7698 .BELOW THE WATER LINE

BELOW THE WATER LINE
(pt. 135)  - section 9
'seminary days'

If any of this would have gone on in Avenel, 

the place would  have been shrieking mad.

There wasn't any of that reverence for things

and silences for moments. Kids just flying

stuff through the air, big conglomerates

of nothing. Movies had a different feel.

I never cared  -  I'd take my bicycle down

to the other side of Thayer Avenue, or 

whatever it was, and come out way down 

by Blair Road, at the tanks. It was quiet and

always a little distant. For me, that was the

equivalent of a movie house : the dead, soggy

woods, with old stumps of boards and things,

piled up just where people left them. I always

got baffled by things left behind. 

-

Seminary stuff, the only thing I was able to 

compare it to was Avenel, because that was 

all I had. There wasn't really anything the same.

Everything was pretty sparse and ordered  -  no

yard messes or things just kicking around. I guess

we had landscape and garden people, I just can't

recall ever seeing anyway and  -  just the same  -  

nothing was ever outsourced, so the brothers 

or someone must  have done it all. Grass-cutting

and that. I used to wonder about the other kids;

it's just a sort of natural thing to do. For a few of

them, it was obvious life was gold. There were 

kids with fathers in the State Government in

Trenton  -  one kid, William Hyland, Bill, I guess,

his father was the Commissioner of Public Utilities; 

a big deal. I first thought it meant that he was like

in charge of telephone poles and fire hydrants and

restrooms in parks and stuff, but it turned out I was

way wrong. He was in charge of the rates and the

structures and licensing and all that of like the

electric and gas and water companies, in all the

state  -  when people say they'd 'pay their utility 

bills', they meant him. Probably made a million a 

year, and sends his kid off to pretend at becoming a

priest. Just for the private education and  -  probably

too  -  because he knew he'd not be able to handle 

the kid through teen years. I always said 'Poor Bill',

getting shunted around like that when his father could

probably afford the best private school there was. And

that was another thing  -  my poverty snitch again. We

were poor; this place cost, back than, about 600 bucks 

a year, tuition alone. Cool thing was, I realized, if you

could stay really cool about it, and pretend at wishing 

to be a priest, you could get in for free. The Diocese

of Trenton, for instance, in my case, they floated me 

right through. That's how desperate they were to get

kids in to the priesthood racket. They used Diocese 

funds to send seminarians to seminary school, even the

lowest, starter-version ones, like mine. We still had like

12 years ahead of us to go if were were going to really

achieve this 'Priesthood' thing, but they had a separate

fund out of which they paid. Say, 15 or 20 kids a year, 

maybe that's high, I don't know, but at 600 bucks a head 

back then, that was like 12 grand a year our of the 

collection bins. Pretty cool. The other funny thing was

that the Governor  -  Richard J, Hughes, back then, he

used to go right there, to Mother of the Savior

Seminary. I guess it was the early 50's maybe, 

for him, or even before. A neat thing though. There

were, like I said, any number of pretty reputable kids

there. You could tell. I remember this one guy, Jay

Commons  -  a really nice, kind of elite fellow, from

Spring Lake. We'd be out marching around, in the

brutal heat, saying the rosary aloud, one of the priests

in the lead (every so often we'd have to do stuff like

that, walking around, aloud, in formation, outside,

praying), and Jay, while we walked, was surreptitiously

showing everyone how to, in the brutal heat, blow on

their inside wrist, underneath the open palm, and it 

would cool you down. I never knew where he learned

that, but it did sort of work  -  except of course you couldn't

be always some candy-ass walking around blowing on

your wrists. It would be about the same as wearing on

of those beanie caps with a fan on it, to blow down on 

you. Just too weird. I just always figured it was one of 

those special insider clues rich people get about things.

I used to pity those priests in the lead, always having

to wear those black cassocks and collar, even in the 

jungle heat. I never did like, nor understand, those

things  -  and I always hated those priest movies with

like Bing Crosby or someone pretending at being some

good-guy priest and saving a failing church or a bunch 

of surly, ratty kids  -  like in 'Going My Way', I think

it was. One of those tinhorn movies we saw. Always

strutting around in his stupid black robe. Ridiculous.

-

There were some real oddities in this place, things they'd

tell us. For a normal human being, it was pretty outlandish

unless you were guaranteed to be in that special religious

mode where you'll pretty much believe anything. As a for

instance, they'd always start going on about our 'vocation',

how it wasn't so much that WE had selected this route, this

whole priesthood, service, and holiness gig, but that it was

GOD who had selected us for it, by giving us the 'vocation',

and then they'd go on about the 'many are called but few are

chosen' routine. By the time they were done, and this happened

often enough, you were afraid to move, figuring God, having

'selected' you once, could certainly strike you again in the other

direction for being a jerk or something. For, ah, saying, 'No!'

Pretty scary stuff  -  12 years old, in a dark catacomb, candles

blazing, some preacher up front going on about this to a bunch

of coughing, nervous kids who just wanted to go into the next 

room and eat, for pity's sake. I used to read about Jonathan 

Edwards and his ilk, all those enflamed preachers of 

righteousness and the First and then the Second Great

Awakenings, when all this stuff was raging through the 

American plains and villages. The New England Puritans

too, with their stockades and trials by ordeal and all that crap.

I'd just figure, 'what the hell?...' I couldn't really get keen on

getting into all that stuff, and it certainly never felt real. I was

living on the edge of absurdity. Sometimes I'd just think of

home, and figure maybe to just set off hitchhiking back

or walked up the turnpike for a week or two until I got there.

At least it would get me out, maybe, of this weird nest of

mental thuggery, but at home then there'd be a whole entire

other pile of crap to deal with. 

-

There was a certain certitude, at least, back home. Avenel 

kids, anyway, the ones I knew, if it was purple, they'd just 

call it purple. If something was not right, or fishy, you'd 

hear about it. Not too much taken on faith. 'If that's a 

match, dammit, then burn my fingers with it and show 

me.' This was all a bit different. I remember one time, 

after the supper meal, or whatever name they had for 

5 o'clock food, a group of upper classmen sitting 

around their table, vociferously debating, almost 

arguing, with their arms in the air, etc. what I considered 

the most fucked-up dumb quarrel-point I'd ever heard 

or seen. They had to be total freaking idiots to believe 

this stuff, or even care. They'd somehow come up 

with two imaginary lines, in space  -  I guess they all 

envisioned this, alike, as one  -  and were ARGUING 

over whether or not the two lines would ever intersect,

or remain, instead, parallel into infinity. Got that? Bizarre

intellectual exercise, or stupidity -  you call it. To me, it

reeked of the same  problems that ruined religion  -  

having to accept and then argue over the weird and

perverse premises presented, actually taking sides and

portraying one aspect as better than another. And these

were the same people, then, who belittle someone like a

St. Thomas (doubting Thomas) who wouldn't believe

until he saw the wounds and put his fingers into the

wound holes of the risen Christ. It's almost the same line

of thought, or way of approach, but in reverse. Inside the

head, going on about absurdities. Yeah, those lines, sure

they'll run into each other, in space, after about 10 billion, 

five hundred million three thousand and twenty-four miles.

I'm absolutely sure of it. I wanted to pipe up, in my

'modern day' voice and say  - 'Dude, space is curved, time

and speed bend things, gravity pulls at mass, nothing is

ever what it seems. Don't rely, good buddy, don't rely.'