7157. BELOW THE WATERLINE (pt. 2)

BELOW THE WATERLINE 

(pt. 2)

Old Ira it was who lost his boy at the

road-level street crossing of the train; was

killed right there. And then, not long after, the

idea took hold and the wheels were turning  -  they

dug out the underpass, keeping the tracks at what

was once street-level, but the roadway went down 

underneath. It pretty much displaced whatever heart

old Avenel ever had  -  stores on the left had to close, 

the post office moved, the library/train station taken down.

Losing a heart like that, human or town or place, is certain

to kill. And it did. What's it say now, when the center of

town is Route One crossing? The ghost of animosity? it

never rose up for nothing -  folks in this town just accept.

-

Out at the Indian Crossing down in the swamp, that was where

Mrs. Gaspari lived too  -  with her son Wayne. She taught

school somewhere, up at Schools 4&5, which became then the

essence of preliminary education in  a place like this: the town

library was as big  -  or small  -  as a box. Wasn't good for much,

except I used to see Linda Napoli's picture up on the wall  -  in a

framed relic of an earlier-day library opening. Since she was my

neighbor, about right years older than me, it felt right to see.

-

Ira had a gas station at the corner of Avenel Street and Rahway Ave.;

it's a Dunkin Donuts now, even has fake flowers along the front  - it's

funny, things, like that : no one absolutely cares about anything at all.

Indians  -  the other kind of Indians, the ones with the rupees and the

Hindustan Times, they run it, and I'd figure haven't a clue about

anything at all. Local. Hereabouts. Historic. Ira, after like the 1960's,

only had the junkyard down in the reeds, the gas station he closed up.

It stayed like that at least twenty years, just shuttered and shot. I'd 
guess he's dead by now, long ago off, and nobody talks of him 
no more. No mention is ever made of the 
fake flowers either. Oh well.