7202. BELOW THE WATER LINE, pt. 19

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 19)

You know how one day you just wake up and 

find yourself somewhere  -  there you are  -  all

conditions in place and ready for acceptance. Well,

 that's the way it was for me, just rolling off age 4, 

and finding myself on this place called 'Inman Avenue.'

It was much different from Bayonne  -  where as a tyke

I lived on the water, right on the waterfront of a very

busy, and always so, 'Kill Van Kull'. Sounds ominous,

but it's an old Dutch seafaring/maritime word ('kill'),

meaning a flow or body of water that eventually, and by tides,

(estuary) flows to, and back from, the ocean  -  in this case

with the intermediate step of New York Harbor. Crazy ship

traffic  -  tugs, cargo, barge, tankers, freighters, everything.

There were, across the water, on the State Island side tug-boat

repair yards, tugboat junk yards, and a tug boat graveyard too.

Rattling, noisy hulks, the slaps of water-on-hulls sounding, all

hours, the horns and toots and bells and claxons of river traffic, 

river traffic here with an oil-sheen topper. Rainbow-like,

sometimes wondrous, glinting off sunlight. Who knew. 

(There's a lot more of this info in 'Leaving It All Again',

my book posted here, to accompany, somewhere).

-

When I got to Inman Avenue, just about ready to be age 5, I 

knew immediately I'd done a Columbus  -  discovered a whole 

new world, wild and entire, and different; and if - like Columbus  

- the whole  discovery of it was by a mistake, it little mattered. 

I was ready, without much reflection, to give it all a go. I'd never

seen a possum before, let alone families of them, hanging upside

down from huge oak-tree limbs. That's the way it was now -  Inman

Avenue housing ended at John and Joanne Wolchansky's house and

after that (where now, long since, they've built houses anyway  -  Mark

Place and Doreen Drive) it was woods  -  right out to Route One and 

trailer court in that direction, and the junkyards and a truck yard and

railroad tracks in another. 'Para-fucking-dise', let's say. There were

rivulets, shallow streams, a pond, fallen huge trees affording shelter

and cover, paths and all the rest of the things which go with wildness.

even a junk-heap of the usual shit people throw out. The local dumping

grounds : tires, rims, bicycles, car parts, toasters, I even found a watch 

once; it worked until it stopped working, about a year later. Before

our house was completed, during its construction, I remember my

parents and my sister and myself, in Dad's '47 Plymouth, driving 

down from Bayonne, on a weekend day, to check on progress, see

how things looked, how it was all going. We'd get off Rt. One

here, at what turned out to be the ass-end of my street, and I see

all this as we drove  -  the thin sliver of rutted roadway through

the woods, past the trailers, etc., until we came down to the end of 

our block. Gravelly road, yet still an entry and exit for those who's

short-cut through the woods to get to Rt. One, north or south.

Great stuff. I never knew, yet, what it fully involved, but in its

raw and wild state, I already sensed it's unique greatness  -  and a

very different greatness too, from the Bayonne - Kill waterfront,

which I never really wanted to give up, but did. Once the house

was completed  -  the structure, not the yards or the roadways

or anything else  -  we moved in. Everywhere around us (me) was

still rubble and uprooted dirt and trees and the general disarray

of a monumental construction job. I guess  -  though I do not

really remember  -  it all got cleaned up and cleared over time.

One day, I just walked around, looking to see if and who else had

by then moved in. I crossed the street, one house over, knocked

on the front door, and just plainly said, 'Hi I'm Gary, I live across

the street.' As it turned out, the mother there was quite helpful and

wonderful  -  she had 2 boys, Richard and Donald Florio. Donald, 
being my age, and Richard, maybe three years older. Fast friends,
 right off, mostly with Donald, that was my first acquaintance 
with anyone on the street. Everyone is different, we're all 
the same  -  the variations, never really lethal, 
mark who we are. So be it.

-

There will be a lot more of this. But for now, the purpose of this 

little chapter is to relate the story of three people I met, and who  -

growing up together  -  I became friends with. Curious little tales.

The first was Jim Yacullo. I've already mentioned him. He was a

tough, broad-beamed, powerful kid. Not the sports or baseball type

as were some of the others, but with a different concentration. Hard

to say. Anyway, his trait  -  astounding to me  -  was his habit (and I

have no idea where this came came, how or why). Whenever Jim said

something  -  any sentence, most any statement  -  you could see, after

it, his lips moving silently. (Eventually we talked about this, as I'd just

asked, 'what are you doing?'). Whatever he'd just uttered, say, 'this cake

is good', he would repeat again silently, mouthed, to himself, back, as

a replay  -  as he put it, 'just to be sure it was said right.' Totally weird

to me  -  it was like rehearsing the play, but AFTER the final 

performance! I couldn't figure out why  -  if he had to do that  -  he

just wouldn't do it first, in the reverse sequence. It seemed more

sensible. Another friend, Kenny Kaisen, previously mentioned, would

smell everything. No matter what he touched, or passed, or what it was

that caught his attention, it was first brought up to his nose and sniffed.

Just like I said  -  no further explication needed. He just smelled 

everything, from the TV Guide to a candy wrapper to a knick-knack.

That one, I never asked about or commented on. And, lastly, another

friend, a bit older, but a friend and neighbor no matter, named Barry

Wynne, later on, when I was like 15 or so and doing art and painting 

stuff out on the front steps area of my house, he'd come over, always,

and ask to use colors or crayons or whatever, and he'd spend time there

with me always, as he did, always, trying to re-design the American

flag. True stuff, and I have one of his attempts here, somewhere. 
Hoping I can find it, I'll eventually add it to this post. His only goal,
 ever, artistically, was in attempting a satisfying version, for himself, 
of a re-designed flag. He'd play around with stripes, stars, triangles 
and alternating formats, but he never got there, and he never 
stopped. It was very cool  -  Barry is the one who introduced me, 
by records, to the Lovin' Spoonful, the Beach Boys, and others; he'd 
bring a record or two over to listen to, each time, as we doodled. 
(Never called it that, no, it was 'serious' artwork we were doing, to us). 
So, such are memories.