1953 Unpublished letter to Judson Crews - Read this gem! (timeline stuff)

mjp

mjp

Founding member
If he mentions a certain place and time often, I tend to believe him too, but he rarely mentions some of these places, and the less he mentions them, the more I doubt them.

Again, I don't doubt that he was ever in San Francisco, St. Louis or a lot of these cities, I just doubt that he spent any considerable period of time in them.

But of course that's what I believe, because it supports my overall hypothesis. ;)
 
roni

roni

Bukfan said:
Do we know for sure he was working for the Red Cross in '42? Any proof of sorts?
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Only proof is Sounes. Usually he doesn't tell things 'as fact' if there's a reasonable doubt. But then - of course there's no evidence it's true.

The timeline I did for the yearbook of 2006 - based mostly on the FBI-files and Sounes both books - says:


1941
June: leaving university. / short jobs at Southern Pacific Railroad Co and Borg-Warner Factory, South Flower Street. / Then start of wandering around - first target: New Orleans. There: work in a warehouse. / Then Atlanta Georgia. / Travel back through Texas as a railroad worker.

1942
Moving to San Francisco. / job as a blood-truck-driver for the Red Cross. / latest possibile date for discovering classical music / Wandering again, one of the targets being St. Louis, Missouri. / job as a warehouse man. / Possibly first visits to Philadelphia.

1944
First publication: 'Aftermath' - going to New York on that occation. / Then (back?) to Philadelphia. (in the Buk-Tapes he mentions, he was in NY BEFORE he went to Philly the first time!). / Living (among others?) in 603 North 17th Street, / prefered bar at Fairmount Avenue. / job (among others?) Fairmount Motor Products. / July 22: arrest through FBI ......etc...


(this is my back-translation from German, so: sorry for the language.)


anybody any suggestions on these datas?
Anything definitely wrong with it?
 
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mjp

mjp

Founding member
roni said:
1941
June: leaving university. / short jobs at Southern Pacific Railroad Co and Borg-Warner Factory, South Flower Street. / Then start of wandering around - first target: New Orleans. There: work in a warehouse. / Then Atlanta Georgia. / Travel back through Texas as a railroad worker.
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I would question whether he had time for all this in 1941. If he left school in June and got a job in Los Angeles, I would assume he worked that job for at least a few months. FBI says he quit Borg-Warner in December (Pearl Harbor?), which puts him in Los Angeles for essentially all of 1941.

In a few places in the FBI files he indicates a month long gap of unemployment, so it was not as if he was afraid of indicating idle time between jobs. That would tend to support the idea that he reported those job dates accurately.

The files indicate that he went straight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, and then show a one month gap between leaving Philadelphia and arriving back home in Los Angeles. Now if Bukowski had a good memory for dates and places, and he was the source of this information, then his whereabouts are confirmed with the exception of that one month. If he was not the source of this information, that means the FBI confirmed at least some of it, which would seem to make it even more accurate.

A lot of this hinges on how accurate you consider the FBI files to be, or how accurate you consider the information that Bukowski gave to the FBI or the post office investigators.
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
Roni: Thanks a lot for the timeline!

According to mjp's FBI info he was in Los Angeles for all of 1941. Then he couldn't have travelled to New Orleans, Atlanta and back to Los Angeles through Texas at the same time - unless the FBI files are wrong, of course. I guess we'll never be able to solve this satisfactory - damn!
 
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cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
From "Dirty Old Man Confesses" (Adam, Oct. 1971):
I moved from city to city, having to work long and dull dime-and-nickle jobs - Houston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Frisco twice, New York City, Miami Beach, Savannah, Atlanta, Fort Worth, Dallas, Kansas City, and probably some that I have forgotten.
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Looks like the landlady from the 1968 story was right after all ;) But, Savannah???
 
roni

roni

mjp said:
I would question whether he had time for all this in 1941. If he left school in June and got a job in Los Angeles, I would assume he worked that job for at least a few months. FBI says he quit Borg-Warner in December (Pearl Harbor?), which puts him in Los Angeles for essentially all of 1941.
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You are totally right!
Sounes (p.20 in the Grove-edition) states:

"He dropped out of college soon afterwards, in June, 1941, and after working manual jobs for six months [!] in the Southern Pacific railroad yards and the Borg-Warner factory on South Flower Street, he set out to explore America ..."

Still he names New Orleans, Atlanta and the back-travel through Texas right after that, which points these experiences somewhere in the Winter of 1941/42, with uncertainty about the exact year/date.

He then claims Buk to be working in SF for the Red Cross in "spring of 1942" (p.21).

This puts all these experiences (the so called "bumming around") into a very short amount of time. Still, living under these conditions can make 3 months feel like 2 years. So we don't need to doubt wether Buks claims about his experiences were true at all, but only if they cover a long period of time.

Some of Sounes' sources, as stated on pp 254-255 were Buks own writings and claims. So we still have some uncertainty here.

mjp said:
Now if Bukowski [...] was the source of this information, [...] A lot of this hinges on how accurate you consider the FBI files to be, or how accurate you consider the information that Bukowski gave to the FBI or the post office investigators.
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As I recall the FBI-files (I may have to have another look during this thread), their main source was NOT Bukowski himself but former employers, co-workers, landladies, neighbors, etc.

I know a little about archaeology, and usually you collect as many fragments as possible - and even though you're not able to collect Everything, you start making a 'story' out of it, build a theory about what happened. (Only when later new material comes up and gives evidence to do so, you Change that story.)
- I would expect the FBI to work in a similar way. That would explain, why the places where he lived show no holes in their files: they simply 'expanded' the proven facts to cover it up. Or maybe they got information from a former employer, who showed them, what Bukowski had listed to get employed, which obviously could be 'filled up' by Buk also to avoid holes in his record.

