re: Pictures from days gone by....

USS Leyte (ARG-8) departs Norfolk, Va on 1 October 1944 on her way to the South Pacific.

This was my Grandfather's ship in WWII. While we can't confirm it, there is a very good chance that's he's in this photo somewhere. On the wall in our living room, we have the documentation where he crossed over the equator 25 days later.

A German air force officer talking to a British policeman in a Jersey street shortly after the Nazi occupation of the island (1940). Photographs of the iconic British bobby cooperating with Reich authorities had immense propaganda value for the Germans.

One of my favorite books is the "Then and Now book of New Orleans"

Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs



Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr

quote:

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On 13 August 1944, 19-year-old Lucien Carr and 22-year-old Jack Kerouac tried to leave New York and sail to France on board a merchant ship, but were kicked off at the last moment. Instead, the went and got drunk at The West End (on Broadway near 114th). Kerouac left and ran into David Kammerer (Carr’s old Boy Scout leader who was infatuated with Carr and had followed him from city to city for years) and Kerouac told him where he could find Carr.

Carr and Kammerer drank together until the bar closed and then walked to nearby Riverside Park. According to Carr, Kammerer either made sexual advances toward him or threatened to Carr’s girlfriend, or both. Carr stabbed the older man in the heart with his Boy Scout knife.

Carr tied up the body and threw it in the Hudson River, then went to his friend William Burroughs’ apartment. Burroughs helped Carr dispose of some of Kammerer’s belongings and told Carr to turn himself in. Instead, Carr went to tell Kerouac what had happened. Kerouac helped Carr bury the murder weapon and Kammerer’s glasses.

2 days later, Carr turned himself in; the same day the police found Kammerer’s body floating in the river. Kerouac and Burroughs were arrested as accessories and charged as material witnesses. Burroughs’ family bailed him out and forced him to return to St. Louis. Kerouac’s father refused to give him the $100 to get out jail. Kerouac’s girlfriend, Edie Parker, agreed get Kerouac out of jail, but under one condition (imposed by her parents), that Kerouac marry her. On 22 August 1944 Jack Kerouac and Edie Parker were married at City Hall with Kerouac handcuffed to a detective.

Lucien Carr appeared in court on 24 August 24 1944 and was indicted for second-degree murder. He claimed self-defense and pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter. He served 2 years in the Elmira Reformatory.

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1973

Clara Bow, My Lady of Whims, 1925