7681. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 132)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 132) - section 6

'seminary days'

Two sort of miraculous things occurred to me

while I was in Blackwood  -  moments outside

of time, the sorts of things that become exceptional

immediately and forever. I'll break in here now with

it, even though time jumps a bit as I do it. It became

apparent that we, the seminary, rented parts of the

grounds out to Campbell Soup Co., based in Camden.

Everyone knew Campbell Soup --  the famous cans,

red design labels, even the Andy Warhol junk not soon

after. In certain areas there were fields of green peppers,

tomatoes, peas, the kind of farm-crop stuff that made

you wonder, with the abundance there, 'who takes care

of all this stuff, who plants it and harvests it, and what

happens to it all.' Leo Benjamin, again, was the one

guy who really pointed it out. On one side of the area

where we ate, there was a good-sized pepper-field

one year, right outside the windows. When we'd be

out, walking around and stuff, he'd pick a pepper and

begin eating it, as if it was an apple or something. I'd

never seen that before. They were crisp and moist and

good, not in excess, but in little doses. I was never a

pepper fiend  -  my mother used to make stuffed peppers,

and they were OK, but like everything else she cooked,

certainly all the vegetables, they were over-cooked and

soggy to death, like old wet paper or something. Most

of the people in that generation, my mother's group, the

parents of my friends, they all had a tendency to way-

overcook things. Beans and peas and all the vegetables

always soggy and wan. They weren't really supposed to

be heavy-cooked like that, to a soggy mess, so that most

of the nutrients are all in the juice then  -  which used to

just get thrown out. Better to drink the juice and chuck

the soggy vegetables. I don't know what it was with that,

maybe sanitary fears, germs and fears of bacteria and

things, from their old days. But, anyway, it's not

necessary and the stuff is a lot better tasting when crisp.

At least it tastes alive. So, thanks to Leo Benjamin, I

began to eat some raw vegetables here and there, right

off the plants. (Later years on, when I lived in NYC,

Judy Tannenbaum and myself, out all night mostly,

on bicycles, in the nice, warm weather, she'd stop

quickly and steal a cauliflower or whatever she could

grab, from the open vegetable stands, and we'd eat that

too  -  raw cauliflower, in chunks  -  like apples).

But, back to the fields, Campbell Soup would send

migrant workers in, on flatbed trucks  -  you'd see

them just slowly riding along, 10 or 12 Negroes, just

like slave days  -  South Jersey's version of plantation

workers. They get off the truck with their sacks and

slowly shuffle their ways along to the rows of crops,

picking and filling their slow bags, humming or talking

aloud to someone, or singing. It was miraculous and,

how can I put it, took my breath away, drew me in,

captivated me and ran me off. I was flabbergasted by

what I saw. Itinerant farm-workers, following the crops

for probably the cheapest pittance of money you could find.

This was 1962, mind you. The South of Jersey was still

white, and I'd bet these people would have had trouble

sitting down at any Woolworth's soda fountain even there

as well. Gap-mouthed, I was mesmerized : the women and

girls, breathtaking specimens of young-girl beauty to me  -

just an idiot young male, but mesmerized by the sight  - they'd

wear kerchiefs or bandannas, sun-hats, or cover their heads

in some flopped hat or rag, their bodies seemingly worthy

of a gymnast's use. That, my dear readers, was religion. The

Virgin Mary Mother of God could not have portrayed to

me better what grace and pose and dignity was. The

downtrodden, at work, under pressure but maintaining their

hold on their Beings, self and soul. The Meek shall inherit

the earth, I'd hear. And then some crud would say  -  'and

they can have it. That's all they get because of their being

meek, and not striking out, not striving or reaching back

and grabbing.' I'd hear that stuff  -  others would talk. Yet,

I could disprove everything with one look at this

Human-Love I felt. I even gave Campbell Soup a pass

on using slave-labor because of the grace of Christ it

showed me back. No one else seemed to care  -  least alone

Leo; he'd laugh or scoff, or say something unnecessary.

It was like watching a squirrel die, on the road, after 

getting nicked by a car. You'd wish it had just gotten

squished and instantly killed, rather than have to be

seen writhing and flailing in its sad death throes. It was

just a great, big, down feeling, dropping all around me

when I realized that others just weren't seeing what 

I was seeing. This was but maybe 200 yards from the 

place where, twice daily, we'd have to sit, in that 

chapel, and partake of liturgy, Christian teaching, 

prayer and sermon. I just didn't know what to make

of the long afternoons and early evenings when, just

outside those windows, truckloads of weary blacks

were trudging along with baskets full of tomatoes, or

canvas sacks of green peppers. Was it not ALL of 

mankind who should, be free and equal? Was it 

really okay to disdainfully put the onus of work and 

toil on the downtrodden others and pretend you just 

didn't notice, or see? Young lives with so little. 

I was crying in my stupid prayers. Lost in space

once more. I never wanted a tomato again.

-

This led right into another massive and fascinating 

aspect of my new life. I can't remember how I got 

hooked up with this, or what it was called, but somehow 

I was involved with these details of work or things that 

took me, often at night (early Wintry night anyway) 

off the seminary grounds. There were two ostensible, 

quite separate operations. One of the priests, I remember 

it being a black guy, the only Negro priest we

had. I always thought he was pretty non-manly, but 

whatever. He drove a black, 196o or '61  Ford -   it was 

either new or late model used, and he was usually the 

only person I'd ever see, driving. The car was kept over 

at the other side of that round barn I mentioned before -  

at the manor-house where all the priests and brothers 

lived. Really, that too was a pretty mysterious place. 

