7777. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 154)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(PT. 154)

'I'm from Avenel; I need more of that.'  I always

liked the way that word sounded, It had a hard edge,

sounded incongruous, like the letters were clashing.

I guess it was just the use of the 'V' in the word. It

always colored my outlook  -  as if a person couldn't

just go around like a softy and still have to admit

to being from 'Avenel.' Other places had other

words, and each of those words described something

different. Brielle. Belmar. Rutherford. Freehold.

Wayne. Pompton Plains. Westfield.  Every place

was a different embodiment of its own sound. That

anyway was a theory I was working on for a while.

It too went nowhere.

-

I think I always took things too seriously. Maybe.

It seemed never to fail that I just overdid it and

took everything to heart. Whatever the concept,

I rolled in it. Every word out of someone's mouth

had to be investigated and judged for its truth.

Much of it wasn't true at all, just assumptions.

When I learned, for instance, about Capitalism,

as they called it -  in all those little stupid, school

ways  -  I took it to heart. Wrong. Bad idea.

It seemed about people making money from

and  -  living off of  -  product-generated money;

income. The basis of  the economy was production,

small corporate structures, all as successors to

Jefferson's yeoman farmers and the rest. It really

didn't hold up. Again 'Avenel' seemingly had

nothing to do with it. A complete divorcement.

There wasn't anything going on in Avenel to make

me see any of the goodness they spoke about  -  all

that proud and rugged individualism of the person

making his or her own way. The craftsman with his

chisel or hammer. It was mythological. That guy,

Whitey, the one who never talked, and did all those

storm windows along the street (see early chapters),

maybe he came the closest, but he was a war-zombie.

What good was that? Otherwise it was always the

outsiders who came in, swooped in, as it were, with

their corporate and commercial interests, and did 

what they wanted  -  tearing down woods and old 

roadways and things. Building crap everywhere. 

That was, yes, 'Capitalism', but that was a foreign 

term, some old European import. It was not 

Jeffersonian Americanism at all. But nobody 

talked. There were always two sides to this 'American' 

equation, as I saw it, and 'American' had lost a 

long time ago. This was something else. All those 

fathers and older brothers along the street,

they were all busy working. That was wage-slavery,

nothing at all like it was supposed to be. It was 

an earnest intimidation, without much of that 

'pursuit of Happiness' stuff. I always figured 

that was what we were supposed to be saluting 

the flag for, but it never worked like that, 

and apparently it wasn't.

-

If you know, Alexander Hamilton founded Paterson,

NJ at the time of about 1795-1800 and on, as a

dedicated 'City of Industry'  -  natural water-power

included (all destroyed now and the functioning water

power once forming the 'Great' Paterson Falls a mere

power-valve-controlled yellowish flow of piss,

running through wooded walkways both dangerous

and disgusting  -  food trash, used condoms,

broken-apart baby strollers and shopping carts).

I've walked that waterway a number of times, and

it really is pretty disgusting to view. A real mess.

I was there too, in the 1960's, 1970's, and right up to

the present day. I've seen all this take place. It was

in so many ways the complete opposite of what

'Avenel' had arisen out of  -  Paterson was a

concept, a pure, fine, planned 'City' to be built

around high ideals, strong energies, and a sort

of over-riding ethos of good, clean production for

the good and the benefit of everyone. I'm just as

sure that everyone knew it would never work;

that the essential drive of 'Capitalism' was to grind

and rip apart as much as possible, for clear and monetary

gain. No questions asked. Take all your 'civic ideals'

and stuff them. The doom-factor was at work; the

'doom-factor' of America meant that nothing was to be

held sacred in the pursuit of gain, dollar, lucre, profit.

The very waterway and the power of the falls which led

to the selection of the location, had already doomed it from

the start. Everything possible was 'dumped' into the very

water which was supposed to have sustained it : each

by-product of manufacture, each dye, pollutant, acid and

sewage bit produced, no matter what else, went into the

water. It wasn't long before that itself was despoiled and

people's lived began descending into a version of American

Hell. But Hell for Profit. And all that was nearly 300

years ago. Very early on.

