BELOW THE WATER LINE
(pt. 195)
It's been a long slog, yes. A person can
live an entire life somewhere, and not
ever really be sure about that place. That
goes for here too - it's nearly impossible
to uncover all the things that this part of
New Jersey once did, once possessed, once
was a base for. The geography has been
entirely changed. The essential ideas of
'river' and 'transport', even of 'light' and
'dark', no longer hold any relationship
to their original place-meanings. Highways
and trucks and cars and rails have torn
up the entire old geography of the state.
The rivers, once revered, were later just
used to dump in. Today you couldn't
even think of drinking from one, let
alone walking through it. A different
kind of 'highway' has ringed and paved
everything. The riversides have been
taken from us. Any old early settler,
townsman, or Native American
wouldn't know the place.
-
In the same vein, about three miles
from my house, in Metuchen, and
now here in Avenel as well (also
about three miles, give not take), is
the Edison Light Tower. It marks
the spot where the initial Thomas
Edison Laboratory and workshops
were located. Once a small, industrial,
village, of an almost artisanal nature,
with its own train station (later the
Iselin stop, and then later again all
turned into Metropark), this is the
very location from which the
'world of darkness' was turned
into the 'world of light.' Edison
'invented', and later perfected,
the electric light, right here.
Startling info. To mark the spot
now, there's a rather hokey obelisk
topped with a large lightbulb.
Resembling more an alien spacecraft
set to rocket off to the Heavens.
Maybe that entire reference
isn't that far off : obelisks have
always signified intense and
distant energies, the effects of
alien forces, secret knowledge,
connections with the stars. Who
knows - and I don't pretend to -
what forces were pushing Edison
along. The 'Wizard' of Menlo Park.
Indeed. There's a woods there that
I walk often enough, the old grounds
and property of the little work village
- photos about in the little museum they
keep there. All through these woods
once ran, as well, the tracks for Edison's
other Menlo Park endeavor : a small-
gauge electric railway. He had it built
and perfected, tested and tried - tracks
and engines, etc. They've taken it all
away, not a trace left. Oddly enough,
and you can look all of this stuff up,
not needing me to tell you about it, it
was Henry Ford himself who came
here and took everything away, even
the soil, (I always get amazed when I
read how he took the top some-amount
inches of soil away with him) to recreate
the 'Edison Workshop' in his Edison
Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
After he became big and wealthy
and famous, from his industrialized
automotive work (the essence of which
is the cause for all that change and
ruination I mentioned in the opening
here), he built a replica village of all
these early-era workplaces - called
the Dearborn Museum. We lost
everything; everything but the old
photos and the rumored 'historic'
activities. It's all been mythologized
and worked over, for entry fees and
vacation visitors nationwide, as just
another part of the overdone American
myth about itself. In all my school
years, in all my presence in Avenel,
none of this was ever brought up to
me. I don't know why, who to blame,
and the rest. Maybe no one. The 1950's
were just that - round-number, and
middle-century bland times. How anyone
could overlook the underpinnings of
the country, right there in a nearby
backyard, as it were, or at least try to
explain it, is beyond me. My parents
weren't ever much 'book-smart', so
maybe they just didn't really know.
Schools? They were probably all
tongued-tied and stupid with
embarrassment, not knowing how
to explain or even broach the subject
to us kids. Why would they? We were
all just assumed to be willing to propel
it forward, keep it going, grow and
continue it all. Maybe the risk was like
'don't tell them about any of this. My God,
they might oppose it, object, try to stop it.'
That's how advanced the Boards of
Education were (and are, don't kid
yourself, it's even more vile and
wide-ranging today). Thought-control,
mind-control, and kid-control too.
-
It's difficult for me to look backwards
now and tell about all the things that
affected me, growing up. I mean to say,
this was a hell of a place for a kid. As I
said before, it didn't have any sort of
Huck Finn river stuff, but the atmosphere
was not that far off - we had our
adventures, and we all had our Aunt
Polly's and Becky Thatcher's too.
Everybody had their own Tom Sawyer
to deal with. Tom Sawyer was the
biggest pain in the ass I ever ran
across - there was one on every
block. The conniver, the kid who
went through all the procedural
motions, just because you were
supposed to, the one who'd never
take the shortcut, and cut through
the mud-bog. Always had to go
around, walk the right lane and
sidewalk. I read that book -
'Huck Finn', not Tom Sawyer,
which book was a bunch
of crap by comparison - about
10 times. I knew it nearly inside/out.
It was great, up until about chapter
16, when it began getting bogged
down with that Tom Sawyer reappearance
stuff, and all the mistaken identity episode
and then Tom Sawyer himself showing
up and messing so badly with Nigger Jim's
head. From Chapter 16 on, it's like a
different book. And it was, I later found
out - living in Elmira, right where
Twain wrote the ending of the book
after having had it abandoned and
left around for some years. In Elmira
he went back to it and wrote it up for
an ending, but it was somehow turned,
as well, into just a much more ordinary
boy's adventure yarn, to an annoying
degree. Twain was in this 'famous-guy'
condescending phase - telling yarns
more, and writing for little kids more.
it was messy. From Chapter 16 on, the
book reeks of it - however, before that
it fairly well represented for me
innocence vs. experience, and all that
William Blake stuff, but in an American
idiom, so to speak - the wild-child,
unfettered river-orphan setting out,
versus the pansy-assed Tom Sawyer
rules and process and experience kid,
Tom. A real key-jangler jerk. The kind
of kid who would play up to adults when
they were around, and then, once they
weren't, start getting all wise-ass and
smart-alecky about doing 'bad', which
to him, of course, was all wrong. His
bad wasn't even 'bad'. It was just all
second-level sneaky. A real creep.
-
The entry of our world into 'LIGHT' took
place right here too. Our Mr. Edison was a
member of a church in Metuchen, right
there along Rt. 27, before Main Street -
a small, pointed old woodsy village church.
He'd promised for the Christmas Day of
whatever year it was, I can't remember right
now, and am not looking it up, to light up
the street and the church all around there;
the route he'd take to his worship that night.
And he did so - that strip of roadway,
entering Metuchen, was one of the very
first 'illuminated' thoroughfares in the
world, at least for a few nights. I don't
know how long he kept it up, and it was
different then because there were no lines
or power-generating stations. It all had to
be done then and there, so it couldn't have
been too long. Sure beats candles and
lanterns and torch-lights. I guess even the
most jaundiced parishioner thought that.
Little did they know the era they were
about the enter, the strange new world to
be dumped down on their heads, and that
weird little place down the road some,
as well, good old 'off in the future'
Avenel! (and yours truly, Huck).
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