7823. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 167)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 167)

I was usually always pretty tightly strung,

seemingly nervous about everything and

often worried. My aunt used to say I was

happy-go-lucky, but I never saw that.

Everything was a mission, onerous and

with some sort of strife. I used to know a

girl, about 6 years old, first grade, maybe

second. Her name was Mary Ellen O'Neil.

She lived on whatever that street is that runs

along Avenel Park, over past Hudson Boulevard,

across from what later came into my life as

the Pat Certain house, with  all those kids,

and where I often was too. Mary Ellen and I

used to sit on her little brick porch out front

and just read aloud to each other. Very odd to

both do, and remember, that. I guess it was

Summertime stuff, because it was always

warm and nice out, and we just sat there. I

don't remember how I got there  -  bicycle

I guess  -  nor what or why it started from.

I remember she'd get way engaged in these

adventure tales we read, all involved. To me

they were just tales, without any import. She

had an older brother too, maybe five or six

years older. I remember him, Jimmy, because 

one time after the old St. Andrew's Church

had been turned into a basketball court,

before it was torn down, someone was asking

us, five or six kids sitting around watching a

basketball game, where we were from and

he quickly and comically answered, 'from

my mother!' It was funny, since we'd all just

said town names and things. Mary Ellen just

disappeared, as did he. I guess they moved

away. Before Mary Ellen, there was another

girl I'd gotten kid-friendly with, sort of up the

street from her. This girl is still around NJ,

and I won't use her name here, but what was

really cool was that in the lot across the street

from their house (it's long been apartments now)

her father used to keep bees. And there were 
hummingbirds around there too; these furious 
little, in-place energy birds. There were some

bee boxes all around, nice weedy grass and

flowers too. It was really neat  -  the old Premium

Diner was there too, along the highway. This

family was Dutch, and I found it all extremely

interesting to see that someone raised bees, and

honey and all that which came from it. I didn't

get into the rigors of all the beekeeping chores

and stuff, but just rather merely 'enjoyed' from

a distance the idea and the scene. As a young

kid, all these little, tiny things just end up

coloring your life and your expanding view

of things. In these two cases, the natural and

bucolic sense of something real and natural

-  bees and a field  - and in Mary Ellen's

brother's case, the cool sense of playing off

things, making humor out of where you were

from. And, of course, Mary Ellen's eye-opening

sensitivity and involvement with what were,

really, just stories.

-

There was a period of time when  -  maybe

about 1958  -  when everywhere there were

new sets of houses going up. I know that,

along the wooded end of my aunt's house

on Starlight Drive in Colonia, only a few

miles off my Avenel house, and where we

visited a lot, the deep woods that once had

been in place there  - and into which I loved

to launch myself for hours and just get

lost walking  -  large crews of workmen that

Spring just appeared, and in a matter of a

month the entire 500 acres, or whatever it 

may have been, was cut, stripped and cleared, 

and just as quickly, in perfectly aligned streets 

and rows, about 200 houses went up. All I 

saw for the longest time was the bare wood 

frames and then structures of all these houses, 

new curbs and driveways. And that was only 

there, in that one location  -  it was going on in

lots of other places too. As I said, it seemed like

the bare-wood house blanks were popping up

everywhere. I could only sense, but did not

know, what was underway  -  the same people

aiming to conquer that sky above with their

blinking satellites and modern jet aircraft were

as hard at work smearing the land with their

cement and tar and gum and macadam. There

was a sense of the old, and the heritage of it all,

that was just getting lost, disappearing. What 

was funny was that I began dreaming about it. 

Real, and vivid, dreams that I'd wake up with  

-  of old, rambling homes and yards, trails and

streams and things, with a perfect recall and

memory, to myself, as to where and in what 

current places these each may have been. It was

as if, within me, inside, an old and treasured map

of what once had been was being brought out

and reviewed, and I was there, or still there, or 

allowed there. The sense of, even, Avenel as a

no-place, was being changed  -  because these 

new homes were being put up in even worse

locations  -  off secondary roads, middles of 

nowheres, in newly hewn fields and woods. These

people ended up having nothing at all except

roads and driveways. How they could even

consider their lack of place to be anywhere

valued at all was beyond me. I couldn't quite

understand, and didn't really want to  -  they

were like hordes, newcomers just plowing in.

The shortsightedness was that it was the very

same thing we'd done 5 years previous, but

the sense and the idea of place made it different.

Or so I thought. It basically came down to the

fact that wherever you went now, you needed

an automobile. Any idea of that old, New 

England-like village square feel was long gone;

it had been dilapidated and failing for years as 

it was, and these new places just put, like 

they say, the old 'last nail in the coffin.'

-

I'd think of the entire state, of New Jersey itself,

undergoing this mad transformation, and I'd just 

wonder. Another funny thing that came to be was that

the big, important, main drag through Bayonne, in

Hudson County' was called Hudson Boulevard  -  large

old homes, big porches, apartment buildings, stores.

Here in Avenel there was also a 'Hudson Boulevard',

just like there was a Park Avenue and a Fifth Avenue.

Go figure that. This Hudson Boulevard was just a string

of small, starter-price and size, for sure, homes, all in

a row. Nothing especial about it in any way, no

particular reason for the nomenclature, nothing

referential to the other Hudson Boulevard. Again, like

Fifth and like Park, it just was. It's all funny, and it

was like that everywhere I looked.