9910. RUDIMENTS, pt. 64

RUDIMENTS, pt. 64

Making Cars

I never regretted much, or at least

I thought I never regretted much, but

it's hard to say, really. Such stuff was

never the sort of thing I got stuck on.

What difference would it make anyway?

I'd gone from point A to point whatever

it was, far off. The entire jumble of my

own first 16 years had turned out to be

a costly (to me) bunch of individual

moments, deduced as one long skid

into a good-bye that never had really

happened. I'm glad for that, though,

amidst my 'regrets' (supposed) I

sometimes wasn't that regretful at

all. What else was to be expected

(of me)? Could anyone else, I used

to wonder, understand my words,

what it was like to be me  -  brought

back from the near dead of getting

trashed (and thrashed) by a train,

spending way too much in time

seeing the world from the wrong

side of a hospital wall? You know

what you see there? Nothing but

duty, illness, and routine. Who wants

that? As a 9 year old or whatever I

was, certainly not me. I found that

entire spectacle blessedly boring.

And it didn't reinforce my faith in

anything of this world any. But what

it teaches you is to shut up about it,

no one wants to hear you. So, I went

mum with my own private and

personal knowledge of that had

happened to me. Nobody ever

believed me, and that was OK. I

can remember, from the 4th floor

corner window of whichever corner

it was in then Perth Amboy General

Hospital, looking out, later, when I

was able, and seeing the street down

below, watching the cars come and

park, and people, from four floors

up, walking about. I had two or three

neighbor people from my home-street

who'd often come to visit  -  a solidarity

thing, friendship. Kaisens. Yacullos.

I'd gotten to be able to recognize their

cars coming in for visiting time, not

that I could really see them as little

figures walking, though I sometimes

did. But I knew their cars and colors,

the Orange and white '55 Olds, and

the pink and cream Chevy Mrs. Yacullo

drove, and her husband's enormous

'58 Buick Special as well. That was,

for a period of time, life for me. Strapped

to a bed, looking, peering, craning down.

To see something, anything. Some sort

of proof of an outside world existing

beyond my horrid perimeter of casts

and traction-straps and wires and

plug-ins into a crank-able up and

down hospital bed which I abhorred.

-

When you're stuck in a hospital, there's

not a dream to be had. They may tell

you there is, but that's just to cover their

own boredom. This was a ward kind of

place, not like the private or semi-private

rooms most people have now. Maybe they

were available then but I sure didn't have

one. This were some 30 people, two long

lines of beds, and it all went on even past

what parts of it I could see. Nurses were

always busy, and scurrying about. Carts

of juices and medicines, and then the

food service stuff, everywhere. I hated

everything about it. There were kids

and grownups, everything was mixed

together. In fact, there were people on

rolling beds in the hallways because

they couldn't fit them all in. Early

days of Middlesex County hospital

over-crowding, before they started

building all those big medical centers

and things like that have now. JFK

Hospital, Robert Wood Johnson, etc,

that entire field has grown leaps and

bounds. Back here, they never had  -

that I knew of  -  people dying of

SEPSIS or, basically what it means,

dying of the germs and bacterias they

get from just being in the hospital,

where they're 'supposed' to be getting

fixed. So much for all that. We had

people and food and junk everywhere

-  screaming people and yelling people,

wailing kids and insane-crazy old-people

babbling about WWI and stuff. If someone

like Mrs. Kaisen had come up to visit and

told me instead that it was now an insane

asylum and I had to be kept there for

some more  -  long  -  time, I'd probably

just have accepted that on the facts of

the matter and the evidence I saw at

hand, figuring she was right. There were, 

at every turn, people smoking (including 

her, on these visits). Try that today, and 

they'll hang you out the window.

-

I never knew much about the hospital ward 

deal, but I guess it was part economics  -  

meaning I'd guess my parents couldn't pay 

for more. I don't know, but it sure was 

an education too. Think of it, I mean not 

at first, but after a while as I was sort of 

'back' from death and fully aware. I'd see 

all this crud going on, people coming and

people going. It was like a graduation or 

something when someone left. I never saw

death, but every so often there'd be an empty

bed you couldn't figure for. Curious, but

no one ever talked about that, leastways not

to a kid. After a long period, with crutches 

and stuff, I could actually get around, and was

allowed pretty much a free range up and

down the whole gigantic room. I'd see people,

I'd go off in both directions, all the way down

to the end and back up. See different people

in their weird beds, or weird people in their 
different beds. Sometimes I'd even get

out to a hallway, and see all the backed up

people awaiting beds of their own. A few 

things still stand out  -  remember, I was

only 9. I'd occasionally see, in the hallway

anyway, people battered up (lots of primitive

car crashes back then), faces and heads all 

bruised or wrapped, and every so often,

astoundingly to me, and I still don't know

what it was about, there'd be someone with

a slab of raw meat, like a steak or flank-chop,

strapped in place over an eye or a forehead.

I never figured that out; maybe it was some

raw-meat, protein cure underway. But I 

saw it, and have never heard a thing about

it. And another thing was, in later life, how

I'd sometimes see a war movie or the like,

and there'd be endless wounded and ailing 

soldiers, in all sorts of field hospital or 

military hospital disarray, arms blown off, 

limbs missing, heads all slathered in gauze, 

all these sad soldier-types commiserating 

with each other's woes and sorrows. The

shell-shocked screamers still in horror, and

the frozen, shapeless dazed and confused too.

That stuff always reminded me of this strange,

weird, confusing hospital ward of endless

plaints and sorrows. Every so often there'd

be some motley priest or religious person

parading around, stopping at beds, holding

heads while they prayed, doing rosaries and

holy water and all that. Especially women, in

the beds, they'd be all swooning and emotional

over this that Father Whovever or some version

of Parson Weems or even Rabbi Schmucker.

The religion stuff got played up pretty big,

but I could see why; yeah, for sure.