not his hat
I knew this guy in Montreal named Ivy Carpenter. His real name was Yves Charpentier. He knew Lenny Bruce. One day he offered me this denim jacket that he said used to belong to Bruce but I turned it down. It was that white denim which I didn’t like. What a fool I was. But on the other hand what’s to stop me from saying to anybody at any time, “See this jacket? It belonged to Lenny Bruce.“ Or hat.
One Response to “not his hat”
- Mort Golub
I remember that jacket. not so sure it ever belonged to Bruce.(maybe symbolically)..Ivy was one of my good friends.He lived with a hooker named Ruth (he called her Root) Ruths hooker buddies gave us freebies. I knew about the Lenny Bruce connection but we were never sure if it was real.Ivy was a master of jive,like his friend Leo Leshlie, who drove us around in his gigantic Mercury turnpike cruiser,and turned us all on, when he wasnt in jail.You knew Leo I believe.Moxie cafe upstairs…
There was a hipster lawyer named Rollin Gallay that actually was a buddy of Bruce. He was a bit older than us and told us many stories about Bruce.I think Ivy transposed these stories of Rollin to his own lore jive history . One of the guys in our hipster group was named Terry Heffernan.He was a screenwriter and did a few Hollywood movies.One of these movies was about our scene in Montreal, titled “A great big thing” Paul Sand played me in the movie and Rene Santoni played Ivy. Terry was a great guy,and a beloved friend but a heavy alcoholic and died young in Thailand, up in Chang Mai. I lost track of Ivy when I moved away, but he spent some years hustling, hitting up buddies.A classic Montreal character. Dont touch that dial.