255. DOWN WITH THE SHIP
I could never make myself
care too much about what
I'd left behind. It just never
held me that much, the
whole 'Avenel' thing. I
could hardly ever even
think of it as a place.
Hard to even explain
what it was - I never
knew. How could you
find 'identity' in a place
that was known by it's
paucity? All those silly
little places around, all
they did was go into
another something
called 'Woodbridge'
without first really
having a place for
themselves. Port
Reading, Sewaren,
Fords, Colonia. Each
was just a stupid
nothing, more like a
design on some real
estate or business map,
of places that were
created after what was
already there had been
chopped and destroyed.
Surplus land, from the
junkheap of time, now
re-purposed for lustful,
returning, soldiers. Just
because a place has a
bunch of streets and
some tick-tack houses
everywhere, that doesn't
make it anything. It was
defined, any one of them,
each of the towns that
went into the greater
make-up of municipal
'Woodbridge,' by the
absence of itself. They
just needed a place - one
central address and location -
for all the corruption and
pay-offs to get to. Even
Woodbridge - for all the
torch-lit parade and heroes
stuff - was a joke cast
back upon itself. Jardot's -
pronounced, by the way
as Jar-Doe's - was about
as typical of anything else,
except maybe the Avenel
VFW Hall, which was taking,
during those years, about
10,000 years to get built,
one cinder-block a year,
for some reason. (I think
it was the loss-leader for
their 'laundering' of
construction money).
The energy quotient for
doing anything, in Avenel,
just wasn't there. And when
it finally was, it just made
everything worse. I used to
think that if Brigitte Bardot
(big French babe-starlet,
then) had married that
Bobby Jardot guy, she
could have been Brigitte
Bardot-Jardot, really
throwing a wrench
into the works, locally.
But at least it would
have cleared up the
pronunciation for
people. I mean, really,
how could you take any
pride in places and
supposed 'towns' that
just weren't really that
at all? Woodbridge
had this supposed
1952 sea captain
'War Hero,' Henrik
Carlsen, who refused
to abandon ship, and
stayed to the very end,
finally being rescued,
with injuries. They
made him out to be
a big ticker-tape kind
of returning hero,
parades and all. He
died at age 72, later.
Turned out the entire
story was bogus and
a cover-up, and yet
people still to this
day believe it and
take all that local
honor stuff to heart.
The ship was an old
junker, left over from
WWII and converted
to cargo-freighter use
by some Hamburg
shipping line, which
is where Carlsen gets
involved as a merchant
captain. (You can look
all this up, one of those
'local Woodbridge man
makes good' stories).
The 'Flying Enterprise,'
as the cargo ship had
been re-named, was
carrying a load of peat
moss, 12 Volkswagen
cars, a couple hundred
typewriters, and a lot
of other basic,
commercial freight.
But, at the same time,
and secretly (which is
why Carlsen fought not
to lose the ship and its
cargo), sub-contracted to
the Atomic Energy
Commission and all
that CIA and Military
USA secret stuff, it
carried a huge load
of (secretly) zirconium;
which was necessary for
atomic use - bombs and
the rest - and was difficult
to get, and quite valuable,
and hush-hush too. It was
important stuff, and he'd
been well-briefed of the
'importance' of secret
and safe transit on his,
essentially outdated and
substandard, old tub of
a ship. It really wasn't
up to the task of the
payload, but it was
so bad it was
inconspicuous too.
Anyway, the welds
broke, the ship took
on water, and went
down, while Carlsen,
in deep shit at this
point, tried everything
short of magic not to
lose the load. So,
paralyzed by fearful
inaction, he 'stayed'
with the ship, until
it was lost. He was
saved, and the
cover-story had
him a hero - for
trying to save a
tubful of consumer
junk, in the course
of his stupid job.
That was the reality.
In Woodbridge, all
up and down Main
Street, he somehow
was converted into
some patriotic
super-hero valiantly
serving to sustain
the great glory of
his country. Yeah,
well, met me at
Jardot's and we'll
talk. P.S. Bring
Brigitte.
-
You can't make this
stuff up, and at least
it would have been
a good yarn, had I
ever had to defend
my 'home-town' to
any NYC native (of
which there were,
let's say, a lot). No
one ever asked, in
fact, all this 'where
you from?' stuff ever
did was perplex them.
The useless cover story
in their heads was of
New Jersey as a
patented dung-heap
of open-flame refineries,
slaughterhouses, murderers,
mobsters, and pig-farms
in the Meadows, all the
way down to Elizabeth,
where the oil-storage-tankers
took over, until you, maybe,
got to the Jersey shore,
where it all started again
until you got to old Atlantic
City. Of course, that
assumption was all
wrong too, but what
the hell did any of them
care? At some point, it
seems, it always turns
out that someone
somewhere is the
butt of someone
else's and somewhere
else's joke at their
expense. 'Raise High
the Roofbeams, Carpenter'
- as J. D. Salinger put it.
-
New York City, by contrast,
was shoulder deep in history
and legacy and place and charm
and intrigue. A person could be
free, free to learn, and bust out,
and not give a damn about the
usual niceties that racked
everyone else up in all those
outlying stupid-ass places all
over the map. It was like
being in a tuxedo for a month,
eating in it, sleeping in one,
and telling yourself it was cool,
when it wasn't at all. As soon
as I got to NYC, penniless as
I was, that old tuxedo went right
in to the very first trash-can
I saw, and good-bye to all that.
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