9867. RUDIMENTS, pt. 52

RUDIMENTS, pt. 52

Making Cars

One time I had a job that afforded me,

as part of the job  -  in fact, a major part

of the job  -  the opportunity a few times

a week, in their car, to race down to

Philadelphia, most usually leaving about

10am, (80 minute trip), and having to arrive 
there for a 3pm deadline in some Appellate 

Court docket room. We used to print and 
produce, for a lot of the courts around, attorney's

briefs (legal nomenclature) for court appeals. An
 attorney's brief, having nothing to do with boxers 
vs. briefs or any of that stupid Clinton underwear 
story stuff. (I found it unbelievable, in 1992, to

see a candidate for President resort to such

foolery in reaching a job he would soon

besmirch anyway). These are legal

summations of argument and review,

usually 30 pages or so, which lay out the

basis for and strategy of, an appeal. They

had to be filed by certain times and dates,

and if they failed, the case was rejected.

So, it was incumbent upon me to be sure

they got there. I had at my use a new Ford

Galaxie company car. I usually sped, the

NJ Turnpike mostly, but not always. I had

my share of pullovers and speeding tickets,

but was told to just take what comes. The guy

who owned the company said he had a deal

worked out with some traffic court guy in

Trenton of getting them squashed. Which I

guess was the case because I never got fines

or points on my license or anything  - I'd just

turn the 8 or 9 tickets I got (over time) each

time I got one and never did I hear more.

The owner guy, Ron, he would boast about

all this stuff  -  calling his connections 'assets'

to his business, and courting his own business

acumen at having attained all these connections.

I also did Trenton and Hackensack (Bergen

County Courthouse) runs too. And lots of

Newark stuff. He even had ways, a few

times, if something important was late, of

getting back-dating and timing done. Which

all ever just proved to me that rules were

made to be broken, that all you needed were

the right connections and some cash, and that

most of the business world was a huge crock

of shit. Newark was always trouble parking  -

he told me to double park anywhere needed,

pop the hood up, take the keys, and do my

business, all the while pretending the car was

broken-down or disabled. Only once or twice

did I have trouble over that stuff. Once I

crashed into some dumb lady who was

swinging wide around a little roundabout

traffic circle thing they have at the rear of the

Newark train station, as you enter Ironbound.

It was no big deal, I talked my ass off to her,

kept the cops away, took her information, etc.,

and promised we'd send her a hundred bucks

for her light and chrome trim and stuff. I guess

they did; I never knew.

-

Back to Philadelphia. I liked it. Even wanted to

move there for awhile. The problem with it was

that all my exposures to New York had colored

for me what 'urban' was supposed to be about.

In Philadelphia, the variants were severe; nothing

muted. It had its great little spots, ethnic and

neighborhood, the place was lovely, the girls

and people really pleasing, but it had this

'Pennsylvania' thing that I just thought was

no good. Even if it was a 'city' it always just

seemed as if the people were waiting for the

crops to come in. No good for me, not a general

judgment. All I'd ever end up seeing was a

person in some oddball clothing who'd not last

3 seconds in New York. That mattered to me,

then. Everyone seemed to have come to

Philadelphia from the western farm areas, and

it just didn't have that grit and hustle, that

sensation of scrounge, that I needed. It had

a section with some really nice art schools

and cultural areas, but they were all Norman

Rockwell and Abie's Irish Rose kind of stuff

compared to the snuff films and glam-art of

NYC. I couldn't bear the lack of dirt and drizzle.

A facile judgment, yes, but that was the sort I

made. Also, things there didn't go up and down

so much like New York  - buildings ripped

apart and replaced in a month. Everything in

Philadelphia was staid and solid. (Or stayed,

and stolid  -  same kind of words. It gets to be

confusing); I'm meaning to say the change was

nothing there like New York's constant change

and churn.

-

I'd blow into  Philly (I never really called it

that), park the car, get to the very cool City Hall

with its big center courtyard, walking proudly

through all these great monuments and statues,

agape, deliver my crap, get the docket stamp,

time receipt, all that junk, and then I'd steal

two hours or so  -  always pretending to be,

later, late because of traffic, in getting back.

