7750. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 147)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 147)

Theatricality and ovation. Emotionalism and

vulnerability. Those sorts of things, and their

being opposites of a sort, always projected

themselves into my field of viewing. Sometimes

I didn't stop to explain myself. Sometimes I was

pretty madly vile. There was a guy I knew, from

working at NJ Appellate Printing, Harry Halpern.

He was one of the richest landowners in Woodbridge

and held lots of properties and holdings, collecting

rents from everyone. He looked like a bum and walked

the town as if lost in space and without a care. He had a

large, estate-type house, set back and hidden by hedges,

on upper Main Street, Woodbridge. It's been long ago

cleared and the house 'erased', just gone. Nothing left

but a big empty, gravelly lot with sometimes a few

trucks on it; right near to it there's an abortion clinic

and each day there are two or three protestors, with

placards and large photos of babies and things, with

crosses and rosaries, standing out front to challenge

or otherwise harass in their own way anyone who is

arriving or departing. The protestors are kept, in a steady

stream, supplied by the Knights of Columbus Hall just

down the street, across from St. James Church. I always

have to laugh because that's about the very spot I'd

always be seeing Harry starting or stopping one of

his jaunts, in the late1960's anyway. He was a short,

strongly-built guy, always in gray khakis, like a

workman's uniform. He never spoke much, or well.

I was always intrigued when I heard of his wealth

and riches, told to me by others, and watched carefully

to see how he acted or what his routines were. They

never appeared any different from anyone, though I

could never really figure him out. I always wanted to get

inside of his head, ask a million questions, find out what

he knew and felt about the Woodbridge he was transforming.

This was the beginning of the 'garden apartment' era, and

those hideous and dumb-looking brick outlays were cropping

up everywhere in what used to be fields and meadows. I

always wanted to know where Harry's education was from,

whether or not he had come up through the Woodbridge

system, with an engrained sense of place and feel for the

town itself, or if it was just another business opportunity

for him. Nothing important, just rather the sorts of thing

I used to think about. I myself had somehow grown an

attachment, whether emotional or intellectual, to that sort

of information. We were, after all, living 'somewhere', and

that somewhere had to have a story and a history to it.

I had another friend, in New Brunswick; she was a graphic

artist, about ten years, maybe, older than me. Her name

was Joanne Mannion and she came from old-line New

Brunswick stock, somehow, and would always tell me

stories and histories, through her family, of old 'port'

New Brunswick, when the waterfront was vivid and active,

stevedores and river pilots and boiler men stalked around,

piles of freight and cargo, boat traffic and drayage people

everywhere. She was way down on that which had befallen

New Brunswick, cursing the town and its people, and by

extension all of current 'America' and its standards and

practices. She had a heart for all that had gone away,

and she somehow sensed I did too. It was one of the

few times I felt that someone was on the track to

understanding a little bit of the way I thought about

things. The funny thing, too  -  let me go back a moment  -

was to see how this Harry Halpern guy gave no care to

being starched or stiff, like any of the rich or historic

characters a place like Woodbridge would puff itself

up about. Here was a regular kingpin of the town, an

invisible real-estate mogul, raking it in, and I could

somehow never envision him getting puffy or important

about himself  - suits and ties and all those dinners and

club-talks those sorts of town guy bigwigs were always

involved with. He really knew how to pull it off. An

interesting and funny corollary to all this, in my own life,

which pretty much exemplifies what I'm saying, was when

I was at St. George Press, just about the year 1990, and

ready to leave, just feeling cramped and constrained too

much  -  all over again  -  by the business world and all the

crap that went with it. I'd begun skimping on haircuts, getting

seedy-looking again, not much caring, and the owner, Bob

took me aside, finally, one day, and told me to straighten up,

look right, 'because the town fathers come in here often. You

know that.' (We did a lot of municipal printing and we'd get

the Mayor and Council people and big business types and

Kiwanis Club sorts, and all the rest). His point was that they

were important enough that I should appear reserved and

proper to them. Oh boy, did I have to laugh at that. (I was

gone about a month later). He actually called them 'town

fathers', like some landed colonial gentry or something. These

were guys whose idea of a grand time was a scrambled-eggs

breakfast meeting, a golf-outing, and maybe a local Colonia

Country Club soiree and dance with their wives or brooding

other. Being a 'Town Father' was the last thing on their minds

and they wouldn't really have had a clue as to what that meant

anyway. All they really cared about was making a buck, and

from what I saw all that meant to them was 'expansion'; growing

the business base of Woodbridge Township  -  more business,

roads, factories, warehouses, housing units, shopping centers

and parking lots. The complete opposite of a town 'father, for

sure. More like 'Town Despoilers.' The whole thing had

become a bad joke. Yet I had to 'look good.'

-

Places seem to, eventually, just become either ghosts of

themselves or parodies of themselves. Cities begin to

deteriorate and crumble, the 'right' people move out

(meaning the 'money') and the crumbs are left to the

next strand of arrivals, always lesser in standing and

money than the previous, and they let things slide a

little more, and then they leave as they grow out. That's

how suburbs begin, spread and fan themselves out. All

the big-time writers who write about the places they lived

or grew up through, and which are no more, they all write

about things like that. The dilution of place and value.

It's like an old-time American saga wherever you go.

The rise and the fall of the places that were; and it's a kind

of a gift for the writer too, because he can mine that raw

material and spin it in any manner he or she then chooses.

That's called interpretation. I don't really know that Avenel,

using my own for instance, has ever had such a treatment, but

here I am, trying at giving it one  -  it's a sort of structural

abyss around and into which I've woven the DNA strands of

the place I called 'home' in the way that I lived it, or thought

it anyhow. But it's more difficult and awkward here, because
in reality 'Avenel' had only the most rudimentary previous
history. It was really nothing ever more than an out-reach
settlement along a highway that kept expanding, and it sort
of wound up being providentially placed near to where at
least six of these big-time, commercial roadways, met and
crossed. A 'hub' as it were -  not so much for people at all,
which is where the legacy and history would have come from,
but for business and commercial interests. The complete
opposite of any sense of goodness and place; just instead the
'locus' of a rapacious, steady, and greedy growth where
'good' things were steadily eroded and taken away, and
only the most mediocre, fouled, congested and transient
things somehow always remained. 'Town fathers' indeed.