7868. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 178)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 178)

Sometimes I get to think that we all

are nothing more than the sum totals

of our experiences, on an almost

'automatic-like' scale. It may very

well be that I'm wrong, but the feeling

I get is that there's a certain 'vaster'

preponderance of our make-ups that

comes up from those moments. All

the learning and reasoning we later

acquire doesn't change it much. When

I was young, my aunt and uncle lived

in Union City. It's a really small, grubby

and crowded hub  -  not a city at all  -  

now mostly Cuban and Hispanic, but 
that's what it calls itself, and whatever. 

It sits up on the ridge of rock ending NJ

eastward. Over the Hudson River, which

runs below. Behind it, to the west, and far

below, is Route One, (Tonnelle Avenue),

usually pronounced Tonnally Ave). That

part of things is a horrible mishmash of old,

wrecked places, car-yards  old foundries

and factories, but all now nothing but

cheap motels (a lot of the 42nd street

whoring business moved out here in the

90's  -  now  they just walk along Route

One showing their wares. Sure makes

traffic jams a little easier to take). Lincoln

Tunnel. Holland Tunnel. There's even

some light-rail stuff now. Anyway, up

above all that, on really steep streets

and twisty curves, is Union City, and

North Bergen, and places like that. My

aunt and uncle, as I said, lived in Union

City. I was probably 4. We'd go visit them

and I remember to this day being stunned

and awed by the view between houses. Thin

openings (the housing was close together and

tight, people living 'cheek by jowl', as I now

say), heralded the eye towards a grand view of

New York City  -  wonderful 1954 Manhattan  -

and all I ever did was find spots but to stare

and gaze out at the equivalent, to me, of Oz

itself. A concrete, steel and glass emporium

of wonder, dreams, light, angles, creativity,

excitement, danger, trouble, possibilities,

movement, highs and lows, heights and

chasms, luck and missed chances, all. And

that was only inside my tiny head at the time!

It spoke to me, I was able to understand and

read the message, feel it in my slimeball bones.

We had not yet moved to Avenel, I'd probably

never even heard of the place and would have

had no concept of where I'd soon be headed.

Swamps, fens, trailers and shacks? Who ever

had heard of that? This, on the other hand, out

before me stretched, was living, was life, was

all the source of my golden waters. I could not

wait. It sometimes seems, in retrospect, that

the experienced 'past', before it was 'present'

simply must have been imagined as 'future' in

order for it to have occurred. Time flips around

audaciously like that, and we miss things at

our peril. As it went, I felt every second of

all this in my bones, before it occurred; like a

dream state, from which you only seldom

awaken. I can't put into words exactly what

I mean. However. The terms of this agreement

are that I will continue speaking, regardless.

Once I arrived in Avenel, it wasn't as if a

rooster was crowing, or that this was farmland.

No, it wasn't at all.  It was just that, admittedly,

there were fields and open spaces around me,

getting quickly sacrificed for the 'good of all'.

Probably mostly for the good of banks, but the

entire process did bring a lot of people out from

their strange situations in paltry surrounding

towns. Summer Street in Elizabeth. Any of

the numbered Newark Streets, slowly being

turned over to 'others.' My aunt, a different,

aunt, used to say (she lived her entire live in

Bayonne, seldom ever leaving its confines,

in a small, old-style tenement/apartment

set-up), that the good thing about Bayonne

was that they had never let the 'element' in.

Never making it clear what the 'element' was,

I only later surmised she meant the blacks or

the Spanish, who now are there anyway. She's

the one who's not any longer there. Death,

then, recovers time, and always wins. Her

coveted town, by those standards, has been

long lost.

-

I don't know what any of that's supposed to

mean, but Avenel never had any 'element'

either. It was basically one, homogeneous

community made of white American people,

from wherever and however they got there.

Yet, at the same time, no one was ever overly

pronounced over this - maybe a few cracks

now and then, about the usual black people or

Hispanic people, using their slang names. My

father used to call blacks (baffling to me)

'moulinyans' or something I never got, which

I later found out meant eggplants (?) and

referred to the color. However, I also found

out that it was a sometime-slang for Italians as

well, coloring too. Baffling, so I never did get

to the bottom of that one. I had heard of the

Moulin Rouge yes, but that was different. I'd

also heard of the Rue Morgue. In fact, I never

liked name-calling, by whatever means and for

whatever purpose. It was annoying, picking

people out people for something and then

needling them with some crack name. Just

tedious. And anyway, my father could most

probably, by those terms, have been called

a Guinea Papist. He'd have killed on that one.

I was just plopped down into the middle of

this : felled trees, run-down sheds, a dog house,

a driveway, some bicycles. It all bore no real

relation to Bayonne, or the waterfront, but  -

being a kid  -  it didn't matter to me and I was

always ready to pick up from some imaginary 

point zero and just start anew. Which I had to 

do, and did. None of the lines really connected.

