7327. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 51)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 51)

I had a friend for a while, named Billy Bernath.

He lived, I'm not sure the name of the street

anymore, but I guess it was Lehigh, where it

dead-ends to the rear of the Post Office. He

was the third or fourth house on the north

side of the street. I spent lots of time with

him, early on, but really can't remember much.

We did some camping trips, with Boy Scouts,

Troop 73 I think, and he managed - while playing

with matches  -  to start a pretty good brushfire

at Camp Kilmer or Raritan Arsenel (in my day

then these places were still military encampments,

unlike today, where one is a corporate center and the

other is part of a college and part of government

poverty-employment projects  - which isn't really that

different from the military, in essence, though not in

practice. You compromise one hand away, you're sure

soon to lose the other one too). That raging fire got the

camp-out cancelled and had us all sent home early.

We laughed about it and just remained quiet. But

I always remember Billy, one day while his father

was driving us to some parade site, listening to a

classical radio station and commenting that I too

should listen and appreciate how all of the different

instruments, in such music, potentially discordant

and anarchic, manage to all come together, in a

harmonic convergence, and make somehow a

sensible music. No, he didn't say 'harmonic

convergence,' that's my phrase now; but you

have to understand what he meant by saying

whatever it was he said. I was pretty taken with

the remark  -  never having thought of it like that, and,

in point of fact actually, never having listened to music

like that, where that idea even came into play. Bobby

Darin singing 'Mack the Knife' was a far cry from this.

But anyway, Bill Bernath showed me a sensitivity

and a thoughtfulness that suddenly stopped the wheeze,

so to speak, the hacking empty noise that was any

cultural life in Avenel. Going to school everyday, in

assembly and such, we'd sing Santa Lucia, we'd sing

Old Black Joe, we'd sing She'll Be Coming Around the

Mountain, and we'd sing Camptown Races  -  everything

from Stephen Foster to Hoagy Carmichal, but in that vein,

at the same time, no one in school  -  not the music teacher

or the program director or the regular classroom teacher,

ever led us to the notion that these were old, 'Americana'

songs and that we were partaking of tradition and a

musical legacy be singing them. They were something

to be taken in and made a part of us. No one ever said

a word  -  which is why we'd end up listening to hip

schlockmeisters like Bobby Darin and Perry Como

and all the rest of that stupid bunch. Yeah, they all had

their back-stories  -  publicists and agents made crap up

to peddle their songs with. 'Perry Como was an Italian

barber who just a few years before was cutting hair and

singing to his customers. Now he's a big star.' That's

fairly indicative of the sort of glop I'm meaning  -  made

up stuff from the Brill Building, and from all those

recording-office strategies that plucked people out and

then forced them down the throats of others so they all

could stand to make a million while the rats at home

bought records they didn't know a thing about for a

buck twenty-five a pop. No one in school ever peppered

the air with truths. It was all program  -  if they were

going to do that they'd have to face off the ideas that

went with them : slave songs and turpitude, enslavement

and victimization, colonialism, exploitation, graft and

corruption. So, of course, we never got the truth. We

got the 'program', the party line, the dogma. These old

songs reeked of hurt and anger, which wan't supposed

to exist here, we were told, and the only complacency

they showed was the complacency of defeat and

subjugation. All those spirituals, we'd have to think

they were 'happy' songs, because that's what the dumb,

lying teachers told us. But they weren't happy songs at

all; they were 'American' songs, with the lights out, in

the dark, songs of defeat and prayerful resignation, the

songs of the lost and the beaten-down. If Rosa Parks

ever sang, these songs would have been her own

songs -  but to us, it was all ignored, and presented as a

potential pile of happy tunes, sung by nit-wit kids in

Assembly, the mouthed know-nothings of equally

exploited kids. Those schools were our camps, and we

were  -  literally, for 9 months of the year  -  inmates.

Nothing could be done because our own parents had

given up on everything, let it all slide and, with

resignation, turned it all over to 'Authority' to do it

for them. We were propagandized into our corners.

Why they had even bothered to fight World war II to

preserve the Freedom that they then so willingly

gave away, was always beyond me. My own father,

he never talked war stuff with me  -  only little tidbits

and stories of his tactics in getting by, joining the

Navy at sixteen by lying about his age, and leaving

school, in turn to do so. He'd talk about his days in

the South Pacific like it was some tour on a vacation

schooner, and then he'd casually mention the occasional

problem with kamikaze pilots and things they had to

shoot out of the sky. I'm sure all they needed was a

casino and some booze to have really been in Paradise.

What's a kid know about anything anyway? We

went straight ahead. Avenel was our ship, out there

and afloat. The only life-jackets we had were

ourselves and each other.

