7249. BELOW THE WATER LINE, pt. 32

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 32)

One time my friend Billy Zellner, his house

was broken into overnight. Strange crime, out

of the ordinary occurrence for our block  -  even

with the prison in our very back yards and all the

occasional talk about prison breaks and all that

'what-would-we-do-if', etc. I always it figured

it couldn't be any worse than Barry Wynn's UFO

landing right about there too. Anyway, story was

that Billy's father  - who was a driver for whatever

bus company back then was running all those buses

now as NJTransit does  -  arrived home later at night,

as usually with his shift, and  -  again as usual  -

emptied his pockets of change and money and wallet

and stuff, and put it all on the upstairs stairway for the

next day  -  when he'd re-stuff all his pockets again in

whichever pants he was wearing. Well late that night

someone broke in, and was about to go for that stash

on the steps. Billy's father somehow ambushed the guy,

clocked him good, and foiled the robbery. That was that.

Nowadays he'd probably be sued and implicated for

aggression towards a black man, but whatever  -  that's

today's world, this was yesterday's. I always thought it

was a cool happening. I myself, after that, always

fantasized in like fashion, about catching a burglar,

beating him, pounding him but good, and then (to take

it one step further) chaining him up in my basement and

further pounding and punishing him at will. That was

either my own personal version of 'Avenel' justice, or

some really early Kafka influence. Either way, it was

my fun.

-

I've lived, already, after Avenel, in different places. I've

been in Metuchen near 37 years, 'til last year, and 10

years in Princeton too. I can tell you a lot about the

differences between places  -  their pretensions, and

their portrayals and self-images. I can honestly say,

from growing up here and returning here now twice

in one lifetime (I don't know, is that an achievement?

Thomas Wolfe wrote 'you can't go home again'. Am I

proving him wrong?)....that Avenel has none of that.

Certainly no pretension. Certainly no false self-image

of itself. it is what it is. You don't like it, get the fuck

out, OK. 'Give 'em Hell from Avenel' isn't just a rhyme,

it's a real fact. And we don't even have a cemetery  -  just

a swampland down in the bottoms. Check for Jimmy

Hoffa there, maybe. I can separate what I'm saying by

pointing this out: In Avenel, in the driveways and out at

the curbs, you're going to find work trucks. You know

it's gritty and tough and sound when guys bring their

work-trucks home with them, and park them : Eastern

Oil Service, Fred's Plumbing Supply, Axion Steel Works,

Otorio's Fuel-Station Repair, Amol's Heating and Cooling  -

things like that. When you see people coming home with

their work trucks, parking them, and stepping into their house

for supper and a beer, you gotta' know all's right with the

world. Here you'll find none of that sick-gazing, 'my Lexus

beats your Infiniti' stuff, the double-fronted two-Cadillac

oval wraparound drive way.  It's a freaking Chevy van, and

it's 12 years old. What of it? Westfield may have its

catacombs and Trader Joe's, and Metuchen could try

and find it's own Striver's Row, trying to be something

it never will be, Princeton doesn't have to try, it's got its
own high-class and the University, but Avenel, I'd say, hosts

Reality. Take it or leave it, at that.

-

Out front of the Clifford's house, on Inman Avenue, used

to be one of those red fire-call boxes, with the blue light

always on. I'd pass it every day coming from grade school,

and later from Junior High, which is all somehow now called,

instead, Middle School. That box and always-on light totally

fascinated me. I never got its meaning, but it had this little

flap-door and a white thing in it for your finger, once you

got the door opened. The idea was to, with your finger

fitting right into that little looped thing, pull on this lever,

and that would register your fire-call. Box number, location,

time, all that stuff. It always seemed  -  to me  -  so final, so

scary. Anyone even thinking of a false alarm, I always thought,

had better think twice. This was a really deliberate decision, to

be made with aforethought, and NOT malice. The doer here 

better be sure of what he was doing.

-

Back then, too, it seemed that when the snows came, they

really came, an they stayed pretty nearly all Winter. I

remember all the Dads and those clunky, noisy chains

they'd put on their cars, at least on the rear wheels  -  the

strange clackety-clack sound of all that is always with me.

That metallic combination of clamp and metal, and the

bands of woven burlap or whatever it was that held the

clamped chains onto the tire. The one year, I guess it was

1961, come about two weeks before Christmas, until late

January, our street was frozen up and the two or three

inches of dense-pack snow on the very street itself, after

thaw and freeze, thaw and freeze over and over, had gotten

hard like ice  - a slick and shiny surface. No salt or anything

like that ever came to break it up. Cars just chomped along  -

but for us it was an entire near-month of amazing sledding

and skating and sliding. Outdoors the entire time, we made

ice-cut igloos, we channeled the curbsides with a river-flow

of whatever thaw happened, and we tended to it, all up and

down the block. To make sure it stayed open. To be sure

the flow continued. We had massive block against block

snowball fights  -  leaving our own territory, Inman

Avenue, to go uphill and challenge the Clark Place 

and Madison Avenue maniacs. Probably Monica Court

too, but I forget. Speaking of Monica Court, and maniacs,

they had the Squillace Brothers. Believe me, any side

which had Ronnie and Richie on it were sure winners.

One or the other of them would rip anybody's head clear

off, on a dare. Just that brutal, and forceful, and direct.

At the top of Clark Place was a hill, part of the street, but

a hill nonetheless -   it used to seem huge, a real incline. 

Now, really nothing at all. But that was our high-point, 

always the pinnacle for these grand and beastly snowball

fights, which would eventually, at some offshot, develop

downward into fist-fights and scrambles to kill someone.

It never failed, and I got used to what red blood on white 

snow looks like. Damn it all, it looks like Avenel. Years
later, doing some reading, I realized that this extended
ice-month I just mentioned was the same January days that
Bob Dylan had landed in New York City, his first steps into
what he called the worst cold and snow he'd ever faced. It
was certainly an extended freeze-over. Dead batteries and
neighborhood cars, every-morning, needing that constant, 
hood-up tinkering, battery jump, and coaching to get started.

-
Something akin to Marcel Proust and his madeleines (look 
it up) and memory, this cold-morning imagry had always 
stayed with me. The sound was different, the air and the  
stillness of the smell. Everything was muffled  - and to a 
ten-year-old like me  -  that muffled meant mystery 
everywhere, and a sweet feeling in a growing heart. As I 
said previous, I love the swaddled and the muffled  -  the
 faces of the people I'd see: the mystery of the girls and their coats, 
the adult men with their Winter hats and the ice on their eyebrows 
and faces  -  the few with moustaches, like grouchy
Mr. Granada and his Ford Victoria, 1956, black beauty (there
were a lot of just plain old Fords and Chevies around Inman), and -  
of course  -  their cigarettes. Cigarettes were everywhere, all these 
people smoked. For one thing, the Army and the military service 
made you smoke. They handed out free cigarettes to the enlisted 
 men, I was told, like they were licorice strips  -  pack after pack.  
They were supposed to break the tedium, and the fear, and the 
big resounding dread. I guess that's where they all first got the
extended habit. These guys, and most of their wives too, were
hooked. Kenny Kaisen's parents smoked Raleigh cigarettes.
On each Raleigh pack there be a little Raleigh coupon. You get
enough of them, and you could cash them in for things ; toasters, 
coolers, picnic sets, lamps, throw rugs. Weird stuff like that  -  for 
smoking! Their house had lots of things from there. I suppose, if 
you really turned in a pile of coupons, they'd even give you a 
heart and lung machine. Well, maybe not  -  bad for 
public relations, you know.