ARTIST: Martha & the Vandellas
FORMAT: 7" 45 RPM
TITLE: "Jimmy Mack" & "Third Finger, Left Hand"
YEAR: 1967
LABEL: Gordy Records
"Jimmy Mack" is one of those songs that seems like it was unearthed rather than composed. It's simple and timeless with a hook that you just want to hear over and over. Lamont Dozier discovered it and broke it free in 1964 after seeing the mother of "He's So Fine" writer Ronnie Mack accepting an award on his behalf. This somber context comes through in the song which while guided along by upbeat handclaps finds its true center in Martha Reeves' measured vocals which aren't lovestruck, sugary-sweet, or even distraught, but instead full of conflict over Jimmy's absence: do I hold out or move on?
While Martha and the Vandellas released "Jimmy Mack" on their Watchout! album in 1966, it didn't get put out as a single until a year later under the Gordy Records imprint. This was near the height of the Vietnam War with 485,600 US troops deployed. There's no doubt this added a special resonance to the song's central refrain -- "When are you coming back?" -- taking an already irresistible song to #1 on the R&B charts (and #10 overall). There's speculation that Barry Gordy waited a year to release the song as a single because he feared it'd be inappropriate for Motown to promote a record about an absentee lover in the early days of an uncertain war. By '67, however, anti-war sentiments had grown, making the message both more relevant and palatable for Motown's mass audience.
My dad, whose draft number was low (047) was able to get college deferments. Still, Vietnam was a presence in my house, my neighborhood, among my friends, and still is. Vietnam was/is pure trauma. For one of my closest friends, it's a thing that defines his dad to this day. He, like many veterans, says little, but the war is always there somewhere. What does make its way out is tragic and damaged. There's none of the grim heroism of so many WWII stories. Nostalgia never took hold.
Both my parents were anti-war, but my mom in particular. She'd often tell me (especially in the days of the Gulf War) that if a draft were to happen, she'd get me to Canada. I didn't doubt it. I grew up feeling that my family, for a generation, had dodged a bullet. It was odd when I eventually worked with a wife of a Vietnam vet who insisted the US won the war, and it was a just cause. I suppose I understood why they needed that to be true.
"I grew up feeling that my family, for a generation, had dodged a bullet."
Growing up, we played "guns" a lot. It wasn't much more than running around the neighborhood or nearby forest making gun noises or recreating our favorite movie scenes. As we got older, our play grew more sophisticated thanks to clothing and equipment from the Army surplus store or garage sales, almost all of it from the Vietnam or Korean War.
It was the 80s, and both Sheena Easton and Sandii and The Sunsetz had their own upbeat versions of "Jimmy Mack." War was either cold and distant or fictionalized and exotic, a playground for Stallone and Schwarzenegger in made up jungles like Val Verde. Our backyard neighbors, the L.’s, invited me over the fence to their garage sale one afternoon. Their fence wasn’t hoppable (every kid knew whose was and wasn’t), so I rounded the block on my Huffy.
Mr. L. led me through their garage sale and into their house. He was, I imagine, in his late 40s or early 50s, with glasses that matched his squared and rounded frame. He had a standard issue side-part haircut — basic brown — like mine now. I’d never been inside his house, but it had orbited my life for as along as I could remember. Any new house, especially those I knew well but hand't visited, felt electric and revelatory. To me, houses held the key to people. My own house was a reflection of my mom — a hazy, messy cornucopia, full of stuff to be discovered. It held little imprint of the rest of us. It was one of the spots on the street any kid could feel welcome, and I’m sure the other parents were happy my mom carried that burden.
I don’t remember much of the L.’s house. We went into the basement where Mr. L. explained he had other stuff that didn’t quite make the cut for the sale. It felt, at least, like these were special things not for everyone, and, well, I was his backyard neighbor after all. I don’t remember much of the stash beyond what I took: a couple faded Army green satchels. They were frayed and scuffed with use, sun and water damaged. I didn’t know where they’d come from or what they were for; I hadn’t even put together at the time that they were Mr. L.’s. I just felt some history there and thought they looked cool. Mr. L. had held onto them all these years. His own boys had played with them, but they were teenagers now. I imagine he wondered what purpose they served sitting there in the basement.
Those satchels were mine for years. We’d use them to play Rambo or Predator. As we entered junior high we even brought them into the woods to camp, stuffing them with fireworks and cans of Hormel chili. Over time I pieced together their history just as my militarism turned to pacifism.
"My own house was a reflection of my mom — a hazy, messy cornucopia, full of stuff to be discovered."
I imagine after one of those camping trips — maybe the one the cops broke up when we were too old to be doing what we were doing — the satchel made its way into my mom’s basement. It sat there for fifteen years while her dementia worsened. I was away at school and real sick when things turned: a loan was forgotten, the bank foreclosed. My sister was there when my mom’s house was cleaned out. I told her a few things out of the thousands to save. A guitar. Comic books. Some videos. No satchels.