Whenever a kid had an emergency  -   most usually a 

toothache or a wound or a fever  -  we'd take trips, 

with the patient, to pre-arranged special dentist's offices

or doctor places, and we'd be there as the kid got treated 

or fixed. It didn't happen a lot, but when it did it was 

very cool, for me. I'd get to see places, lights at night, 

travel. The priest, name completely forgotten, would 

talk, the radio was on, all cool. It was an extra, added 

attraction to my living. The second aspect of this was 

that we had a mechanic-fixer guy, one of the maintenance 

'brothers', not a priest, just a career brother. That's a different 

set of vows, a slightly lower level  - called 'Brother Bob'

or whatever, not 'Father McNally'. First name stuff. He

was really nice, bearded also, like the farm guy  - little, quiet.

He had a 1952 pickup truck. Every so often it would be filled 

up with metal  -  scraps of things, broken stuff, car parts, etc.

When that happened, it was time for a junkyard trip. I'd go,

with him, to perhaps the strangest experiences of my days.

Ever. (Now, the writer's point here would be to not yet tell

you, let you dangle, introduce all sort of diversionary and 

ancillary thoughts and matters to keep you either at the edge

of your seat, with expectation, or just riveted to follow more 

of the story. I like discursive stuff -  as a writer  -  it allows

the word to grow, the subject to expand, new ideas to be

introduced, skipped over, and returned to. Fun. This fellow

may have smoked a pipe, I think. He drove the truck in a

very mannered fashion, a small guy, just humped to the wheel,

bouncing along  -  no radio in this one. It was like some old

farm scene in a weird old book, the jerry-built truck, all rigged

and contrived, jalopying along, over the trail, just settling

in and slowly disappearing down the road). Well, let me get

back. We'd ride over ruts and valleys, into the farthest, weird, 

dark back-ends of Camden. Once we even crossed the bridge

and went, especially, to some Philadelphia junkyard along the 

Delaware. But, mostly, these were dark-Camden trips. Some

Jewish guy was always around  -  Abe Golub's Junkyard, or

Sid Mablesky, Junk Dealer  -  anything like that. We'd pull in, 

the little penny-pincher guys would come out, look over the

stuff, mumble, point. Weigh things. They'd go off together  -  

he actually looked mostly just like them, my 'brother' guy.

It got to be funny. Then they'd dicker some more, decide 

on something, pay up, and we'd unload. It was always fun,

nothing at all to do with religion, though there probably was

like 'Saint Smattering, Patron Saint of Junkyards', or something.

But these were Jewish guys, so it couldn't much matter. They

played in a different league from us. Better umps, bigger bats.

The truck would get unloaded, and we'd leave. Always in

complete silence, for the next ten minutes, as if he was going

over, rehashing in his head, what he'd just taken in, if the

bargain was fair, if it had been worth the doing, etc. I could

never figure out how all these priests and brothers operated

anyway  -  all living together like that  -  did they have meetings

where they went over this stuff, approved or disapproved of

expenses and trips, reviewed the take, scolded or scoffed at

someone of something, make jokes, good or bad about what 

had been done? Did they even know about me, in on these

things? Bafflement and mystery, like some deep Vatican

secret committee paying off the Pope's bills or something.

 I just stayed quiet and went for the rides. BUT, back to the 

scene, and here's where it gets telling, deep, dark. Again, this

was the early sixties  -  much of the outskirts of Camden was

bleak, black junklands. Shacks and the remnants of large

homes, sagging and separate, out along what were, I guess,

remnants of older roadways. Houses with four or five steps

to get up to, and nothing else. Desolate, ruined, quiet. No

matter much the time of year, there'd always be people around,

just staring at this odd little truck bally-hooing its way along

their jutted roads. Broken trees, twisted things growing, torn

up old sidewalks and fences. Only a few lights, maybe

connected directly to a porch here or there. But always

the gaunt and silent people, staring. I mean slow, vacant

staring  -  like they'd just awakened from the dead and only

because something was passing by. There wasn't even a touch

of real malice, just a poor feeling of dread. A bleak and bleary

endlessness. Any of these roads could have just been a

dead-end that backed into Hell itself  -  instead of scrap yards

and caves and piles of junk. Dogs. Broken clusters of cars and

windows. Muggy people, staring with their odd eyes  -  big,

red-rimmed when close-up. It was truly the weirdest thing

I'd ever seen. Camden's a disaster today too  - a war-zone, 

streets just rows of rubble patrolled by State Police, not even

any longer local cops. But this was worse. This was before

any 'concern'. LBJ and all his 'Great Society' Presidential

Anti-Poverty stuff hadn't even started. All these people

were just the stiff-armed, desolate, destitute poor. Absolute

nothings. For us to come tweetering down their dirt 

roadways was seen as much as wonderment, from their 

end, as it was from mine, or maybe as an affront to all 

their lives and property. I never knew. But in those 

silences and travels I knew I had landed  -  most 

definitely  -  somewhere else for sure.

-

This was what it was like for me. I'd seen junkyards and

car-yards before, the trailer parks of Avenel, the greasy 

puddles beneath the trucks of Brandywine Salvage,

Inman Avenue's very own end  -  but that was nothing 

compared to this. Just miles of rutted, desolate, dead land.

I got back to the seminary after each of those trips, still

rattled by the greater reality. Amazed. No one ever asked

me a question, not a thing, about what I'd done or seen.

It was all invisible, the cloak of secrecy. Some days I just

wanted to stand up and spout  -  preach from that chapel

pulpit about the raw-cut portion of Life that I'd been given

to see : forget all this huddled and cloistered crap, get out

there where mankind Lives! Get up! Arise ye men of a

new generation!....but, nothing. Nothing came. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guess.

Just pocket money from truckloads of scrap.