airmen aboard an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant helicopter from the U.S. Air Force Rescue team. Jake hasn't expressed to me what he said to the rescue team. But, I am sure that as a Jersey boy he would have joked with them and asked - "What took you so long?"

The National Museum of the United States Air Force describes the incredible heroism of the Combat Pararescue teams in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War:

"The blood-red beret, symbolizing sacrifice, has been the pararescueman or "PJ" (for parajumper) mark of distinction since early 1966. The PJ's unique mission in the Southeast Asia War was to ride into a combat zone aboard a rescue helicopter and descend into jungles, swamps, mountains, and forests on a cable and winch. On the ground, they stabilized and helped hoist the injured to safety, often under fire. All volunteers, the PJs earned more decorations per man than any other USAF group in the SEA War."

 A U.S. Air Force pararescueman is lowered on a forest penetrator from a hovering 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron HH-53 helicopter during a rescue mission in Southeast Asia, June 1970. (U.S. Air Force photo)

U.S. Air Force air rescue team: Four Nakhon Phanom based A-1 Skyraiders and a Lockheed HC-130P Hercules recovery aircraft refueling a Sikorsky HH-3E Jolly Green Giant helicopter

U.S. Air Force - National Museum of the U.S. Air Force photo 1968

Jersey Guys 

Jake still carries the wounds of that encounter during the Vietnam War. Perhaps Jake gained courage that helped him move into his new life as a student at San Francisco State and husband to his effervescent wife Linda. 

Francis Ford Coppola directs Marlon Brando in the Godfather wedding scene 

Like a scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s sweeping masterpiece The Godfather, Jake's stories embrace the cinematic moments of life. Jake loves to tell the tale when he encountered a posse of overly friendly gentlemen at a reception in San Francisco. Jake's wife comes from an Italian American family and is proud of her heritage. Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, Jake had met his fair share of the cosa nostra. But that evening at one of the grand old hotels in downtown San Francisco was more than Jake expected. 

Linda and Jake Desch 1970s

As Jake tells the tale, the wedding celebration was opulent.  Lights, camera, action, The hors d'oeuvres, crudités (as only a Jersey guy would know), antipasti (most likely from Molinari's in North Beach),  lasagne, fish (this was San Francisco after all), and freshly carved meats were all spectacular. Champagne flowed freely , the music had swing (Tony Bennett should have been there), and the dancing went on all night. Linda liked to move on the dance floor and Jake eagerly glided along with her. Like most big men, Jake gets hot easily and he needed to take a break to cool off. 

At the sink in the men's room, Jake splashed water on his face with his eyes down. He could hear the thumping of the music down the corridor and then heard it grow louder as the restroom door swung open. Jake gathered himself quickly and looked up to see six large, beefy, muscular, no nonsense men gathered in the bathroom with him. Too many to wrestle with Jake thought. So Jake did what was natural to him. He made friends. "How's it going guys?", Jake asked in a Jersey accent he pulled out for these kind of occasions. The six men nodded positively as they looked Jake over. Their internal threat response meters sensed no threat from Jake. In actuality, the men saw Jake as a fellow member of their rare club. "What are you packing?", the lead bodyguard asked Jake in a whisper as he flashed his holstered weapon. The other five Italian guardians followed suit and displayed their handguns.

"What am I packing?" 

"These!" - Jake said as he held out his massive hands. 

Three Regular Jersey Guys in the Soprano's 

The meat market Satriale's created for the show  is possibly based on Sacco's Meat Market located at 806 3rd Avenue in Elizabeth, New Jersey which served as the unofficial base of "Uncle Joe" Giacobbe, a veteran made man in the DeCavalcante crime family.

Alaskan Earthquake

I remember sitting in the living room with Uncle Jake at the Desch family residence in Garfield, New Jersey when my Dad was with the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam. We often stopped by to visit my Grandma and Grandpa and assorted aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews on weekends in those years, 1965 - 1966, to hang out with family. One Saturday the TV was on playing Attack of the 50 Foot Woman - a low budget sci-fi film from 1958 - and Jake was passing around a stack of photos of the damage from the Alaskan Earthquake of 1964 that he had taken while stationed at a Strategic Air Command Base in Alaska. To me, the film's theatrical release poster appears like a green screened actress in front of Jake's earthquake photos. Worlds colliding indeed. 