-

The death and grime, has been now somewhat cleaned 

up by Government and Parks Service fiat but yet made 

worse. Americans, as a group, obviously can't hold 

well to their tenets. The only functioning businesses 

now in places such as Paterson are worked-over 

bodegas, quicki-marts, Hispanic food places, bars, 

 hospitals and a few Governmental and bureaucratic 

infiltrations, broken-down school buildings, traces 

of industry, and as many new and 'yuppified', or 

whatever it would be called, condos and living units 

built with transformed old mills, factories and silk 

and embroidery buildings as can be had. People 

who are otherwise, for all practical purposes, just 

completely useless and unaware of anything past 

the end of their noses. A remnant of the past 

stupidly exists in the idea of the Railroad Museum 

near the Falls, which blindly celebrates a 

 transportation and power-energy past so long 

gone as to be laughable. Speaking of laughable, 

there's a larger than life statue of Lou Costello, 

of 'Abbot and Costello' fame, who was raised in 

Paterson, NJ. What's become of the American

system of 'Capitalism' is a wreck. There's no 

longer much capital involved. You were once 

supposed to get rich and make your way on 

money made by product, yes, and the profits 

generated. Made money. Now most of it generated 

into  -  not Made Money  -  but 'Taken Money'. 

The American Dream is now to work for the 

 government, at any level, state, local, national. 

That's where the money resides  -  wages, benefits, 

pensions, an entire afterlife of living, early-retired 

and well taken care of. There are hundreds and 

plus ways of doing this  -  living off tax-generated 

money, as if there were no end to it. (Powerful 

unions crank their strangleholds on all these 

endeavors.) One municipal NYC project now 

underway, which I have just been reading of, 

is going nowhere and is way over-budget, having 

lost all semblance of its original and projected 

attempt, mainly because of the internal battlings 

and machinations of twelve (count 'em, twelve) 

different unions within the one huge job, all 

 operating at cross-purposes to each other, 

trying to endlessly pad the payrolls, erecting 

barriers to open-hiring and clear-functioning 

and efficient installation and completion of 

job duties and details. Project management 

has about gone mad, the municipal commonweal 

suffers, and the project gets waylaid, while 

thousands make off to the bank with their 

purloined funds and salaries, squeezed from 

the municipal fountain, thought to be endless. 

Add to this cops, teachers, social workers, 

criminal justice attendants, judges, lawyers, 

 firemen,  advocates, functionaries, and 

actuaries to the fact. And then add it all 

again into itself by a factor of two. That' 

what I've learned of Capitalism in Avenel's 

fine America. And that was something like 

50 years ago. It's much worse now  -  the  

entire Military establishment has come to 

be considered a grand job and a wholesome

career. That's evil, man, just evil.

-

Seen from that perspective, which was the 

manner in which I viewed it (I'd always had 

a soft spot, a special place for 'Paterson' and 

the early-American emphasis on grounding

a Society in ideals. It seemed as if, once, it 

could have really been a planned 'Paradise.' 

I had aunts and uncles in Rutherford and 

Lyndhurst, and cousins in Paterson too. 

So it always stayed close. Avenel, in contrast, 

was a crazed, wild hinterland), Avenel stood 

for solid, plodding regularity and boredom. 

I don't think there was ever a dare put out 

that Avenel answered to. I know, in my own 

house, the big talk was always of my Aunt Millie,

some sort of Democrat committeewoman or 

something, who somehow with whatever

connection she had, could swing you a Summer

job with one of those ridiculous parks programs

or other  -  basically a cushy, do-nothing-much

minimum-wage timekiller job in the local park

around your town. Taking care of kids. Weaving 

leather wallets and other pretend Indian-crafts.

My aunt could probably get you a job  -  Government

paid, again enslavement, but willingly done. It 

was a real shame, and it was a real-long-way-

down too. It had absolutely nothing to do with 

'America.' It was, in fact, closer in so many ways 

to any of those decrepit East Germany type places 

where a desultory from of Communism servitude 

was slowly dying, while the 'State' propped everything 

up. It was no different  -  and that was the sort of 

crap my aunt and all her local Woodbridge and area

political cronies were peddling around. It made

me want to scream aloud.  I'd come home from

visiting, and I'd look at Avenel and just say 'what?'