7967. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 98)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 98)

Sometimes it seems to me I spent half my life dumb,

and the other half stupefied. And none of it by choice. 

It was the way of things, so to speak -   nothing I could

do one way or the other. School had always seemed 

like an end-game to me. I knew what it was about, but

wasn't really affected by it at all. Sitting in Assembly,

singing all these weird old slave songs and plantation

ditties, with absolutely no explanation as to what in the

world we were singing. Old Black Joe? Swing Low Sweet

Chariot? On Moonlight Bay? Glory, Glory Hallelujah,

His Truth Is Marching On?  Excuse me but, have I missed

something? Was there a reason for the exploitation of

others and the pining of all these people? Instead we

were supposed to go home and get by watching I Love

Lucy and the stupid Three Stooges? I often wondered,

did anyone even think at all? School 4 each Spring

would hold some ersatz Spring Book Fair or something:

rows and rows of trinkets and junk for sale  -  jacks, balls,

yo-yo's, mirrors, pencils, pencil cases, and books. The

problem was, adults kept intruding. I knew a girl that

was not allowed, in Fourth Grade, to purchase a cheap

paperback copy of Huckleberry Finn, because it was

'too old for her.' Lucky they had arithmetic classes at

least  -  so we could learn how 2 plus 2 never adds up to

anything at all. They'd pack the stupid school to the rafters

on Saturday mornings  -  10 cent movies, things like

Black Beauty and Cinderella and Pinocchio and National

Velvet and Bambi. Kid's fodder, Pablum for the brats.

I never really went, or went once or twice but  -  finding 

out there was no possible way I'd ever enjoy myself  -  

I kept the dime and did something else. There were

tough kids everywhere, you know, I could hang with

them. Me and Jeffrey Cecil  hanging out big time on 

the tall stone stairway, sentinel-like, outside the school

instead of inside. I never made much sense out of that

school except for the cool, shiny-painted concrete basement

with those two rooms where we'd get to kill each other with

dodge balls and stuff. Then they'd rise up and try to throw

square-dancing at us. You'd even have to dance now and 

then with boys. I remember dancing with John Masterley 

more than a few times. Sweaty-handed John. Seemed like 

anyway, and he always had this weird perfumy scent to that 

sweat, like he washed and soaped and cleaned real thorough. 

He must have cringed thinking he had to dance with me  - 

sandpaper razor callus hands Gar. It was better anyway 

then dancing with some of those girls. No siree bob, I'd take 

my chances with old John. Much preferred the volleyball.

Which is the same word, 'volley', that's used to designate a

round of combat-fire in battle; which this about was. Odd.

Me and Theresa Knox in fifth or sixth grade, I forget, we 

were somehow given over to cleaning the erasers as our 

detail. At the end of each afternoon, or maybe every other, 

me and Teutonic Theresa would take all the erasers down to 

the basement area, at the end where there was a back door 

leading to the little paved play-area. Right at that doorway 

there was a freshly-installed, new and high-falutin' electric 

eraser-cleaning machine. You'd turn it on, and these two 

furry spin-wheels would churn furiously while you lightly 

pressed the erasers down on them. White chalk powder

flying everywhere -   even though there was like a vacuum 

built in that was supposed to suck it all up. Not so. Almost 

immediately Theresa declared that was the last time we'd 

try that spinning machine, danke, (she said that like at the 

end of every fifth sentence. It meant 'thanks' in her 

German/Teutonic tongue. It kind of really meant, 'shut up, 

thank you, I'm in charge, we'll do it this way from now on.') 

So. because of 'Theresa Edict #1', which I wasn't about to 

buck, we'd (surreptitiously and on the sly almost) take 

the erasers outside, through that little doorway, and  -  in

the finest old fashion  -  furiously pound the erasers on the 

side of the brick building to beat them clean. It worked, 

it really did. But you had to, just as well, almost pray for 

rain that very night because there'd be a million white 

chalk-eraser smoosh marks all over the side of the building 

at, oddly enough, our height. Danke. Theresa was cool.

-

The school lawn at School 4 used to be a good field for some 

of our little football games  -  neighborhood kids, local boys, 

farm-team  stuff. Nothing to do with the older-boy things we 

did on the other fields with  the killer-Squillace Twins and 

their violent football means of overthrowing any comity or 

good-will between boys. This was easy and soft football. 

The full length of School 4, on Avenel Street. There used 

to be a nice array of big old oak trees  -  but nothing that 

ever got in our way  -  and a flagpole. A steel, solid, 70-ft 

high flagpole, the kind you hear the rope slapping in the

wind on. It was over by the library end towards the school 

building and the playground. Occasionally a menace. One 

time, in fact, my friend Frankie Strohlein (he's dead now 

too  -  seems like way too much of that going down) he 

caught a long pass from the other end of the field and, 

determined to spring towards the deserved goal, turned 

around after making the catch, running full-throttle and 

took about two steps before smashing at about 60 miles

an hour, on the run, with his forehead right into that pole  

-  which he'd evidently forgotten about or took no heed of. 