While Jake was there, on March 27, 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. The quake lasted  4.5 minutes and is still the most powerful recorded earthquake in U.S. history. It is also the second largest earthquake ever recorded, next to the 9.5 magnitude earthquake in Chile in 1960. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson provides an historical account of the military's response to the quake:

"The military in Alaska, from the moment of the disaster, mustered their full strength to assist their neighbors," wrote Air Force Lt. Gen. R.J. Reeves, commander of Alaskan Command, in a letter to Army Maj. Gen. Eugene Salet, commander of the U.S. Army Training Center at Fort Gordon, Ga. 'The military services proved once again that they are ready, willing, and able to cope with emergencies, whatever their origin.'"

Alaska Earthquake March 27, 1964. Collapse of Fourth Avenue near C Street in Anchorage due to a landslide caused by the earthquake. (Photo by U.S. Army)

Jake and his colleagues started working immediately after the earthquake to provide aid to those in need throughout Alaska:

"At dawn the next day, 17 C-123 Providers left Elmendorf's runway carrying equipment and supplies south and east to Valdez, Seward, and Kodiak. During the next 21 days, nearly four million pounds of cargo was flown out in Operation Helping Hand. Massive airlift operations by the Military Air Transport Service shattered records, hauling in two and a half million pounds of cargo - from baby food to heavy equipment - from Lower 48 bases."

Homeward Bound

Gregg Chadwick

Jersey Cantos 

16"x20"oil on linen 2016

Private Collection, San Francisco

Northern New Jersey, where Jake grew up, is one of the United States' largest transportation hubs. When Jake was a kid, rail lines, automobile parkways, and air traffic filled the Jersey earth and sky with movement and the possibility of adventure. I remember when I was a young boy, Jake was on leave from the Air Force and brought by a small collection of his old toys to give us. Trucks, trains, and planes were there in miniature. And a red plastic spaceship ready to carry Buck Rogers and Wilma into the stars. I could almost hear the first line in the United States Air Force Song - "Off we go into the wild blue yonder, Climbing high into the sun"

Jake enjoyed telling me about his childhood playgrounds along the tracks of the Jersey Central rail line that his father rode along as a railway engineer. Jake and his buddies would play ball in a dirt yard next to an auto body shop on the edge of town. The crack of the bat would mix with the sounds of pneumatic air pumps and the hiss of paint guns. Often a train whistle sounded by Jake's Dad would ring out from a Jersey Central engine moving slowly down the tracks next to the field. Jake says that he and the boys would run and jump onto the freight cars as the train rolled on. 

One day only Jake made it onto the train. He was actually able to reach up towards the train engine and his dad pulled him up into the cab. "Where are we going Dad?, Jake asked his father as the train pulled away. "Anywhere you want to go Jake.", his Dad said. "Anywhere you want to go!"

He Called Her "Lightning"

Gregg Chadwick

Lightning (Edith Desch)

36"x 24" oil on linen 2018

Jersey Memories - Grandma Desch

by Gregg Chadwick

When I was little and my dad was off in Vietnam during the war, we lived in a small, rented carriage house behind a big estate. On the way to school each morning we would walk by the train platform full of commuters waiting for their ride into the city. I knew my Grandpa Desch drove trains and I often wondered as we passed over the tracks on the bridge on Ridgewood Avenue whether he was in one of the engines down below. It's only thirty minutes by train from Glen Ridge, New Jersey, to Penn Station in Manhattan. Yet, there seemed to be a world of difference between my town with its quiet gas-lamp lit streets and the bustling avenues in New York City. The train was the artery between those two worlds and I never forgot it. 

The kitchen in Garwood was where Grandma Desch would spread her warmth. 

