7378. BELOW THE WATER LINE, pt. 60

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 60)

One year I can remember, I guess it was perhaps

1959, a Christmas Eve spent, for whatever reason,

going back and forth, up and down the block, my

sister and myself, to the Kaisen household, about

10 or 15 houses up the street, or down, whatever  -

to the direction of Abbe Lumber's end. The idea

was somehow that  -  the bring the real joy of

Yuletime forth, we'd dress as Christmas things

and go spend the evening showing them our

costume changes. Don't ask me, as I really have

no idea of what was going on, nor where either

Kenny or Christine were and why they too weren't

doing this stupid trick with us. Whichever year it

was, I recall it being quite balmy out, as we simply

walked back and forth, a few times anyway as the

long night entered towards its midnight stage.

Another year, by contrast, when I was perhaps

9, I can remember (again, totally bizarre and out of

character for me) coming home  -  it was early dark

and quite cold, probably about the 12th or so of

December, and seeing that my mother had the

inside of the house newly completed with all the

usual Christmas decorations  -  little creche, the

lights, the angels and candles and wreaths and the

tree, as well  -  and I remember commenting to the

effect of 'Wow, how nice. Now all we need is the

Christmas music.' Which crack, of course, brought

on the Christmas music  -  in this case, to my memory,

a constant replaying, perhaps 10,000 times of the

'Little Drummer Boy' 45 my mother had, on the

record player. I guess it had a 'replay' or something,

because that it sure did. Superseding my usual

Officer Joe Bolton and his 'Three Stooges' nightly

presentations and dumb commentary. Officer Joe

Bolton was like some fake NYC policeman, in a

uniform, real or not, and standing in place, twirling

a nightstick, he'd expound about the episode about to

be played, or talk about the episode just shown. Little

insider notes about why Shemp, and not Curly  -  two

replaceable characters on the Stooges. Moe and Larry

always remained the same, but for whatever reason there

was a bit of drama with the Curly character  -  a guy named

Shemp, and another guy named Joe Besser, stepping in,

in varying episodes, as the 'new' Curly. Though Curly was

the best and  -  to my mind  -  irreplaceable, and possessing

the certain quality the Three Stooges needed to actually

be the Three Stooges. See the crap a kid learns.

-

Summer was one thing, but it always passed  -  Winter's were

internalized. We all still did things; we had our Winter ways

and cold-weather places, but it was different, yes, for sure.

A lot more solitary stuff went on. I can remember any number

of us, in that woods where they later built Doreen Drive and

stuff, being back there for endless after-school hours in the

woods at the little ice-crusted pond which was in the center

of the place -   ice skating little circles around for hours. We'd

arranged good-sized logs in some form of semi-circle or close,

around the water edge, and if not skating we'd all just be sitting

around there as whoever else was skating went about their skating.

I guess it got dark around 6pm, and we dispersed for supper and

all, because I can't recall any fires or sources of warmth or light.

But I remember it was close  -  we just all felt close, everything

was closed in around us. That was the thing about our little

group and those woods  -  there were trails, little paths that

went off, depending on the direction of home, people went

their varied ways out. Also, it was always, in there, just as

we'd left it  -  I guess there were no other people coming

around making changes or even visits. It was our place  -

the trees and the shade in the cold of Winter was just as

pleasant to us as were the possums and happiness glades of

Summer. Even now, I still get that 'long-lost' feeling inside

me just writing about it. A lot of our stuff was bicycle based,

but this woods never was  -  no entry for bicycles, no place

for them, and it just never happened. Up on the top end,

towards Route One, there was a small row of some trees

that used to drop these rippled green balls, about the size of

softballs. We later found they were called Ugli fruit  -  a real

odd name, in that they were ugly, but were named Ugli. I

never got to the bottom of that but it always puzzled me why

(here I go again with the God and Nature stuff) these things,

whatever they were, fruit, nut, vegetable, were so useless. I

couldn't understand why a proficient God would make,

 occasionally, such useless things  -  for instance, if these

were edible, and had some value, we'd have been rich! We

could be eating off the fat of the land. That puzzled me; were

we fated to have things not be usable by us; like, even, grass.