There was a nasty thud, almost like a tree snapping in a 

storm, and he was down. Out cold. That's C-O-L-D.  

We'd been (supposedly) taught a lot in that school  -  like 

who Old Black Joe was, and whatever Santa Lucia was about, 

(OK, just kidding), but we'd never been taught first aid, nor

especially the kind of first aid that could revive a dying-kid-

football-playing-concussion-case with a bump in the middle of

of his forehead the size of a small loaf of Italian Roll. Short of

burying him under Mr. Roloff's portable, or calling the local

morgue (no cell phones back then, thankfully), we decided to

just shake his ass, I mean rattle and pummel his prone body

until he awoke from his death-stupor. It worked; and fortunately

too, for our own personal rap sheets and criminal histories.

-

One thing about 12 year olds, at least in 1961 it seemed: We

were always finding ways to sneak a smoke. I mean cigarettes; 

which was all that existed in our world. 'Pot' was something

your Dad's old car went to when it was worn out  - 'this car's

gone to pot.' Everyone was always stealing a cigarette or three

from somewhere  -  the mother's pack, the pack their father

left on the back steps, their aunt's Kents (that was me), when 

she'd leave them around  when visiting. There were these little

clutches of kids -  under outside stairways, behind the school, 

in the woods, always managing to smoke. I mean, we weren't 

like existentialists or anything, fighting over concepts of Dread 

and Fate and Free Will or Malicious Intent. None of that. Nor 

did we discuss Camus or Sartre and the Algerian War. We 

just smoked to pass the time, and see what it was like  -  the 

smoking, not the time. We'd argue about baseball or if Willie 

Mays was any good as a black ballplayer alone, or just better 

than white guys...or something like that. We'd argue about 

girls, and who did it and who didn't, what it looked like, 

how it worked. All kinds of shit. Boyhood rubbish. But 

beautiful rubbish too. Our cigarette-in-hand poses were

perfect. Our cool-headedness about things was perfect. If

a girl actually did walk by, we'd have gagged, but it would

have  -  at the least  -  been a perfectly suave, smoker's gag.

-

Up and down our block, Inman Avenue, and the others too, 

there was a period of time when it seemed most everyone 

was getting backyard pools. Not the in-ground built-in and

permanent things -  those were for the really well-off, but

the three or four foot high metal and plastic liner type

above-ground pools that came with their own little ladders

to climb in, filter units, a deep section, or deeper anyway, 

in the center, and all that. Some had decks around them, 

others not. It was a real rash of getting for awhile. One thing
about the pools at least, you'd get to see all the girls in their 
bathing suits. Big-time stuff for 11-year old boys. I remember
one time in my backyard  -  one of those afternoon clutches of
kids and mothers, swimming, a few of the mothers remarking
on how sweet and pretty Barbara Fehring looked in her bathing 
suit. Of course, my ears perked right up. Then I heard her 
Aunt Betty say 'she still has a lot of baby fat on her.' I couldn't
quite understand that one, never having looked at her as fat,
or chubby, even. I learned later, of course, it was more about
'girl development stuff,' and shapeliness and curves and all 
that - stuff you learn about only later, I guess. OK by me.
Those who didn't get a pool, most often had memberships 

(and enough money) to go elsewhere  -  places like Holiday

Lake in Edison (now an industrial park) or  -  like the 

Yacullos across the street  -  a season sticker-pass for 

Lavallette. That was ultra-suave  -  they'd have these little

colored-pass tickets, a different color for each year, pasted

on the rear side window, for ID and beach-parking entry.

It was real status  - especially leaving them on year after

year so that, eventually, your car would show your status

and wealth by the amount of stickers. Except, one problem

I always thought about, by the time you showed, say, six or

seven of them in  a window, it just meant that your car was

an aged piece of junk and your crummy status didn't allow

you to buy a new car. Which, of course, became a paradox.

A contradiction in which the effort defeated the effect, or the

other way around. That's how I saw it anyway. I never knew

how they thought about it, or why it wouldn't occur to them 

a really well-off person would just buy a new car each year to

go with the ONE new sticker and be done with it. Life's

a real jag sometimes, a conundrum without end, a song sung

in an assembly without any reason at all.

-

That basement back in  School #4, it also had like one or

maybe two classrooms down there. I had something in there,

can't recall. A little dingier and more dreary than the rest. If you 

looked out the windows it was like almost half underground  -  or 

not really 'above' ground anyway. It made for a sour atmosphere

with a damp, muggy, sour smell too. There was a rest-room there

too, one for boys and one for girls. Funny when I think of it now, 

but as a fifth-grader or whatever it was, a boy, in the restrooms

we'd just stand in front of the urinals and pee. Funny too, I guess,

how boys just adjust immediately, roll with it, think nothing of

it. Just point to the urinal and have a go. I remember one time, 

one season, the big bathroom joke (I must have heard it five

times, and never knew the origination), which seemed to turn up 

every time five or six boys were down there, was 'What did Hitler

say when his wife told him she was having a baby?' The answer

was 'Hotsi-Totsi, a new born Nazi!' Go figure that one.