In a similar fashion, the quiet evenings at the house where my dad's parents lived in Montclair were a world away from my mom's parents' boisterous home in Garwood. Being one of eleven children, my mom was thrown into a swirl of hugs, greetings, questions, and desires the minute we walked through the door of the Desch home. Small in size, but full of warmth, my grandparents' house was a neighborhood gathering place. A black and white TV was usually on in the living room with a ballgame playing or often on weekend afternoons a pulpy science fiction film. Grandpa would often hold court here on his days off from the railroad. I remember Grandpa mussing up my hair when we arrived in a warm hearted gesture that implied get comfortable and join the fun. I was considered shy as a kid in this environment, and with my Southern California accent, I wasn't quite a true Jersey kid either.  If the living room was Grandpa's domain, the kitchen in Garwood was where Grandma Desch would spread her warmth. Usually wearing an apron, Grandma's world extended from the stove, to the sink, to the screen door leading out to the second story porch. Her meals were hearty and reflecting our Irish/German roots ranged from corned beef and cabbage to sauerkraut and sausages. My favorite breakfast at her house was a plate of browned potatoes fried up in her cast iron pan. 

"What's your exit?"

I remember Grandma giggling one morning when I spread mustard on my bread instead of butter because of a billboard I saw along the New Jersey Turnpike that depicted buttered bread with such a mustardy yellow that I thought it had to be a French's condiment ad. The New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway run the length of the state and at first meeting folks from Jersey often ask,"What's your exit?" Grandma and Grandpa Desch lived off of Exit 136 in Garwood, New Jersey. When we drove there from Exit 148 in Glen Ridge we would often detour through Irvington to grab an Italian hotdog or sausage at Jimmy Buff's. 

Gregg Chadwick
Jersey Rain (Jimmy Buff's)

30"x 40" oil on linen 2016

There are a few classic New Jersey staples: pork roll sandwiches such as Taylor Ham, saltwater taffy at the Jersey shore, and Italian hot dogs at roadside restaurants up and down the state. But, it is the smell of Taylor Ham cooking on a griddle that always brings me back to Grandma's kitchen.

An accumulation of memories

After painting my grandfather in Jersey Central Engineer (Arthur Desch), I was asked by my Uncle Jake to paint a companion piece of Grandma Edith Desch. His wish to honor both of his parents with my paintings of them was of great interest to me. In artworks such as these two portraits, venturing back into my childhood memories is an essential part in crafting a painting. Sadly, my grandmother passed away in 1976 and time has faded even the photographs we have of her. I would have to dig deep and remember the woman that my grandfather nicknamed Lightning. Hearing my extended family's stories of their times with the Desch clan helped me settle upon an idea for my portrait of Grandma Desch. She needed to be in her kitchen and she would need to have a warmth of spirit. Her painting would be built from an accumulation of memories. 

Gregg Chadwick (center), his brother Kent Chadwick,  and a group of Desch cousins in Garwood, New Jersey  Gregg Chadwick Jersey Cantos 16"x 20" oil on linen 2016

Hop On Pop

by Gregg Chadwick

Dad (General Robert J. Chadwick USMC)
circa 1978
photo courtesy USMC

Peter Clothier asked me a while ago to contribute to his series of Boyhood Memories which he is posting on his new blog site -http://www.boyhoodmoments.com/2016/09/hop-on-pop.html and eventually working into a book.  I finally finished my story and it has prompted me to continue writing about my life as an artist. 

Growing up as the kid of a USMC officer during the Vietnam era inspired me in unique ways. Please have a read and let me know what you think. Also spend some time on Peter's site. Masami Teraoka 's piece is timeless and magical and Michael Provart 's writing is funny and poignant. Peter Clothier also adds his own childhood memories into the mix. Every story Peter has received is rich in memory. 

Peter introduces my story with the following: "HOP ON POP
Here's another "absent father" piece, this one with the added leitmotif, perhaps, of a creative vocation discovered as a child! The Dad in question is caught in the black and white photograph, below. Gregg Chadwick is today a Santa Monica-based painter whose work is widely exhibited and acclaimed. His blog is titled Speed of Life. His boyhood memory skirts subtly around the pain of separation, deflecting it first, jokingly, onto a prank played on his mother with his toys; then on a treasured book, a parting gift from Dad. But by the end, we're left in no doubt that the pain is there..."

