7273. BELOW THE WATER LINE, pt. 38

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 38)

There was a crazy guy named Dooley, who

had a toy store, also named Dooley's, pretty

much in the exact spot where the Woodbridge

Library and the George Frederick Health Center

is. There was a long lawn and driveway, all cluttered,

and displayed everywhere were swing-sets, slides,

trampolines, bicycles, and lots more. Behind it all

sat this really great, white clapboard, Dooley house,

where he lived with his family. The family, I know

nothing about. He was a really jocular, twinkly-eyes

laughing guy, with a booming voice. A bit bulky, he

was, but a nice guy. About 1956 or '57, he and my father

worked out some sort of a deal for a nice swing-set and

attached slide to be delivered to our yard. My father and

this Dooley guy had hit it off well, and as I recall he

came by with his truck and he and my father pretty much

spent an entire day, or most of it anyway, digging eight

or ten little holes, filling them with a concrete mix,

assembling the swing-set and attached slide, and then

planting it, as it were, nicely positioned and made

level, in the soon-drying concrete the mixed. A few

beers later, it was all finished and they were happy

guys. Dooley got back in his truck, and left. We also

visited there a few times, my father and myself, mostly

just to say hi and hang out, it seemed. But I guess there

were reasons for the visits. The store itself was just a

decent, low building built onto or at the front of their

house  -  and it was filled with great stuff : trucks and

cars, toy versions I mean, dolls, for girls, wagons and

sleds, and probably more, but I forget the whole scene,

Neither can I remember if this was open meadow and

clay pits, or if the newer Woodbridge High School had

been built yet. It didn't really matter : there was a little

Carvel or Dairy Queen there, on the corner where the

Woodbridge High School electric sign is now, and  -

to the other direction  -  there was a big, kind-of-fancy

banquet hall and restaurant, called The Log Cabin. I

remember it burned but good, totally destroyed. Nothing

ever replaced it  -  the area now is ABD Electric, at the

train crossing. Across the street was Woodbridge Ford,

a regular car dealership, just Fords, and next to that,

over towards the highway. was the pretty large grounds

of the Woodbridge Drive-In Theater, now a huge mess

of Shop-Rite and other stores. The Ford dealership

used to have wires strung all over its front parking

and display area, and there were, like Christmas

lights, strings of clear lightbulbs running everywhere  -

which was the lot's illumination. I know, because we'd

usually find ways to break some lightbulbs whenever

we got over there and they were closed. Nearby, past

the now-high-school's little triangle corner, there was

a Studebaker dealership (my friend's father's place,

except that I can't remember his name)  -  they were

gone by 1959, I'm betting, as was Studebaker, and

DeSoto too. Two old car-names. There was a Stewart's

Root Beer there too, and down the street were the 3

Little League fields we played on. I'd bicycle ride to

games there; if we won, sometimes the coach or the

manager guy, Bill Taylor  -  who lived in Avenel on

Woodruff Ave., he'd take the team (maybe 15 kids) to

Stewarts,  and we'd all have a root beer at the outdoor

counter. When we lost, on the other hand, we'd have

to buy him a case of beer  -  no, no just kidding. Later,

too, they put in a place called 'Jumpin Jiminy'  - which

was an outdoor trampoline place where, for like 50 cents,

you'd get a half-hour or whatever on one of the five or

six outdoor, fenced in, trampolines. All that stuff has

disappeared -   there are now 'professional' buildings

there, a Spanish restaurant and, across the street, where

the Studebaker showroom and lot once was, is a big

Indian Restaurant, where they serve buffalo meat.

No, just kidding : the other kind of Indian food.

-

I'll cover all these things more later. This is just a rundown,

beginning with Dooley, of things that became routine places

to me  -  mostly thanks to Avenel Park. Which is all I'll

ever call it. It's been cavalierly re-named after a recent

dead Mayor, and hopefully that re-naming will fade in

10 or 15 years and we can get back to some sense about

places. I won't be here to see it, but I hope it happens  -

a place is a place, by geography. The 'descriptive' of the

geography is what counts, not the stupid political

re-naming of things. Passing things, of the moment

things. If you'd rather say they're re-named so they

do NOT become passing and forgotten, I'd say you're

wrong. It's all better forgotten, these silly political

things foisted on us make me puke.

