7621. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 111)

BELOW THE WATER LINE 
(pt. 111)

Just about the first thing we did once we'd moved to

Inman Avenue, into the new house  -  and I don't

rightly know how or why (I mean, it must have 

cost a good sum), was take a little family vacation

up the the Adirondacks/St. Lawrence Seaway, 

somewhere up there, to a place called 'Thousand

Islands Dude Ranch'. Nothing to do with the dressing,

by the way, of the same name. My father somehow

drove  -  '47 Plymouth it was, first car we had in 

Avenel, brought down from the Bayonne move. I

guess it was good enough for such a trip, though 

I'm amazed by all the stamina  -  car and people.

The Dude Ranch  -  it was actually called that  -  

what little I remember of it, though there are

photographs, was fairly authentic. Lots of wood,

rope, tents, forestry buildings and all. They had a

staff of these folksy, Will Rogers types (not that 

I knew that then), twirling ropes, whittling wood,

playing harmonicas, all that. Shy, kind of goofy,

guys  -  all affectation, I guess. They made 

campfires, took the young kids like me, around 

on horses, did cowboy stuff. We had these little

clutches  -  archery, roping, horse-tending, stories,

etc. They also had 5 or 6 purported authentic 'Indians'. 

In leather, costumes or suede, real authentic costume.

In my mother's little photo collection, after she'd died,

we found some photos of that vacation  - the actual

first time I recall seeing them. I was maybe 5 or just

maybe about to be. Usual stuff, smiles, laughs. On

the back of them she'd written penciled-in legends. 

Odd stuff, in only her sort of nomenclature : like in

one photo, I was taking archery lessons from two

cowboys and an Indian, and her legend reads : 'Gary

playing archery.' A little odd. In another me and a

few other boys are standing around a campfire with 

two really grubby-looking cowboy guys, just grinning.

You'd think she'd write 'Gary playing camping' or 

something. No, she just has 'Gary with cowboys.'

I can barely remember some canoe trips along shallow 

waters, with river rocks scraping and all that, but I

can't remember any adults, or even my own family,

in any of the memories. I guess the adults did their

own stuff, and the girls were separate too? Just

don't know, but I remember nothing. Also, no 

memorabilia or decals or trinkets, or anything. Just 

a void. No one ever talked about it again  -  must have

been a nice car trip, but I can't remember anything there

either, no scenery, no rest-stops or motels. A memory-

void, a blockage of psychological origins? Who knows.

Later in life, my father-in-law, after I'd gotten to know

him and his ways, he always spoke of things as 'I 

remember when I was five.' It became our joke-line...

'I know, when you were five...' His entire life operated

out of his five-year old memory bank  -  house, cars,

open fields, school, father, all the stuff now long gone.

I, on the other hand, can really source little on that level.

My memories are different and seem to come from 

somewhere else, not real inclusive of early age, except 

for Bayonne and all that dark street and after-wartime stuff.

Much different, almost existential. My concepts are more

cerebral that tactile. I figure it's all from getting blasted to 

bits by that train and re-awakening into maybe another 

entire, complete life. Their seven years old was my one 

year old, but in Life number two. Go figure; I can't figure 

out Life, why should I have the answer for Death.

-

So Inman Avenue became the key for me -   it certainly

wasn't any dude ranch. We'd buy caps for our cap guns at

Murray and Martha's  -  a little box of maybe a hundred 

perforated red-roll caps that fit right into your pistol that

shot caps. How it began, I don't know. Jim Yacullo, and

anybody I guess, though I can't remember anyone else

actually doing it. The holster and pistol-grips were mostly

plastic  -  made to imitate leather, and the gun grip was

a nice, yellowy plastic. It all must have started with Roy

Rogers, or Howdy Doody, or something. I can't say if

shooting and killing in such a manner is endemic to boys 

or not. How all that gun stuff got started, I don't know. We

certainly never played dolls or EZ Bake ovens. We'd pretend

murder, or robbery, the usual cowboys killing Indians stuff

of legend. I don't know, is that how we learned History? We'd

practice fast-draw, assuming we never got hit and always won.

Never did have to worry about picking up the other, dead guy,

or going through his pockets to steal, or calling the undertaker

or Sheriff. None of that. What we were doing, I'll never know.

It never harmed us, I don't think  -  leastways I never knew any

boys who became killers from it, or from anything actually.