So, yeah, I seriously doubt the reliability of the FBI files as far as 'EVERYTHING in it' is concerned.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Well, I think we're pinning it down.

So it's safe to say that very early in 1942 he started his traveling, and that same year wound up in Philadelphia, where he stayed for some time.

If he really was in New York when Story magazine came out, that would mean he had to go back to Philadelphia after New York, since we know for sure he was arrested in Philadelphia in July of 1944 (about 6 months after Story came out).

New York may have been a brief excursion, as he says that he spent very little time there (only a few days or a week as I recall?). I assume - since there is only one known Philadelphia address - that Philadelphia was probably "home base" for a while, and he could have easily visited New York by train at any time (maybe during vacation from his job at the Philadelphia car lot ;)).

---

I have to disagree that the FBI or post office would have "padded out" any dates to cover unknown times/places. Bukowski himself would have had reason to do that - to make himself appear stable and hard working - but the FBI would not report anything but the facts that they found.
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
Now we're starting to get somewhere. We can almost certainly rule out travelings in 1941. We know he was in S.F. spring 1942 working for the Red Cross and we know he was arrested in Philly in July, 1944. The other locations that he mentions, such as Atlanta, was that before or after his arrest? Hmm...
As for the FBI files I tend to believe them overall because I don't think that they would undermine their own files and detective work by making things up. If that was common practise all FBI files would become utterly untrustworthy...
 
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mjp

mjp

Founding member
I don't know if I take the Red Cross job as fact. It's far too colorful (all that red, you know ;))) and there is no corroboration - that I am aware of - aside from Bukowski's own stories.
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
mjp,

the 9-22-53 and 10-9-53 letters from B. to Crews are postmarked from his Coronado Street address. The nov. 1957 one is from the PO Box 75-451, Sanford Station, L.A. address.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
268 4/6? That's interesting. I'll have to find out where the Ocean View address came from - I was pretty sure of that one, which makes me believe it comes from a letter as well...
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Well, that puts him at the Coronado address for at least a couple of years during 1951 through 1953 then.

I adjusted the timeline to move Westmoreland up a year. I still have to dig up the Ocean View address. And now that I look at it, 334 S Westlake Ave, 90057 doesn't fit in the time period it's in either. I think I got that from Sounes? But it doesn't make sense with 503 Union on either side of it...
 
roni

roni

In the Buk-Tapes, where he's talking about the bar in Philly, he states:
"FIRST I went to New York."
- in the same piece he claims:
"I waited two-and-a-half years - I went away a year - and I came back and waited two-and-a-half years ..." - that sounds a little long to me. But what I think, we CAN believe is, that he was there TWICE, having a kind of intermission somewhere else.
 
S

Sircha

Reminds me in a small way of the mythology versus the reality of L. Ron Hubbard's life (though, of course, Hubbard's real and imagined lives were many times more malignant and bizarre). Yet both extracted the banality from their lives by transforming them through their fiction into the timelines of a quest for truth replete with fantastical stories of wanderings to faraway places where they ran with wolves in Hell then touched the clouds with gulls, if not with eagles in Bukowski's case.
 
hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
Moderator
Founding member
Maybe. Point is, he applied coconut - somehow - to the cakes.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Funny (since this thread wound up containing a lot of "10 year drunk" and "ramblin' man" posts), I was reading bits of War All The Time yesterday, and there are two poems in a row where he talks about traveling to New Orleans as a young man.

In the first ("on being 20") he says he was 20 years old, and left from the (Temple Street?) rooming house (after a visit from his mother, which is also telling). In the second ("the troops"), he says he went after WWII broke out, which would make him at least 21, and possibly 22, if he left later in the year, after August 16.

Seems he can't keep his stories straight. ;)
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
mjp said:
In the first ("on being 20") he says he was 20 years old, and left from the (Temple Street?) rooming house (after a visit from his mother, which is also telling). In the second ("the troops"), he says he went after WWII broke out, which would make him at least 21, and possibly 22, if he left later in the year, after August 16.
Click to expand...

WWII started Sept. 1939 with the invasion of Poland. The U.S. got into the war in Dec. 1941. Maybe Buk did'nt think of 1941 but of 1939 or 1940? Just a thought...
 
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mjp

mjp

Founding member
Sure, but World War II started for America in December of 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The vast majority of people here didn't give a rat's ass about the invasion of Poland or Hitler or anything else happening in Europe until Americans started getting killed. That's just the way it was, and I'm sure that it was not only Americans who were guilty of having blinders on when it came to horror and atrocity being visited on "someone else." So American "Troops" wouldn't have been pulling innocent people off buses and beating them until 1942. Assuming that even happened, which is doubtful.

Bukowski did not leave Los Angeles until 1942, I think we can say that with some certainty. Exactly when in 1942, we don't know. Though it was probably early, and it was probably at least partly in reaction to WWII. People on the west coast thought they were next, after Pearl Harbor. San Pedro is full of old military bases, tunnels and huge canon batteries. The people on the west coast fully expected to be attacked, it just never materialized. I think part of the reason he left was to put some distance between himself and the coast. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Especially if you weren't real keen on putting on a uniform.

Anyway, in another poem in War All The Time he says that he spent 7 years on the Philadelphia barstool, which we know is impossible. Not that it matters. He was a poet, not a journalist. ;)
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
a good non-journalistic poem about World War II is "ww2." It was written in 1961 or so and published in Mica and then collected in Mockingbird...
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
I don't know why, maybe it's the dancing or the way he "sings," but that's funny as hell. "I'm the coconut man" will be going through my head for days, I'm sure.
 
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