- 

The guys we'd see out behind my house were 

railroad workers  -  not the conductors and things,

these were the guys with the chains, cranes and 

levers, the 'work-trains' that would come by and 

do things : changing wooden railroad ties, iron rails, 

stones beneath, the entire ongoing maintenance

and care process. They worked; they had to time 

things between trains; guys with signal poles and 

sticks with letters and numbers  -  flashing signals 

when trains would be approaching, and at the 

same time signaling the  passing trains about 

the ongoing work. They always had cigarettes, 

and worked head down, sternly and busily. It

was all one-piece-at-a-time work. Now it's all

done differently  -  I've watched along my 

Princeton commutes; there are entire rail-bed

machines now made for this, lifting and replacing 

an entire section at a time; the ties are no longer

wood but instead a poured and molded concrete.

Air guns and sounders are used for signalling. It's

new and efficient now  -  all those old processes 

are gone. The cigarettes too. I've been told by

varied WWII military vets and such  - my father

included  -  that the US Military used to promote

these things -   dispensing cigarettes freely or nearly

free. 'They gave us two things, always; cigarettes 

and condoms.' Nice to know that aspect of R&R

was taken care of  -  I never knew if that meant

rest and recreation or rest and rehabilitation. 

Somewhere there must have been thousands 

of women, around the globe, in their own 

'service' too. Thanks, Uncle Sam.

-

In the 1970's when I'd bought a piece of property

and an old farmhouse, 12 acres and a barn, out past

Scranton, PA  -  75 miles due west, in fact  -  my

father used to always comment, as we drove past 

Scranton, or past signs for it : 'Scranton! Biggest

whorehouse on the east coast.'  It was nowhere

near the east coast, but he used to always say how,

in his early Navy days, for R&R, they'd be bused to

Scranton, for the ladies, I guess. Then he was shipped

to San Francisco, he said, for an afternoon, basically, 

then to Hawaii, and then onto his ship, and off to the

South Pacific. He was a gunnery captain on a

battleship-tender. Which is just what it sounds like;

a heavily-armed slightly smaller and more manueverable,

supply ship for the other battleships floating about.

Like the Shop-Rite truck, sort of, delivering the

re-supplies to the battleships, of their rice and cereal,

water, juice, meats, toilet paper, bags, tissues, and

everything else you cam name. Probably not condoms.

My father's ship would first be loaded up, somewhere  -  

I'm not sure and never found out, in port, or at sea too,

whatever. They took fire, had to dodge kamikazes, etc.

The most interesting this was  -  and unbelievably this

is how my ftaher first got hooked up with upholstery

as a craft (GI BILL, after the service, to an upholstery

school somewhere)  -  that they'd also pick up from these

ships they supplied, whatever dead bodies they had. He'd

have to sew them up in canvas burial sacks, for the 

burial-at-sea ceremonies. Essentially they'd mumble 

some prayers over the guy's bag and then heave him

into the ocean. Now that must have been real fun;

glad I wasn't there. My father used to talk about those

big, curved sewing needles he'd use on the burlap or 

canvas or whatever those sacks for burial were. He was

also a gunnery captain, shipboard  -  meaning he had his

own flank of shipboard armaments, any number of 16

or 32 millimeter machine gun things, and some guys

under him that he had to supervise for combat at sea.

That's really all I ever heard about  -  I'd think about

stuff like that when I was traipsing around Avenel : what

the other men did, how their experiences went, (if they'd

ever been bused to Scranton?), where they were in the war.

Back in the 50's there was some sort of cliched entertainment

thing with little kids saying 'so tell me what YOU did in the

war, daddy.' I was meant as a support-booster for guys who 

fought, and a way to socially ostracize those who didn't.

They'd have no stories to tell, and their kids then were

supposed to think less of them. Beats me. Jeez, if that's

the case in this neighborhood, just make something up.

-

Everything's so different now. That was all about an 

undercurrent, too, of 'catching out' the gay guy  -  he'd have

been too weak-kneed or flimsy to have fought, was usually

then a conscientious objector, and no service record to

speak of. That sneaky bias is long gone. Now, in the

other direction, it's like everyone wants to be gay, for

pity's sake. It's 'cool'  -  so neat, so happy, so privileged 

and fastidious. Most of these train guys, working 

the tracks, they were probably vets then  -  tough and

quiet and all steeled up. I don't know like who if any

of my friends ended up 'gay'  -  we never knew about 

that stuff, and just never asked. It didn't concern us.

We all sort of knew Mr. Roloff was, but who cared  -  

he was very obvious. All those Andes Brothers and

Mt. Wintergrass, living alone together in one of those

new apartments. Who knew what? That's all today's

world stuff now  -  concern and acceptance, and all 

that. I'd off rather had a bullet to the head, back then,

than have to worry about that stuff. Avenel was the

kind of place for that  -  we were tough and shameless,

and most of our sweaters and things were knit and 

sewn, you can bet, with steel thread.
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PHOTO  -  This is the Brill Building, where all those 1950's and 60's songwriting
schlockmeisters  went to work each day, churning out their words and tunes.