7635. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 115)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 115)

'Paradox, NJ' would have been a great place, a

real gravy train of a town. By the way, back when

I had a dog, about 1958, that's when Gravy Train

came out. It was a dry dog food that  -  with the

addition of water  -  was said to have made its own,

doggy-tasteful, gravy. I guess it did  - the dog ate it,

and the water was transformed into a brown something.

There were any number of strangely oddball things

back then that kept mixing me up : One time, walking

along the aisles of the Shop-Rite (my mother was

shopping with the cart, in her orderly, item by item,

and row by row, fashion. I would just wander all about,

gleefully looking at labels and designs, and reading

whatever text I could on the packages), it was 1957.

I came across  the rows of soups or mustards or

something, I forget, and saw the label name 'Heinz '57'.

I later found it it meant, as a company boast of sorts,

that they '57' products which they made and sold. They'd

incorporated that idea into their logo. I, however, simply

thought that  -  because it was 1957  -  they changed their

label each year, to match the year, and this was, therefore,

their most-current and newest line of offerings. I never

did find a 'Heinz 58', the next year or year after. Funny

how that worked. Even graver than that goof-up, to me,

was the time I was trailing these two men, just by accident,

I was sleuthing or anything. I don't know what sort of gents

they may have been, but they were shopping and strolling

along looking at product. At that time, also 1957, I believe,

Kellog's Cereal had just come out with what was called

'Special K'. It was a large, red 'K', basically scripted by

typeface, pretty attractive, and the word 'Special', though

smaller, accompanying it. Suddenly, the one guy stops,

grabs the box, and says to his boyfriend, or whatever, 'Oh

look, something new from Kellog's, 'Big Red K'. Which

is what he called it. That drove me mad, into a frenzy of

distraction, a rant to myself about 'how dumb could

anyone be to so mis-read a package as to even call the

product, clearly stated, by a wrong name.' This guy, I

concluded, was of the idiot variety who takes everything

he sees at face-value, re-evaluating everything through

the dullness of his own flat mind. The cereal was clearly

called 'Special K'. Yes, it had a large, red 'K', but that

wasn't the point  -  nor the damn name of the cereal. Yet

this pompous swish immediately assumed to his partner

that this great new product was called 'Big Red K'

because that's what it had on it. Dullard Express, rolling

into the station. It was like saying 'Piltdown man was an

advanced Human', because he had a nose and a skull. And

not even a nose, because you can't see that on an old skull,

What you see is the 'absence' of nose, a spot where the

nose cartilage may, one would 'assume', have been. Idiot.

Maybe Piltdown had an elephant trunk : how would this

jerk even know except by his mis-reading the evidence.

-

This all probably sounds like nothing, or the ravings of an

Avenel Madman  -  hey, I've never denied that  -  but it's all

a part and parcel of being raised there, as we were. We were

given half-tales and conjectured stories, and then forced to

conclude in only the prescribed and approved ways. And, of

course, that led to a million Avenel boyhood questions. Like

standing in front of a mirror to see what's growing. If we got

something wrong, the likes of Sister Josephus or some other

twisted dingbat would come down on our heads like her

stupid gold ding-dong bell. By the way, if she was in operation

today, her fat-nun-ass would be in jail for physical abuse. Let

that be so stated into the record. Here. By me.

-

On TV, too, there was a big confusion for me. Overlapping

products or something. This Ronald Reagan guy, a worn-out

movie actor, used to come on like one a week, and  introduce

some western movie or show or something. He was all smooth

and suave, maybe movie-handsome, I don't know (I should have

asked the two Special K dweebs from before). He'd go on, and

I'd be nothing but confused. It was sponsored by something

called '20-Mule Team Borax.' I had no idea what that was, nor

what the reference to 20-mule-team was about. Strength, power,

and speed. Or slow, plodding deadbeat animals reluctantly

pulling a load that took two moths to go a mile. If they wanted

sleek-strength, why didn't they just get 4 horses or something,

instead. Was it a good reference, or a lame reference, and a

reference to what? And who was this smiling bozo on the screen

anyway? There was also a soap named Boraxo. As I recall, it was

all sandy and gritty, like Lava soap, for really grubby hands, or

mechanics or really dirty jobs. So what was it, Borax? Or Boraxo? 
And what was the stuff anyway? All these westerns had taken

the country by storm  -  it was all my father ever watched.

Cowboy shoot-em-ups, great lines of running horses, crazed

guys firing their guns from a half-crouch off the saddle while

going about 90, Indians -  always mostly portrayed as dullards

and slain from the peaks and high-spots of mountain passes or

rocky buttes  -  being decimated as if they were useless flies

at a picnic. Or ants in the sidewalk swarms when we used

to pour boiling hot water on them and wipe out entire

batallions and colonies in writhing, furied burn-deaths.

This Reagan guy always seemed like their was some sort

of behind the scenes befuddlement going on in his brain, or

in his line of sight even. Something he couldn't quite figure

out, but he knew he had to keep talking, or saying his lines.