If we could have eaten grass, or gotten food out of acorns or

leaves, or anything like that, the whole world would have been

different. Much less need to work. Food everywhere. You'd just

pick what you want and eat. No fighting over ownership or the

possession of, for it was everywhere! That could be Paradise

for sure. What was it that made a jealous God deny all that

from us? Was the 'The Fall' that the Catholic Church lesson

twerps were always blatting about? That's why we were all

so miserable, killing and fighting over borders and food and

stuff? So then, this God made a perfect world and then lost

control of it? What kind of God was that? It's not free-will,

couldn't be because it's all pre-ordained now, and the fault only

happened once and not to us, each, individually. That's free-will,

a one-to-one thing. The other was mob rule. Paying for this

bullshit Adam guy for ever and ever? I never got it, that story,

like sooo many others, made no sense. It was all commercial

poppycock to keep people under control, and paying up, always.

In those woods, at that ice pond, hell, the world was free and easy.

It made sense, and it was right. Who were these people, always

trying to muck it up for us  -  against all evidence, really, and then

demanding that only they had the way out and the right answers.

Having the right answers is easy of you made up the story.

And then anyway, one day it was just all gone.

-

The local newspaper, at the time called The Perth Amboy 

Evening News  -  later just The Evening News, and then later 

again The News Tribune, then the Home News Tribune, and 

later just The Home News. Some junk-bond conglomerate 

kept buying bits and pieces of NJ newspapers until eventually 

they had fairly killed the whole mess. Those papers now are

nothing but pages of junk. When I was in the printing industry, 

years later, one of my accounts and friends was John Burk, 

whose Burk family owned the News Tribune. He wasn't much 

of anything except a low-grade businessman looking to turn the

usual profit  -  not a journalist or newsman in any way. He'd sell

or include anything in that paper if it would get eyes to it, people

to see the ads, so that he could sell more by having big counts

of readership and exposure and thus charge more for big companies

advertising. For a while they had this stupid little 'character'  -  like

a small icon chubby guy holding a newspaper. They called that

character 'Newsie'. And they ran a stupid contest : each day, 

somewhere in the paper, buried in the words and articles and stuff,

would be 'Newsie'. Small. Readers who spied it were supposed to 

call in, give the location, and they'd win something and then be 

entered to win something else. It was a pretty cheesy, almost

shameful, gimmick, I thought. My mother always played it.

There'd be some horrid headline about 41 people slaughtered

in a fiery earthquake somewhere in Africa and eaten by

marauding elephants and then slaughtered by hungry pygmies

with a bus that rolled off the cliff  -  horrible stuff  -  and in the

middle of the continuation page paragraph, there'd be 'Newsie', 

smiling back at you. Jeez, huh.

-

One time, in the printing days, the guy I worked for, Bob Wiegers,

he had us represented at a luncheon thing the News Tribune threw

to show off some new, big million dollar equipment they'd gotten.

There were long-winded explanations about this and that, how it

worked, how fast it produced, all that  -  plus the industrial expert

know-it-all-manufacturer's rep stuff. After about an hour of this,

in the question period, Bob raises his hand and  -  in a businessman's

way but also in a way that came out sounding almost sarcastic, in

reference to making money and getting return on investment and 

all, he says  -  referring to news delivery boys  -  'So you've got 

all this new millions of dollars equipment, and you're telling me 

you're still putting all the responsibility for the success of this in the

hands of 12 -year old delivery paper-route kids on bikes, to make it

work or not?' After a few titters, that went over like a lead balloon.

-

The News Tribune used to run  - exciting for me  -  this 'countdown'

panel each day on the bottom of the front page. It began about mid-

November each year. It wasn't much, but it was always exciting for 

me to see and watch the countdown, with some oddball form

of expectation. There'd be a little Christmas drawing, something

different each day, or the same maybe, I forget, and it would say

'25 shopping days 'til Christmas'...then 24 the next day, then 23 the

 next, and so on. I always thought it would be cool, since all

they cared about was money and sales anyway, if they used, instead

of 'til', meaning 'until', the word 'till' meaning cash-register drawer.