7522. BELOW THE WATER LINE, (pt. 88)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 88)

I'd reckon it right to say I had enough friends

for one lifetime  -  back when I was young; and

mothers, and fathers too. It seemed like everyone

was on the lookout for everyone else  - mothers

watching other kids visiting, feeding them, making

sure they were Ok and got off to home on time.

Fathers would come home and see others; kids visiting

or staying over. Say hi, mingle, fool around some.

There were a couple of signals and whistles in

town, noises that ran over and sort of acted like the

old tolling bell in a town square  - of course these

bells and whistles were all different and all-factory.

Lunchtimes and breaks and shift changes for workers.

It was always pretty weird  -  the big 3pm steam pop

at Philadelphia Quartz, that was always a grand noise.

It was just some great outrush of superheated air that

hit the afternoon with a great sizzling, rushing sound

and left a ballooning white cloud. Always very

impressive. If it wasn't exactly three o'clock, it was

maybe 3:10. I forget. My history and homeroom

teacher later on at the end of Woodbridge High

School, Emery Konick, his father worked in there

for his entire working life. Emery Konick was a local

sportswriter. He wrote a column called 'Konick's

Korner' in a couple of state newspapers. Covered the

local sporting scenes  -  football and baseball mostly.

Nothing real special, just a bunch of local booster stuff

about teams and guys you'd maybe run across on their

way up to 'the Bigs' or something - that's what they called

the major leagues, back in those days when it still meant

something  -  before all the drugs and sex and booze messed

it all up. Most all of it was still white too, need I say. A

disguised racism that ran pretty late into even the 60's,

until at least everyone as one started getting blown to

smithereens in Vietnam  -  didn't matter there what color

you were  -  all the blood there, I'm told, ran red.

-

In high school, homeroom and all, I hated Emery Konick,

and he hated me. Well maybe just 'detested' is the better word.

He was a gung-ho, super-straight military type, and I was

an addled annoyance of long hair, sandals, old, dirty clothes

and in general the kind of youthful attitude that most of the

rest of the world hadn't yet caught up to, my friends included.

Oh, sure enough, they all would, but by then I was long gone.

I got to be known, in some circles, as the original Avenel freak,

the first hippie, and all that, but it wasn't really true. I still

get it from people, at gatherings and reunions and such. I just

was where my 'was' took me. I didn't much go thinking about

labels and names and adjectives. Because of that, funny thing

too, everyone I ever meet immediately assumes I am and was

a compendium of every catalogue drug and trip that there ever

was. But that's not true at all. I steered way clear, sure to want

to keep my head above me, not so much up my ass, which is

where  -  it seemed to me  -  all the drug people I ever saw

(and I lived with bunches of them) ended up having it. It's

funny  -  sometimes I just deny. Other times I just go along.

I can out-story any real drug-addict bean-pole anytime.

Anyway, it's all dirty business; always was. I hate drugs, and

I hate smoking weed too; 'ceptin as now it's just about the

most free and easy thing you can do now. I still have never 
done it. Too much baggage with that crap. You can probably

even find a cop or a councilman to smoke it with you. Things

everywhere sure have changed. This country sure has gone to

Hell, and it's funny how people now are just so proud of that.

-

When I was 8 years old, hearing those bells and whistles (there

was a great 7pm war hoop of a town whistle that went off each

evening from the firehouse. That whistle mostly ended and 

set-down our days for us), none of them made much sense.

I couldn't get the significance of the importance of the time

they signified. 7pm? So what, why do they tell you? It's always

7pm when that thing blows off. Why do you need it then to blow

off to know it's 7pm. It was an odd, kid's, circular reasoning, and

it, no matter, made more sense to me than the damned whistle

ever did  -  all these crazy adults, always having to be told things.

Emery Konick's father, I later figured, must have that stupid 3pm

steam whistle every day for 50 years. Like he worked at the

River Rouge Ford plant or something, in Michigan. Thousands 

of soggy workers, limping off to the time-clock. Tough burden.

-

Emery Konick used to throw me out of school nearly at least

once a week  -  to go get a haircut, go get proper shoes, better

clothing. I even got sent home a few times for 'too much clothing.'

How they knew that was beyond me. I pioneered the layered-look,

way before it was hip  -  mainly because January and February are

damned cold months and walking three miles or so each way to

school meant wearing some serious clothing. (Those pussy-jacked

teachers couldn't take it. One year they walked out on a 72-day

teacher's strike that got them right through the coldest commute

days). I'd have liked to have seen them walking their jerk asses to

school. Years later, when I was at St. George Press and Emery

Konick was a big-wig in the NJ Sportswriters' Association, he

and I would work closely on all the event booklets and awards

and installation programs they ran. We'd kissed and made up by

then, never much talked about which one of us was a bigger

asshole back then. Times, and things, change, I guess. Just a

truce though  -  neither one of us ever really surrendered. As

Bob Dylan later put it (on one of his luckier days) - 'I'm right

from my side, and you're right from yours.'

-

I never much cared -  one time he called me out in front of 

everyone, pointing at me and saying, using me as an example,

that 'long hair is, basically, for girls.' I felt like standing up and 

saying back to him a few choice accolades too, but my pose that
year was 'passive resistance,' following Martin Luther King and
Ghandi too. (I was a rude, nasty 'sum'bitch' when I chose to be

to be, or could be anyway). War was often run by words. That's 

how infernal high-school wars were run, back in '66. Who needed

Vietnam, for God'sake. Or God and Country's sake, or whatever

they were peddling back then. Country Joe and the Fish, it was,

'Country Joe MacDonald' puttin' it : 'One Two Three, what are

fighting for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn; next stop is

Vietnam. So it's five, six, seven, open up them pearly gates...

be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in 

a box.' Rough times everywhere, let alone the halls of some

seedy high school where no one wanted to be anyway, 

speaking of bells and whistles.
-
I guess what I was sensing, or saying, was that it was
all over, it was coming to a swift and decisive end. All
my youthful days were a'gettin' done, and done quickly.
The Science-Fiction writer, if you have to call it that, Arthur
C. Clarke, he wrote a book called 'Childhood's End.' It
came out in 1953, before my reading time, for sure. But when
I caught up to it, by Jesus, I caught up to it. I believe in all sorts 
mysteries -  the mysteries of place and being, echo and presence,
intention and desire. I know we're not alone. I know I hold my
God in the palm of my hand each time I reach for my heart, and not
my mind. I believe in lots of things. I believe I'm in every other
person's One Spirit just as much as I believe they're in mine.
And I believe in nothing much at all. And that book, let alone 
the geeks and fakers of a society  back then represented to
me by Emery Konick, was the start of my new time on Earth.
So you might say, I guess, high school was good for 
something after all.