RUDIMENTS, pt. 65
Making Cars
Well you take stock of your life and
what do you get? Whatever you want,
I suppose. That's the fun of such subjectivity.
For myself, I just tried not thinking about
ends, more just the means. I got out of that
hospital thinking I'd be free, and the next
thing I know I'm right back in it all. As a
kid, it's immediately apparent you're at the
mercy of your parents. For as long as it
takes. So much for that. I finally get off
crutches and such, and get to go back to
school, sort of like a normal person, and
what's my mother do? She outfits me in
her version of the hippest, classiest shoes
in the world. 'White bucks,' they were called.
About as inconspicuous as a tumor on the
end of one's nose. Thanks, Ma. And thanks
Pat Boone - some creepy, infectious singer
from like 1958 who sang that year's big-horny
song, 'Love Letters in the Sand,' and was
known for his, yep, you guessed it, white
buck shoes. On stage and talk shows, he
was everywhere and had evidently gotten
deeply into my mother's head. This same
Pat Boone guy later become some sort
of evangelical guy, preaching 'Jesus and
repent' everywhere. Which I thought was
an interesting turnaround. I got back, then,
into school, re-acquainted myself with
that vague reality and was fairly-well
accepted, not so much as a cripple but
more just as an interesting character who'd
been hit by a train, recuperated well-enough,
and came back with white feet. Perhaps.
The very next thing I knew I was in some
on-stage talent contest, playing the piano
on a silly tune called 'Around the World In
Eighty Days,' from a movie of the day, I think
(another Mom influence). I somehow won
what they called first place. It got me a tepid
applause from a mob of grade-schoolers in
a forced assembly, and a paper-crown, like a
dumb-King, with a gold star on it too, that I
had to wear around the remainder of the day,
and I walked home with it on too. I always
figured the entire thing had been set-up as a
pity-prize award, for the poor train-kid with
the white feet. Like one of Jerry Lewis' MDA
Telethon kids. Boy, I already disliked living,
and this made it all the worse.
-
I forgot to mention, while I was in that hospital
stay, my parents (I never knew how) had
contacted and arranged for some TV show to
come visit me, do his little act and stuff for
me, and - of course, attract everyone else
in the ward too. I myself wasn't sure what this
was all about, and wasn't even sure I knew who
this character was, from TV. It wasn't Clarabelle
or Howdy Doody or Buffalo Bob or Captain
Kangaroo or Shari Lewis or that Ding-Dong
Classroom lady. But I went along with it all,
just for something to do. The guy was called
'The Merry Mailman.' He was like every kid's
best friend, uncle or whatever. I forget what
he did now, to tell the truth. It wasn't magic,
nor was it storytelling or anything. I just can't
recall. The guy's name was Ray Heatherton,
and he did later have a sexpot daughter of
sorts who was also famous, in the 60's I guess,
named Joey Heatherton. Not Jane Fonda, but
close enough. He came to visit, and a bunch
of other people got all enthused too. Can't
really remember much else about that.
-
I suppose I can completely understand
anything that anyone ever did. It must
have been pretty scary, for a parent and
other grown-ups and all, to have to deal
with the reality of the mess I was in. Life
or death, for a while, precarious stuff,
non-sensical situation. And then having
to re-integrate into school - me right
back into a solid mass of kids like me
in all other respects except that one I'd
just come out of : that strange, weird
cosmic tunnel of debris I'd just been
squeezed through like in a tube of some
really magical toothpaste. First one
direction, and then the other, plopped
right back out the same end, somehow
of the same tube. Or a different end
of the same (magical-realism) tube.
Or the same end of a different tube, or
wherever all that would go. There were
no words. With all the continued doctor
care, out-patient visits and clinical stuff,
it still remained a pain in the butt for a
long time. And then, just like that, the
legal crap started and I was going back
and forth to Newark to be prepped and
coached by this big, fat Jewish lawyer guy
named (I kid you not) 'Solomon ('Sol')
Wolfman.' Real name, but pronounced more
like Wolfmin than Wolf-Man, which is the
way I preferred. He was a real cigar-chomper
too. Endless preparation for being in the
witness chair, what to say, how to act. Except
I really didn't remember a God-damned thing
about what had transpired - either my brain
had been cleansed or the shock of the instant
blotted out all memory. Either way, I couldn't
have been too much help. Anyway, the day
of the trial that fat jerk never even showed
up, sent some new acolyte lawyer in to plead,
and I was, by that, completely discombobulated,
having never worked with this guy before.
Really threw me off. You might think 'Well,
the truth is the Truth.' But here there really
wasn't any. I remembered nothing at all,
my mother was sappy-useless (she was
the car driver who got me into this mess
going (skidding on ice and snow) right into
the path of this idiot train, which then took
my part of the car away with it on its merry
way down the tracks until it could stop.
My mother's section was back up there at
point of impact, and she was pretty much OK.
A few stitches in her head, and maybe a conk.
So, anyway, she lost the case, being found
'negligent,' by not being in control of her car,
the 'Reading Railroad' at the time was going
broke and bankruptcy loomed, so they pleaded
poverty (believe that!) and I was awarded
$1900 dollars, total, as an 'innocent bystander'
- which is really what they somehow ended up
calling me - and the money was to be held for me
until I was age 21. That's the whole story, delivered
as if by the Merry Mailman himself, in the character
of an Innocent Bystander who 'bought the farm'
but lived. (With that 1900 bucks and interest,
at age 21, I made my down payment on that
distant Pennsylvania farm; and 'He bought the
farm' is what they used to say about dead soldiers,
meaning all that idle chit-chat abut what he was
going to do after the war ('Ahm 'a'gonna go to
Kansas and buy me a farm and live happily, once
ah'm a'done with all this soldierin' business.')...And
then when he gets war-killed, they just say, 'He
bought the farm.')...
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