-

The Dooley swing stayed  in our yard a long time. I

myself never gave it much attention. But it got used

lots  -  friends and friends of my sister, and then the

younger brothers and sisters. I forgot to mention the

one really cool thing about it  -  one side was a slide,

but the other side was like a swinging seat-section,

the kind of thing you get on a carousel or maybe a

ferris wheel compartment, if you can visualize that,

so you could just sit there, as if on a porch-swing,

and slowly rock back and forth. I liked that.

-

I used to set out on my bicycle for these places, which

weren't much, but they were somewhere. Avenel Park,

in the deep, back ends, actually past the park through it

towards coming out onto Rt. 35, or Amboy Ave., whatever

it's called there. It was dirt road stuff, just wide paths that

went into beautiful swamp areas and ponds, and the entire

area, each summer and Spring, was crazy-grown with 

skunk cabbage, May apple plants, reeds and punks, what

we called them anyway  -  those fuzzy brown things that 

you can dry-out and light up like a cigar and it keeps away 

bugs with its nice odor and smoke. I'd just bike in  -  I had

my own favorite spots, near a pond  -   and sit; not much 

of a care about anything  -  there was traffic and stuff out

at the street but where I was no one could see me, I was

sheltered, and it was nicely isolated. No one ever bothered

me - just bull frogs and mosquitoes, doing their thing. I'd

waste lots of time there, musing  -  having imaginings like

dream-stuff, entering and leaving places at will, whether

real or not. It was how I strengthened my character. I was

trying hard to become other-worldly. The great silence

was my best friend. Time runs its own toll, and it runs

out of time too. Funny - it runs out of itself. These places

are all gone now  -  endless apartments, piles of immigrants

and faulty people. Once 1965 came around and all that

immigration stuff changed, the placed got flooded with

Indian and south Asian 'scientific' types  -  they were the

first to be let into this country in large numbers from those 

places. Merck, Johnson and Johnson, Squibb, all nearby, 

they all took lab workers, scientists and professional 

personnel. Everything was built over, the swamps and 

rivulets taken away. Nothing's there now except big blasts

of bad breath  -  the equivalent of anyway  -  no-one wants

it to be there, but the whole town was sold out lock, stock, 

and barrel a long time ago. Zirpolo, Jacks, Barone, Dragos,

Bassarab  -  all those money types sold Woodbridge down 

the river for their thirty pieces of silver, over and over again. 

Zirpolo and Jacks went to prison, others never got nabbed.

They were criminals, fleecing the public purse, and what I

got from it was nothing more than a boy's negative attitude

and the resultant loss of everything 'American' in the old 

sense of the word, from my life. Even though the school 

jerks still tried teaching us all that usual Civics book crap,

everyone knew it was all a lie. In a few years anyway, 

Vietnam sealed the trap on all that stuff. Even so, 

some jerks still fell for it all.
-
I can't go around making excuses for things, or even
excuses for myself. This is the place I, sort-of, grew up in,
so I'm telling about it but only in a little way the way it was 
because it's all coming through me, the way I am now, the way
I came up through it. My viewpoints, while solid, would most
probably never be the accepted viewpoints of others  -  I didn't
'develop' myself so that they should be so. The life I put together, 
out of Avenel, had more in common with some 15th century 
monk somewhere than it ever did with the usual product of 
Avenel. It's as if I'm looking at a picture book of some place I 
may have once been, and trying to turn in a morning report about 
it to some insane management firm that wants my report. I'm
pretty much the enemy of what we purport 'society' is about today  -  
and I would want to redeem it, to bring it back with some force to
the underpinnings of what it should have become from what it
began as, NOT the way it is now. I detest accumulation, the 
squidding around for money, wealth, envy and possessions.
Careers and success mean nothing to me  -  those things are not
my world. Are there other places that would have contained me?
Yes, of course; but 'Avenel' is the place I was, for a time, and
so  -  because of that  -  that's the story you're getting.