Black Leather & Blue Denim
Subtitle: A 50's Novel
Publisher: Dubya
Published: 2001
Format: Paperback
ISBN-13: 9781589090460
Description: Black Leather and Blue Denim: A '50s Novel is available at online bookstores Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Buy.com, Booksamillion.com, Powell's Books, Tower Books and at other major Internet retail booksellers.  The book exists in hardcover, paperback and in three e-book formats (Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket Reader). BL&BD is one of 31 books authored by Jay Dubya (John Wiessner). BL&BD is one part of an action/adventure trilogy, the other two books being The Great Teen Fruit War, a 1960 Novel and Frat Brats, A 60s Novel.

 

General Synopsis
Black Leather and Blue Denim is a '50s novel about greaser gang conflict in Levittown, Pennsylvania. J.W. narrates the story.

J.W. (age twelve) and his family move into the Dogwood Hollow section of Levittown in the spring of '54. He soon makes friends with Carnie, the neurotic son of a carnival barker, and Tinker, a mechanically inclined, vindictive kid with destructive tendencies. The three boys are picked on and harassed by older greasers from Kenwood, another section of Levittown.

In April of '54, the Fairless Hills Steel Mill opens, and the Caracas, a Venezuelan ship is carrying the first iron ore from South America up the Delaware River. Students from area schools are invited to wave linen American flags on sticks at the vessel. Four people in the front row accidentally fall into the Delaware River as the Caracas is passing by. Two of them are Angie Palermo and Bubbles Messina. The two girls and their families blame J.W. and Carnie for pushing them over the bulkhead into the river. The event causes future conflict between the girls and J.W.

J.W. likes Angie Palermo, the daughter of a Mafia drug and pornography distributor. J.W.'s principal enemies are Popeye Messina (Angie's cousin), Cummings, the leader of the Kenwood Kamikazes, and Father Malcolm, the disciplinarian at Cardinal Reagan High School. In late January of '57, J.W. and Carnie were ice skating on the Delaware Canal. Cummings, Popeye, and some other Kamikazes throw J.W. across the ice, which then breaks. J.W. has a near death experience. He is rescued by Carnie and Robbie Wilkinson, another Dogwood Hollow' friend.

Later that month, Tinker and J.W, are hitchhiking. They arepicked up by Kamikazes' Cummings and Popeye Messina, transported into Philadelphia and left off against their wills. After being "kidnapped," Tinker vows revenge on the Kamikazes. 

In early '57, J.W. becomes friendly with a handsome blonde-haired joker, Bo Jalonec. Bo and J.W. go fishing along the Delaware River in March of '57. They are surprised and attacked by the Kamikazes. Bo and J.W. jump into an old abandoned rowboat. The K's throw stones, and one hits Bo in the forehead before he and J.W. manage to row out to an island. In July of '57, J.W. and Bo help organize the Diablos to protect the gang's members from the ruthless Kamikazes. Pranks and practical jokes between the D's and the K's quickly escalate into life threatening situations. 

Quinn, leader of the Diablos, becomes friendly with Marcus "Sugar Ray" Spellman, a young black mechanic who works on the engine of the chief D's '42 Ford. Tinker is unhappy that a black kid is going to join the Diablos, saying he was going to quit the gang and join the racist Kamikazes. Carnie and J.W. convince Tinker to stay in the Diablos, but the mean-spirited youth tries to undermine Quinn's authority.

Phil Jackson is a rich, spoiled jock who is the Cardinal Reagan quarterback. In the Feed Bag restaurant, an area hangout, Jackson makes fun of Tinker. The two boys fight outside the building, and surprisingly, Tinker beats up the athlete in a fair brawl. Three weeks later, Jackson and three of his offensive linemen attack and injure Tinker behind the Dairy DeLite custard stand, which is located next to the Feed Bag. Tinker gets revenge by stealing Phil Jackson's white '56 Corvette and then filling its interior with cement.