I'd just roam. I didn't drink, so I never saw

that side of Philadelphia (wish I had)  -

these were, I've read, the years of the era

when Bukowsky used to hold court at some

4th street bar along Brown street. He'd drink,

as usual to excess, with little money, and hire

himself out to whichever braggart would pay

him five bucks or whatever back then, to go

out in the rear courtyard and fight. Usually

beating Bukowsky up, but he got his money

and could keep drinking. This is the guy

who, somehow, got revered as some great,

big, authentic real American poetry voice.

He still has his fans and legions. Charles

Bukowsky  -  they even made a film about him,

called Barfly. I never could stand the guy, and

his work sucks too. Anybody I ever knew who

liked him was usually a younger kid, but not

a college younger kid, a working-stiff kind,

with tattoos, male or female (usually, but that

was then). No telling for taste. He was pretty

ugly too  -  not that it matters much, but I threw

it in here so I could point out how strange it

is to be writing about how unpleasant looking

someone was and have to juxtapose the two

very opposite words to express it  -  'pretty

ugly'  - I mean how's that go? Usually, you're

either pretty or you're ugly. But not here.

-

My times in Philadelphia were always memorable.

They had street stalls and outdoor book sales that

were a first for me and really cool. There used to

be a lawn around the City Hall and some of it had

gotten covered with dark green, wooden book stalls.

I'd pore over that stuff and be delighted. Most things

were like .25 or .35 cents. One dollar was out of

sight expensive. I found lots of stuff. For years

afterward I always searched for information about

these now-long-gone book stalls. They were a real

treasure and should not go unremarked. I even went

over to the Atheneum place once  - not so far off

and very Philadelphia important and proper  -  but

the 'Historian' they had there claimed no knowledge

of what I was talking about. And he was about 50. To

my 40. I figured I probably knew more than him, and

you really had to be a retard not to know what I was

referencing  -  if Philadelphia history and lore is your

game how the hell couldn't you know? Tuned out,

years later, I was reading the three or so books

written by Patti Smith  -  a regional kind of raucous

female rock star, marginal music and the rest; she

was (is) about my age and came from Deptford, NJ

and used to steal away to Philadelphia on runaway

days and pore over these very bookstalls for hours,

just like me and about the same times too. And she

wrote about it, in one of her books, 'Just Kids,'

maybe, or 'Wool Gatherers,' one of them. I could

have kissed her for the references. Hell, I'd have

married her just to thank her. (She was about on

par with Bukowsky in that department, but so

what. If looks could kill they'd both be champs.

But, then, hey, you ought'a see me). Only still 

later did I find, in a little niche on the inner

porch wall of some building's outside there,

a tiny pen and ink-bowl plaque memorial to 

the 'lost bookstalls of old Philadelphia'. Could 

have knocked me dead  -  all these idiots and

not a real soul among them.

-

I'll be back to all this, because I have things to 

go over. You see, New York just grew, all sorts

of geography, once, and haphazard streets and

alcoves downtown, and then they put that grid

plan overall the new stuff after about 1805, so

the rest of the city's like a right-angle prison.

Everything's got numbers and particular

dimensions, the blocks and all. Philadelphia,

by contrast, was 'planned' one of those L'Infant

designed places, Like DC too. Everything centers

around the City Hall square and plaza and spokes

out to there, to the two rivers. Broad thoroughfares,

pleasing sight lines, the 4 squares in equidistant

measurements out from the center, parks and

fountains, and above it all, Fairmount Park and

Schuylkill Heights and all. It's fairly nice. I'll 

get into it all another time. And Patti Smith

some too  - she was always a little annoying. She

got this dash of fame and then parlayed it into

other things. Like Polaroid, the old camera 

company, she hooked up with them for a

full, free supply of their instant film stuff 

and cameras, and wherever she's gone, for

free she's gotten cameras and film and taken

all these really crummy Polaroid time b/w's,

mostly, of things  -  writers' graves, their old

homes and tables and desks and stuff, and 

gotten raves and made millions  -  and gets

all religious and mighty over it all. Boy,

stuff like that really gets my goat. It's the

almost equivalent of Bukowsky renting 

himself out to go and get beat up in the alley.

So like stupid three-chord rock n' roll junk

that debases music, so too does this debase

art and, for sure, photography.