By Fred Bruning
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May 26, 2024
Remember, “Clockwork Orange?”
That was the 1971 Stanley Kubrick movie adaptation of the futuristic 1962 Anthony Burgess novel about a gang of British hoodlums – “droogs” – who enjoy nothing more than a night of “ultra-violence,” sometimes lethal.
Brilliant movie. Scary stuff.
Only six years before the Burgess book, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers – five kids from Washington Heights, just above Harlem – sang an unusually topical, mostly overlooked, doo-wop song called, “I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent.”
Lyrics were simple and rhyme-y, no angst or disillusion or bitter indictment of the status quo, just a little good advice.
Do the things that's right
And you'll do nothing wrong
Life will be so nice, you'll be in paradise
I know, because I'm not a juvenile delinquent
There’s one line, wise and unexpected, I remember most after all these years.
It's easy to be good, it's hard to be bad
Stay out of trouble, and you’ll be glad
Take this tip from me, and you will see
How happy you will be
It’s easy to be good, it’s hard to be bad?
Nice sentiment, right? That we’re generally a decent bunch and, only with effort, otherwise.
All things being equal, we’ll do the right thing.
No question, plenty can go flooey. Circ*mstances must be taken into account.
But in that long-ago, rock’n’roll time, I thought Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had identified something true and uplifting. It wasn’t the first time the boys had pondered eternal verities. Their great hit a few months earlier was, “Why do Fools Fall in Love?” and who knows the answer to that?
And so ends the deeply philosophical portion of the day’s presentation.
Why mention “Clockwork Orange” and dear Frankie Lymon?
Answer, ahead.
But, first, please join us – my wife, Wink, and me – as we enjoy late dinner at a local bistro, crowd thinning but voices of the remaining customers cheery and restorative, the persistent buzz pleasant, invigorating, and no threat to conversation,
Wink and I clinked glasses in that grand and universal tradition and before her first sip of Prosecco or mine of Malbec, Wink said, as, in one way or another, she often does, “Lucky, we are.”
And, for sure, we are fortunate – able to afford, at least once in a while, what so many cannot.
“Shouldn’t forget,” Wink says.
“Shouldn’t. Ever.”
Meal done, we pass on dessert. I have a double espresso.
We speak with manager, a friendly young man we’ve known for years. He tells us he’s had a round of medical stuff – major league – but is doing well.
“Glad to be alive,” he says. “Wife, three kids.”
We hug him and leave. It’s 10:30. Time for pajamas and a new mystery on BritBox.
There are a few little curves on the way back to our house – the road running along the water – and, coming around the last, we saw maybe 10 kids on the other side of the road and two on ours. us.
One boy, taller, older, was tapping the ground with some sort of white rod and yelling – drunk, maybe, who knows? The other kids were laughing but kind of hesitantly. The older boy hit the street again.
I slowed and then stopped.
The boy – 17 or 18, I’d say – looked at us, granddad and grandma, and yelled something.
He stepped in front of the car, blocking us, and smiled, mouth wide and contorted.
He came around to Wink’s window and made another haunting face.
Shouting something – not sure what – he hit the car twice, hard, with his rod. He laughed. I had a sense of the other kids watching, frightened, maybe, as we were.
The big kid roared again, and, then moved on. The others followed.
Wink called the police. “Before they do real damage,” she said.
The vicious boy – the brief, alarming episode, the nicks suffered by our old Subaru but, thankfully, not by us -- made me think of Clockwork Orange. In my imagination at least, the fellow with the rod looked like Malcolm McDowell, who played Alex, leader of the droogs.
Toward the end of the film, Alex slipping toward oblivion, is psychologically “cured” by government authorities but perhaps, after all, out of reach.
Frankie Lymon, sweet fellow, memorable voice, was found dead at age 25 on the floor of his grandmother’s bathroom in Washington Heights. Heroin overdose.
I hope the kid with the stick and sneering smile catches himself quickly.
Easy to be good.
Hard to be bad.
Stay out of trouble and you’ll be glad.
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