7518. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 87)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 87)

The old heave-ho of metaphor can always

be brought back from the dead, speaking of

which, Avenel has no cemetery? In and of

itself, that has to tell you a lot about the sort

of place it is, and always has been. This is

the kind of opposite of exclusivity  -  you can

for sure get in here, easily, and, when you're

done, in fact, you can't stay. There are

plentitudes of cemeteries around and nearby;

but when you begin to hear of that little,

secluded, designation of 'place' and quality

by which people say - 'Avenel' was always

wonderful to me, like a small town of old.'

Just stand up and say back : 'Shut up, you

fool. You've got it all wrong.' A good portion

of Inman Avenue is, in fact, buried cheek by

jowl in St. Gertrude's in Colonia. Neighbors

in life are, there, also neighbors in death.

Right near to where my parents are buried

I can do a very small, sideways shuffle-walk

and run into five or six immediate neighbors

who are also buried there. But that's not Avenel.

Remember that. The identity of 'Avenel' stops

with your very last breath. So, breath deep.

In fact, in Avenel, as a dead car you've got an

excellent chance of remaining in town.

Certainly more than as a dead person.

Good joke there, somewhere.

-

Father Genecki used to tell me his line  -  he'd

go on about how his 'early morning walks' along

Avenel Street made him feel an essential part of a

small, almost New England like, village. I knew

even then it was a crock  - but I never said anything

back. I did look long and hard for, oh, say, a central

town square, a bandstand, a magistrate's office  -

anything. There wasn't. Time was when there wasn't

even a bank. You couldn't send a telegram. Well,

maybe. What I'm saying is how all the usual overblown

rhetoric that gets fed into our heads, we accept it all

when it's made up of things we simply can't prove or

disprove -  like a religion or an ideology, or something.

But as soon as it comes down to a tangible form, like

all the rest of that gibberish, we can disprove it readily,

just by looking around. So, that makes it pretty tough

for lies. I also remember, about 1964 or 64, banners

across Avenel Street, two or three anyway, proclaiming

(Woodbridge had been awarded the designation that year)

'Woodbridge, NJ - All American City.' They flew those

banners with pride, though I never knew why. It was

all part of some hocus-pocus from Lady Bird Johnson,

the President's wife, about 'beautification', as she labelled

it. No highway billboards, no unsightly slag heaps (or

junkyards) along the highway. Probably no trailer

parks and hot-sheet motels either. Oops, forget those

last two.  How in the world Woodbridge, NJ, and then

by extension and by banners, Avenel, NJ, became holders

of an 'All American City' title is beyond me. More rubbish.

There was, first off, nothing 'city' about any of it. To the

opposite : you could never NOT find a parking place here.

There were never hordes and lines of people anywhere.

So, anyway, I never knew what was up, except that all

these people were bunko artists and flim-flam men. The

reason people came here, in fact, was their 'fleeing' the

cities of old and staring here a'fresh. If anyone really had

possessed any good sense, it could have been played up

in an opposite fashion  -  forget that belabored 'city' stuff,

just present it instead as the archetypal American story

line of someone 'breaking' away, going somewhere new,

to start all over, and succeed, or not, on their own merits.

-

Another interesting thing  -  you couldn't ever find a parking

meter in Avenel. There never was one. Until McDonald's,

and all the rest of that crud, began clogging up St. George

Avenue, you couldn't really get any declared 'fast food'.

When Dunkin' Donuts, in fact, re-seeded itself in the old

Ira Rhodes gas station on the corner of Avenel Street and

Rahway Avenue, I was pretty dumbfounded. The empire of

mass-marketed foodstuffs and the national advertising 

identity that goes with it all, how about that, had landed

in Avenel. Now we've got representatives of every chain-saw,

I mean, chain-store, eatery there is. The two main boulevards

of this grand Parisian endeavor, Rt. One and St, George Ave 

(Rt. 35) are so splendiforously arrayed with all that grand 

City of Light stuff, damn! And not to mention the peculiar 

gastronomic beauties of Avenel Street would be sinful!

-

After all, I ask you, what man can live in a desert? Who is 

there among us who does not need the prod and push of 

fellow humanity surging past him? Man is not made to 

life in soulless wastelands, after all. Yes. Give me the 

town square always,

-

When a grand man takes on grand proportions, it's OK.

Everything seems fitting. But when a small person begins

wearing 'grand' proportions, it never works, it goes wrong,

isn't done right, never fits. It's like a bum drinking Grand
Marnier instead of Night Train Express. Calling Avenel  

a small town with traditional mores and observances, 

that's like calling the Avenel Park gazebo a fitting place 

for a Michelangelo sculpture, for an outdoor display

of the Pieta. Go on, give me a break. Call things what 

they are, and just learn, instead, to be comfortable in your

own skin. Humility. Pleasure. Acceptance of the real.