A bemused expression, a jollity that bespoke, really, nothing

at all except the general banter of the pleasantry of 'falling for

what I'm saying', OK. Or a conga-line of undressed 20-year

olds passing in front of him while had to keep talking. Oh,

yeah, he later became President, for 8 wooden years. Even

got shot once, like his 30th day on the job or something.

I was old by then, but he popped back up on America's

radar like an old pinprick of acne. On a decaying face.

-

Most all of my friends were just plain, old white-bread

American boys. I can't say I recall, but I guess we all ate

pizza and ice cream and such, together. The weirdest,

out-of-my-ken food I ever ran into was in Jim Yacullo's

basement  -  the house right across the street from mine.

It was Christmas time. Seasonal junk all around; decorations,

cookies, etc. We were down there one day and his mother

brought us some junk down to nibble on  -  it was this

weird roll of like fleshy, dark-yellow, round things curled

around on a string. You somehow got it started, and pulled

them off one-by-one and ate them. They were OK, a little

sticky and even sweet, but I liked them. They were, she said

'Greek Figs.' I'd never heard of that before, or tasted them

either. And the other thing was a freaking bowl of walnuts.

With the little pick things and the jaws with which to open

them. That was all new to me too  -  we sat around for a

half-hour mining this weird pile of walnuts, still in a shell,

in this big bowl. There was some work involved, so at least

it kept one busy, but they didn't really taste all that hot to me :

they were a bit too meaty and oily, and had these harder pieces

of, like, bone-slivers or shell stuff still in there with the pulpy

stuff. Wasn't worth a dare to me. The figs were passable.

My other friend, Ray Szemborski, he used to just swig

red vinegar from the bottle, like it was water almost, and then

he'd say how good it was for you. He'd say 'drinking vinegar's

like drinking blood, because that's what it turns into anyway

inside you.' That always baffled the hell out of me, more than

once, too. All it did for me was make me instantly sweat.

-

It was a long time before I realized  -  I was somewhere else

by then  -  that I'd spent way too many late-night efforts at

aloneness, rolling into dawns, trying to make my own path and 

leadership, though it was all but through rubble  -  the rubble 

of others and of places around me. It's all about, at a certain

point, efficiency. Nature usually wastes nothing, gets things 

done with everything having a purpose and a use, and then 

diminishing that use into the fade of something else. The 

next thing, so to speak. Always changing  -  nothing ever 

gets stuck, so you really can't depend on anything ever 

being static. That goes for relationships as well. People just 

make their connection and then die. They remain, from 

that point on, the very same. It's hard not to. People

always want things from other people  -  you end up 

having to do cartwheels just to survive : lawns and patios, 

dumb-ass vacations and picnics and trips to nothing and

 nowhere at all. You go to Paris or Rome, some do, and you 

come back the very same as when you left  -  unable to 

just fit anything new into your basket; never understanding 

anything, never altering one perception at all. Just all the 

same crap in a different language, that you brush up on so

that you can ask the waiter for bread and not sound stupid,

or properly address some jerk concierge somewhere who 

wants to take and polish your shoes for their version of 

fifteen bucks. You can do it yourself, for free, with spit, 

and their rag. But you won't. You'll pay, and say something 

cool in their tongue. Wives and husbands, they just feeze up, 

all the fresh little twigs and branches stay off the tree, and 

all you're left with are the same, old, big  limbs you always 

knew  -  no new growth, nothing fresh or vital. Never 

creating anything vital at all, you never know the joy of 

that refreshment. That's when the troubles begin  -  when 

you start judging others by your own lame standards 

and think it's all right. Thinking it's your world.

-

Remember, some chapters back, a lot actually, my little

tale about that Mrs. Kuzmiak  -  in her church-lady role  -  

bringing my mother to humiliation and sorrow by asking 

what had 'happened' to me? The offshoot of that, the sub-text,

was as if she'd said to my mother 'your kid's a hideous wreck.

You lost him. What did you do to fail him so much, that he's

become such an awful specimen?' It wasn't that way at all,

but my mother, my parents, they couldn't cope. I'd become 

the atom bomb in their house  -  in their eyes ruining it all for

them, and ruining myself too. I knew what was going on. Mrs.

Kuzmiak was Neanderthal in her penny-pinching way; putting

a church-pride-hurt on my mother, wrongly. My mother was,

actually OK. It was Mrs. Kuzmiak who was the dumbstruck oaf

in this. She had no business except her pissant dollar-for-dollar

hankies and gloves business, like Murray and Martha's penny

candies, but in a different guise. She was all solid and closed 

up, and  -  too bad for her  -  around her calcified body a more

modern world was was a'borning, and sweeping in. She was just

out of her element, they all were  -  my parents too  -  and not

knowing what was happening, nor what to do about it. 

Ice-Station Zebra. Or Paradox, NJ all over again.