HOP ON POP

By Gregg Chadwick

As a kid, I liked to build private worlds out of drawings that I would cut up and paste into scenes with soft plastic bugs pulled hot from my Creepy Crawlers molds. I would squirt the Plastigoop from a small bottle into the empty molds and heat them up on my Thingmaker. Once, late at night, I cut out a darkly drawn semicircle, taped it to the kitchen floorboard in our rented carriage house, and placed dark rodent Creepy Crawlers around my invented mouse hole. As a last surprise, I hid one in my mom’s coffee cup. My brother and I would get a great laugh, because my mom hates rodents of all shapes and sizes.

I woke to the baconesque smell of Tastystrips and the caramel espresso smell of Mom’s percolating coffee. She was at the stove pulling strips from the pan and lining them up on a golden, grease filled sheet of paper towel. Her coffee mug sat nearby. My brother was already at the table reading a cereal box before turning to my mom to chat about a birthday trip to the Revolutionary War encampment up at Jockey Hollow with his friend Casey Jones. Yep, the same name as the famous railroader. Our portable transistor radio was on; it should have been playing "Cannonball Express" in honor of that other Casey. I sneaked a quick glance to be sure that my mouse hole was still there with its attendant rubbery rodents. OK, the plan was still in action. I walked over to the stove and looked into my mom’s cup. I gulped as I saw myself reflected in the dark liquid.

“How’s the coffee Mom?” That sounded wrong. Was I in a Folgers commercial or something?

“Fine dear. Careful of the hot stove. Don’t burn yourself.”

I sat down without a word and quietly ate my breakfast, glancing at the line of dark Crawlers on the floor.

A honk outside interrupted the quiet and my brother jumped up to run out the door. My mom called after him, “Don’t forget your jacket.”

“It’s June Mom,” my brother said.

“So it is," said my mom as she marked off another day on the calendar.

“One day at a time,” she told me. “That’s how we get on until your Dad comes home.”

I didn’t mention the Crawlers on the floor and especially not the one in her coffee cup. She never mentioned them either. I did make some Crawlers that day for my Dad, though, and Mom and I placed them carefully in an envelope and addressed it to his Fleet Post Office address in Vietnam.

My dad didn’t really need any more bugs in the jungle. But I kept sending them anyway. They were small packages of memories. And I wanted to thank him for the going away gift he had given me before he went to war in 1965. We were in the car. I remember ripping the paper off that package like it was the wrapper on a popsicle on a hot summer day.

It was a book! I could begin to make out the title as I shredded the wrapping. "'Op on Op” peeked out at me through a hole in the paper. “I can read it all by myself Beginner Books," it said.

I tossed the decorative wrap onto the car floor and held up my prize with its aqua, white, orange, and yellow cover. “Hop on Pop” by Dr. Seuss. I laughed at the two small bears jumping on the daddy bear’s tummy. “We like to hop. We like to hop on top of pop.”

“Thank you! Thank You!” I said, in between pages.

Mission accomplished. My dad and mom smiled as we made our way back to my grandmother’s house. But I was sad, too. I knew even then that a good little Marine didn’t cry, and that my brother and I would need to be tough for Mom.  I put the book down, held my tears back and looked out the window. As if in a movie, the scenes scrolled by. Even though I had been born here, it seemed a new landscape for me. 

We would have to run our recons without Dad for quite a while. 

Full Story at: http://www.boyhoodmoments.com/2016/09/hop-on-pop.html 

Jersey Rain

Jersey Rain by gregg chadwick
Via Flickr:
Gregg Chadwick 30"x40" oil on linen 2015 

 Inspired by Robert Pinsky and Robert Chadwick 

JERSEY RAIN

by Robert Pinsky

Now near the end of the middle stretch of road
What have I learned? Some earthly wiles. An art.
That often I cannot tell good fortune from bad,
That once had seemed so easy to tell apart.

The source of art and woe aslant in wind
Dissolves or nourishes everything it touches.
What roadbank gullies and ruts it doesn’t mend
It carves the deeper, boiling tawny in ditches.