When I got involved with the motorcycle gang stuff, I knew

a few killers, and their signifying tattoos  -  which were special

and secret, but obvious, and attested to their status as having

killed. Now ain't that weird as all hell? Did they start out in the

same way? Later on, as it all became way too slow and boring,

and we grew impatient, we'd just buy the boxes of caps, at like

a nickel a pop, and smash them with rocks and other pressure 

things, taking great pleasure in the incendiary noise and power

of the entire box setting off as one. From pyrotechnics to 

Vietnam in one fell swoop? Was that the idea?

-

Nothing ever really happened in Avenel  -  no one famous 

came by, or I didn't know it. I was surprised, even recently, 

to see on some historic marker that Don Drysdale had lived 

in Woodbridge. News to me. He was a pitcher for the Dodgers,

peaking about 1962, like with 25 wins. Seems it would have 

been a big deal around town  -  having him to school  and all.

But I never heard of it. He died in 1993, at age 57, in some

Montreal hotel room, broadcasting a Dodger game. Anything 

that ever happened here, we had to make up  -  like with my 

friend Barry and that whole UFO thing, in the early chapters.

That was excitement. Well, that and burning down the portables, 

which was never successful. If any of that happened now, 

there'd be armed guards to your house, dragging you out 

kicking and screaming, by your hair. We are always under 

suspicion of something, but nothing ever got proved. Now, 

just being under suspicion is enough to catch you up big-time.
-
The only real distinguishing characteristic of Avenel, for 
me, and that was different for everyone depending on where 
one lived : those on the other side of Route One essentially 
had entirely different 'characteristica'l viewpoints of their town;
in that area there were evidences of much older days, along 
Remsen and Demarest and such there were little corner stores
internal to neighborhoods, kind of like Metro's by us, that sold
sundries and needed supplies, cold cuts, toilet papers, things
like that. All we had was the fairly faceless grouping of stores
across from the mob-scene-school, and they sort of fed off that,
the billion kids always buying candy, the meat guy Al who
switched himself big-time into Shop-Rite, on the other corner,
and whatever rotating business came in and out of practice in
the intervening stores. Mrs. Kuzmiak, previously mentioned, 
was a widow lady of some other ethnicity, who sold, as I've
gone over, all these adorable little cloth things  -  socks, gloves,
napkins, underwear, mittens, aprons, and such, from 
marvelous glass cases. It was a one-to-one  purchase, hand-to
hand; a very concentrated sales force of one. Her. All was
accompanied by the smells and aromas of her constant cooking.
Kettle-soups and sauces, I guess, because that what it always
smelled like. Never knew  who she was cooking for, unless
there was a constant army at her back door. I'm not sure
she even had one  -  it was a very oddly situated place she lived 
in, snug up and attached longways, brick, to her building-end
which was her store and shared entryways. Not being sexist here,
 it was  a 1950's woman's store for sure. There was absolutely
no reason for a man to enter  -  unless maybe buying 'bloomers
as a present for mama', in some Ma and Pa Kettle sense, works.
-
Ma and Pa kettle would have been a good idea for that Dude 
Ranch too. It would have fit right in and brought some relative
idea of civilization to visitors from places like Avenel. When
we got there, I realized it was all so different and far-off from
the way we'd begun living in our new Avenel home that all I got 
was confused. First I was awake in some dark, mysterious 
waterfront shtetl like Bayonne  - awake at night to the braying 
of tugboats and steamer-ships, with myriads of weird people 
slowly walking the sidewalks up and down that crazed-out adult 
playland  that Uncle Milty's Amusement Park' was supposed to be.
A sort of Kingdom of Ice Cream and Lust. Then we got to Avenel, 
which was the negation, essentially, of all that  - everything cleared
and cut, new, sun-lit acres of sameness, everyone out in the open,
trying to be bland, loving their washers and dryers. And then  -  no
sooner than settled in to that alternate version of reality  -  I get
dragged way up to some Natty Bumpo Leatherstocking Tales
Deerslayer Last of the Mohicans outpost from History on the
way to its own oblivion. Whew! Three distinct and totally
different versions of Reality. Had my mother taken a photo
of the inside of my head at that time, she'd might have
inscribed the back : 'Gary, playing at the Real.'
('oh Mamma, clearly I was lost in these darkening woods').