Th Diablos have a night raid on Sal Palermo's Bristol, Pennsylvania business, Specialty Enterprises. They discover a cache of marijuana and pornography inside the warehouse. Tinker heists some of the contraband and plants it in Cummings' car's trunk and in Phil Jackson's dad's Lincoln after the Cardinal Reagan Prom. Popeye Messina had double dated to the prom with his buddy Phil Jackson, and they, along with Cummings, get in trouble with the local police.

Quinn and Cummings have a drag race on Haines Road, but Tinker, who wants control of the Diablos, interferes with the outcome. Cummings, Popeye and the Kamikazes enter the Feed Bag restaurant. Marcus Spellman is sitting inside the hangout with Quinn, J.W. and Carnie. Cummings makes racial insults at Marcus Spellman. Quinn defends Marcus and challenges Cummings to a fight at a nearby quarry. The fight is broken up when a police helicopter hovers overhead. All of the greasers immediately disperse. A gang war between the D's and the K's is temporarily averted.

Tinker goes on a rampage and destroys a whole fleet of Kamikaze cars in a series of bizarre situations. He also destroys Phil Jackson's replacement 'Vette, which the quarterback's wealthy parents had recently purchased. 

A second drag race is scheduled between Quinn and Cummings for Labor Day of '59. The site is a New Jersey blueberry farm with a blacktop road, and the two gangs assemble there. As the race is in progress, a New Jersey State Trooper's patrol cruiser enters the farm's main gate and pursues the racers. Quinn and Cummings must criss-cross several times and take separate side dirt roads above irrigation ditches that lead back to the asphalt road. The trooper elects to chase after Quinn. At the final intersection before the home stretch, the police cruiser and Cummings' '52 Ford have a head-on collision. The two cars fall into five-feet-deep canals on opposite sides of the road. Carnie, Tinker and J.W. rescue the state trooper from drowning, and Marcus Spellman saves Cummings. Phil Jackson has a mental breakdown. He leaves a suicide note and then runs away from home. The newspapers report that his parents have offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information about their son.

Quinn is having problems with his girlfriend, so he becomes more active with the Diablos. He asks J.W. to devise a prank against the Kamikazes using Jackson's disappearance as a basis for baiting Cummings and Popeye, "as long as nobody gets hurt or killed." The Diablos tell the K's they had discovered Phil Jackson's body and that they wanted to share the reward money with the Kenwood gang to signal a truce. J.W.'s plan works. The Kamikazes are frightened in the woods by "Phil Jackson's ghost," a prank devised by the Diablos. The K's speed home towards Levittown. Their car runs an intersection and is crushed by a tractor-trailer. Worm, the driver, is killed. Spits is paralyzed. Cummings is hospitalized, and Popeye Messina suffers lacerations, bruises and loss of pride.

Marcus Spellman's family moves into the Dogwood Hollow section of Levittown at 43 Deepgreen Lane. This greatly upsets the residents of the previously all-white community. J.W. and his Diablo friends take an unpopular stance against the massive white backlash protesting the racial integration of Levittown. Quinn, Cummings, J.W., Popeye and the rest of the D'' and K's finally come together by accepting the black greaser's right to live in their community.

Forty-three years later, the main Diablos have a reunion in San Diego, where Quinn presently resides. After remembering the Diablos' many '50s adventures, J.W. is saddened to learn that Bo Jalonec had died of leukemia in 1994. Bo had become a wealthy man. His reunion gifts to the remaining Diablos were mint-condition replicas of the cars owned by the gang's members in the 1950s. J.W. inherits a green and white '57 Chevy, a reproduction of Bo's car. J.W. also receives a black leather Diablo jacket and a pair of blue denim jeans. An envelope inside the '57 Chevy contains a note from Bo to J.W. asking him to always remember "Black leather and blue denim," the subject of their first conversation in the spring of '57. 

Quinn leads a caravan of vintage '50s cars from the Hotel Del Coronado over the curved Coronado Bridge into San Diego. Quinn stops at the crown of the bridge and gets out. So, do the drivers of the other classic cars. Quinn points to the water below. As the former Diablos look down, they see the Caracas passing underneath. The ship reminds them of their glory days in Levittown in the '50s