It spends itself regardless into the ocean.
It stains and scours and makes things dark or bright:
Sweat of the moon, a shroud of benediction,
The chilly liquefaction of day to night,

The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one:
It smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River,
Fair Haven, Newark, Little Silver, Bayonne.
I feel it churning even in fair weather

To craze distinction, dry the same as wet.
In ripples of heat the August drought still feeds
Vapors in the sky that swell to smite the state –
The Jersey rain, my rain, in streams and beads

Of indissoluble grudge and aspiration:
Original milk, replenisher of grief,
Descending destroyer, arrowed source of passion,
Silver and black, executioner, font of life.                

A Perfect Storm

by Gregg Chadwick

President Barack Obama comforts Donna Vanzant today in Brigatine, New Jersey
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) 

The Megastorm Sandy roared into the Atlantic Coast on Monday night.  A thousand mile wide swath of destruction marked its path. The storm raged from the Carolinas to New England,  dumped a massive freak snowfall on West Virginia and flooded much of coastal New Jersey and New York City. Hundreds of thousands lost electricity, buildings were washed away, homes burned to the ground, and many died. But it could have been so much worse. As the night of Sandy wore on, many of us were reminded of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the feeble efforts to save the city of New Orleans. I was on twitter most of the night, communicating via 140 character messages what we knew and how to reach help. People were scared, information was spotty and at times poisoned with fake news from a now disgraced  Republican campaign manager who cruelly spread dangerous rumors of trapped emergency personnel. But arching over the discord and disinformation was the understanding that President Obama, via the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and his own personal courage, had our backs. 

Gregg Chadwick

Belle Ville

11"x11" oil on linen 2005

Private Collection Los Angeles

As Sandy raged, I thought of my painting, Belle Ville, inspired by images flooding through the media of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It struck me that this strong woman carrying her child away from the storm, could in many ways be seen as Michelle Obama. And I knew that the man who married this heroic woman would carry us as well. Today  President Obama inspected the damage that Sandy brought and determined the continuing course of action with the head of FEMA, Craig Fugate, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. President Obama spoke to the American public across from a damaged marina in Brigatine, New Jersey. Barack's words were purposeful, calming, and filled with effusive praise for those working hard to take care of the people of New Jersey, in particular Governor Christie. Those words will be noted. But what will be deeply remembered is President Obama's comforting embrace of Donna Vanzant - who lost her livelihood, the marina from which the President spoke, in the storm's wrath. Pablo Martinez Monsivais captured a stirring photograph of that moment. This is how Hurricane Sandy will be remembered. A simple image of one man helping another in need. The question is answered. We do take care of our own. 

Krazy Kat Caught in an Alley by Kent Chadwick: New Poem Published in Pontoon by Floating Bridge Review

Krazy Kat caught in an alley 

By Kent Chadwick

                        ________

                        ________

                        ___   ___

            Krazy Kat Caught in an alley

                        caterwauling

            night in Garwood

                        New Jersey

            moonlight on the sagging

                        back landings

            drinking men stripped

                        to undershirts

                        ribbed with a

                        working day’s sweat

            the viscosity of bourbon

                        poured into shots

            patterened thump of

                        ball against wall

                        ball against wall

            sound of speed

                        from the street

                        rubber friction

                        gas combustion

            the swamp coolers shake

                        the swamp coolers drip

                        against the heat

“Fireflies don’t come no more.”

            blue auroras stream

                        from each T.V.

                        out window screens

“Turn it down!”

           

            one house shines

                        in new siding

            chain links the brown

                        block’s backyards

                        right angles and shadow

            no sirens tonight

            a kid laughs

            some woman hums

                        the dishes away

“Sit for a week, even this’ll look good.”

“That’s whiskey talking. Throw me a beer, Jake.

It’s all in your head.”

This poem was included in Pontoon, published by Floating Bridge Review (Seattle), Number Four, 2011

All the poems in Pontoon were chosen from manuscripts submitted to the 2011 Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Award.


Pontoon is available from Floating Bridge Press

Photo: Painter & Poet by Margaret Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick

Detail of Jimmy Buffs

72"x96" oil on linen 1982--1992

Collection: Kent Chadwick