It was all unconnected wires, everywhere.

- 

Maybe there were echoes, but that was about it.

Avenel had existed before my arrival, and it 

probably had stories. None of which I'd ever

heard. When you get to someplace where 

everyone is new, or newly arrived, there's 

not much to delve into. We never delved into

the life-stories or the pasts of the older Avenel

people, families who'd bee here a while. I can

remember my wife's family telling about the

people directly across the street from them, in

1947, when all the new houses were just built 

and my wife's family arrived, how those older

people rued all the new housing and activity. 

For twenty years or so, their house had been 

alone, nestled in a tree'd in section of woods,

and they'd been alone  - until one day, they 

said, they awoke and the woods were all 

coming down around them. And then

there was, suddenly, curbs and roadways, 

houses and people. Families and kids. That

had to hurt. They left soon after. Also, 

among the first residents, down some just 

a bit, on Dartmouth, were a group of Scots

people. The story I got anyway  -  they'd

bough 4 or 5 houses in  a row, whoever 

they were, and thereby made a small sort 

of Scotch Village or something right there. 

It did eventually all scatter, and they moved 

away, but the story and the circumstance 

lingered. I always liked to picture it. It's all

pretty funny, because no matter how any of it

looks now, to those living in it at the time, that 

was all the cutting edge of modernity. All those

car fins and TV antennas, and new driveways

and 'super' markets and all the rest; when it

just comes at you, you accept it. It only all

looks funny in retrospect, when people  -  

others, living then in their own onrush of 

'modernity', begin chuckling at and making 

fun of what went before them. As if they knew

any better. I guess that's what nostalgia, and

kitsch, and 'retro', are all about. So, by moving

to Avenel, in essence, my parents were simply

moving into the future  -  having made their 

own decision, whether consciously or through 

some weird unknown urges, to stake out some 

new land for a new continuation of time. Ah yes,

and then there's me : in Scripture, it's said that

'God calls people who are uniquely unsuited for

the task that he sets them to.' I never quite knew

what they meant, but they used it on us all the 

time at the seminary too  -  calling it, quaintly,

'vocation.' A calling, an interior urge, set to by

this quirky 'God' fellow, to which you had to

answer  -  deliberate a little, then, okay, but you

were sort of considered bound to say 'yes'. Or

get out of Dodge, and quickly. For me, it was 

more like fulfilling a duty to the world, whatever 

I may have seen it as, or seen the world as, for 

that matter. The vocation part of it, even here 

in faraway Avenel, pressed hard. I sensed I 

had been plunked there for a reason, and God 

forbid if it became a reason I never found.

Many are called, but few are frozen. That 

was probably more like it.

-

So I walked around, I played with friends, I

found ways of making things matter. At one 

point, about age 11, I sent to the F.B.I., in far-

off Washington D.C., where I'd actually been 

once. My letter asked for information, career

stuff  -  and I received back this crazy, entire

packet with a cover letter (supposedly) 

addressed to me and signed by J. Edgar Hoover

himself. I was pretty floored -   they actually

took me serious, gave me the time of day, all 

that stuff. It was, what, 1960? Everything was

precious, and filled with possibility and the

expectation of undertaking  -  as in doing, not

the funeral stuff.
-
That was that then. For a long time I just subsisted
on whatever dreams about place and time I could 
come up with. I'd go to bed at night having these
imaginary cowboy fights and shoot-outs, scenes 
where I somehow always wound up managing to
'best' some other force of bullies or scoundrels, 
thieves or crooks. Far too weird to retell or 
understand, I never knew what or how I'd 
gotten so absorbed in this sort of stuff : TV, 
shoot 'em up westerns, whatever. It was way too  
easy to be 'hero' in your own adventure, and behind  
all that I knew that somewhere in the experience of 
living, there really were punches in the face, failures, 
mistakes, and losses to come. It could never be only 
victorious triumph and rightness. No one could tell  
me different. So I retreated. What does a kid retreat 
too? Toys and trinkets in cereal boxes. That was a really 
big deal to me at about 9 or 10. It was a grand gimmick, 
and I don't think they do that stuff any more, but there 
was a time when you'd get a toy auto, or some sort of 
figurine, or a catapult, mini pull-toy, anything  -  some 
of it really pretty neat  -  at the bottom, or near the 
bottom, of your cereal. Presupposing that it would 
be the incentive to force kids to get their Moms and 
Dads to buy the product, I guess it worked. I ate a lot 
of cereal, and collected a lot of stuff  - usually, to make 
it even neater, the things were single-wrapped in their 
own little paper sleeves, or packets, or holders. I guess 
they were blown in during packaging, settling some, 
and then being found by the kids as they worked 
through the box. I used to love that stuff. I remember 
really loving the collectible little cars the best. That's 
the sum total of my experience on that count, I guess. 
And it's really some total!