RUDIMENTS, pt. 68
Making Cars
I never believed in straight lines. In
order to get myself to where I was, it
was always a crooked line, arc'd wavering,
almost fluid, that I'd followed. I'd always
figured life to be organic, and nothing
organic ever grows straight.
-
I'm not sure what anyone else is about
at age 23, 24, whatever, but I knew that
from my perspective the world which I'd
experienced up until then, and was about
to continue to experience, was like no
one else's. My participation had to be
the metaphorical equivalent of being in
a vast, ten-ring circus in which I was,
(at all-at-once time sequences), the
ring-master, the lion-tamer, the high-wire
act, the freak, and the clown. And the
ticket-taker and clean-up man too. This
far out in the country, most of the other
definitions of things were gone. I knew
little of what to say, or do; and it was all
very odd. The ladies to begin with, these
farm wives and all, they were very strange
- all with welcoming faces and a smile but
at the same time the most disturbingly
judgmental sort I'd ever seen. I didn't wish
to be on anyone's bad side, but it was,
I soon saw, out of my control. It all
went by appearances, by what they
perceived of how you looked. I tried to
fit in, got myself all shaven and shorn
immediately. The look I have in the few
photos of those days is the look of a
twelve-year old boy. Not a good look
for me at all, but smilingly or not I
did it. It was all like undergoing major
surgery to fit some, as yet, still unknown
role. Nor did I know who in the heck I
was doing it for.
-
One thing that really irked me, right off (it
did seem that I was always, immediately,
regretting things, mainly because they got
fouled up in about two seconds after I got
rolling - like that stupid pole-lamp lighting
episode in the previous chapter), was that
after all I'd just gone through in the preceding
years, all that culture-ruckus, NYCity stuff,
out here any achievements made then were
immediately dissolved. It was like going in
a backwards direction some 20 years in an
instant. These people were hard and fixed and
frozen in their set ways, and forms of thought
and thinking. It was right away back to all that
old crap - how you look, the hair issue again,
the clothing, the sincerity of dour farm-outlook
stuff. I guess all these little women were once
virginal, sweet pickings for their menfolk around,
but you'd never know it. They were all as sour
as sour milk. I guess, maybe, there were one
or two free spirits among them, but I never
found any Isadora Duncan in that herd. There
was one woman I can recall who got herself
ostracized but good for some crazy remark
at a local Baptist church (the only one they
had around there) morning breakfast or lunch.
There was a tray of cruellers and things
being passed around, and she'd selected the
largest one, saying something like, 'Umm, long
and hard, just the way I like them.' It was all
it took to outrage a few of the other ladies, they
all had a big fit, and I was late told later all
communication with this woman had ceased.
By the other ladies, I mean - I don't know
about the menfolk, most of whom, in the
re-telling, thought it was the funniest story
they had. So, you can draw your own conclusions,
but even those stuffy and easily-offended ladies,
I figured, must have had that on their mind
anyway to be so set to think like that in an
instant. A while later, once my wife got
settled in and started actually getting friendly
and mingling with these ladies, all that worry
kind of dissipated, and all that was over. Among
the men, I do have to admit, none of the talk
or wise-cracking was ever much sexual in any
way; everyone just always went hard at their
tasks and chores. We were always working
on something, it seemed, a tractor or a set of
plow-blades or a spreader or something;
wrenches, chisels, all that stuff.
-
This little church I mentioned was the
representation for religion around there. It
was a small, white, wood-frame structure,
almost a shack, but grander. It had a 'Ladies
Aid Society,' to which my wife was quickly
enjoined, and they often made foods and
soups and things for outlying people and
families, most often in need. There were
socials and feedings, prayer-meets and
missions. It was all so small-key that it
was like living-room stuff, really. But
these local folk thrived on it. One or two
really big and nasty snowstorms, they
all mobilized up with snowmobiles and
tractors and all that and did manage the
bringing of food and things to many
of the outlying and really poor trailer
people in the outlying hills. Snowed-in
kids, weak-kneed Fathers and Moms too.
It was a real mercy-mission sort of thing,
and that's what struck me right off about
the entire undertaking - the self-initiative
of a group of people, nobody having much
anyway - pulling together like that for
others. That was the foundation of operation,
and tagging the religion thing onto it, in
actuality, got them the use of the big kitchen
and stove and all, but the dogmatic end
of it was all forgotten. It wasn't at all like
the Catholic Church stuff I'd known back
at home, where everything was first ladled
through the thick groggery of all that proper
'religion' stuff. Out here that all fell away;
it was simply the assumptive fact that
'God' was here good enough, and that was
that - what counted was getting the
mercy-mission stuff done. Thanks and
prayer can come later. The local preacher
guy attached to all this wasn't much of
an anything anyway - certainly not
authoritative or magisterial; just a
small-framed, old, part-time farmer with
a felicity for rattling off some prayers
and no compunction about finding a
sermon in a daffodil, a fly, or a frog, if
need be. Everything was childish,
complete, and simple. As base a
religion-format as you'd find. But
no one ever starved or got frozen to
death. He went as Rev. Wallace McKnight.
To me he looked like nothing more than that
'Wizard' guy behind the curtain in that old
Wizard of Oz movie. A little, roundish guy.
When found out, not much of anything at all.
He'd drive around from farm to farm in his
little black Ford, visiting the sick and the old,
praying alongside the kin and family of someone
dying. He'd do outlandish things too - blessing
a new tractor or barn; I'd even seen him attend
to a dying cow, and then console the farm family
losing that cow. A million-to-one, this guy and
this God. All bets down, all cards on the table.
Sometimes I used to think, out there, the only
thing long and hard, ever, was everyday life.
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