RUDIMENTS, pt. 71
Making Cars
The situation I mentioned earlier about the
small town of Troy, PA being a sanctuary
was true in my context - if you had a
really crummy car, or no 'right' paperwork,
no one ever bothered you as long as you
were just there to get groceries or do
family business and such. The three or
four cops attached to the police station
were just local hacks and never really
cared about much. Nowadays, sanctuary
towns and cities are considered consciously
cool, but this was all accidental and mostly
about simply not caring. You just had to
know your limits - you couldn't just go
joyriding around the little town, making
all sorts of noise and stuff; they'd be then
duty-bound to stop you. Then the problems
would ensue. Nothing was too efficient in that
town, and a pullover and a citation might likely
end up taking you three hours if they decided
you needed an 'interview' over at the stationhouse,
The little police station was, back then, connected
with the local maybe ten-room hospital and
emergency area. It's all different now, larger
and more grand. I remember one time, with a
gash in the top of my head, waiting for a few
hours, holding a towel to my head, and then
being told to wait some more while they found
a town doctor who could make a slot and come
on over, once they opened up. Which was pretty
crazy, I thought, since it meant they had no 'staff,'
I'd guess, yet they called themselves a hospital
and showed an emergency room. I wondered if
they had patients in the rooms and beds, or not.
Pretty crazy. Just a stone's throw over from
that (now gone completely) was the Troy
Hotel - one of the most exemplary, legendary
sleaze-holes I'd ever seen. Actually, that was
where I'd gotten the gash in my head, and where
I waited out the doctor's arrival. (I stayed there on
my visits leading up to the taking of possession
of my 'house'). Back in 1971 or '72, whenever
it was, one of those horrible Winters, a room
was seven bucks a night. Big rooms too. It was
a large, rambling, well-equipped kind of once
Victorian-era America version of a splashy
rooming house. Multi-floored, gigantic and
imposing carpeted staircase, a huge sitting
room, open to the world, except the world
never came. Big, stuffed armchairs, fireplaces,
reception desk, all really good, but rundown as
all get-out; in fact mostly neglected. It had
maybe seen its prime about 1904. The real
'operational' center of the place (forget the
sign-in or 'reception' desk, it was ill-used
and forgotten - unattended too) was the
enormous bar, in the enormous bar-room.
Which was the only place where anything
was really ever happening. All dark wood,
burnished and smoky, untouched in 75 years,
stained and burned, always half-lit, and the
only sound you'd hear (certainly NO television
crap, as in bars today) was the rising and
falling grumble of men about to argue or
disagree, or disagree about even arguing.
At 30 cents a beer, who really cared about
anything? The walls were marked up, in
their dark, oily way with old posters,
hunting charts, shooting schedules, a
few framed photos of prize winning killers
(hunters, I mean, not criminals - I don't
think leastways, though that might have
been a nice clear photo of Jesse James
above the dartboard), and any of the other
stuff that goes with the slow-temperate
operation of a low-life saloon in a dark,
beady town with nothing much happening
or going for it. The biggest festivals of the
year were hunting seasons, and they made
sure it was just about some sort of hunting
season always. There was even a pretty nice
gun cabinet, with glass doors, filled with
rifles, and a rifle rack on the wall behind
the bar too, with a few nice long-guns there.
A slow torrent of nervous violence seemed
always to be lurking, but these guys all had
nerves of steel, even when pressed into the
service of drink, and managed to keep it
all together pretty well : flannel shirts,
those fierce beady eyes, cigarettes
and slander.
-
One other thing - and it was a basic rule
that was flat-out surprising. The place had a
no-women rule. Seriously. They claimed it
was because they were dedicated to the hunters
and their hunting-season clientele. I found out
about it one night when I arrived late, with my
wife and infant in tow. Initially turned away,
I cajoled, and paid extra, for the privilege of
getting them in. In fact, they gave us a floor
of our own. Third floor, with no other lodgers.
The whole place, I know from experience, was
a male paradise, and I'll mention it discreetly,
just to rebut the 'no women' stipulation : A year
or so later, when I had a local job busing people
around - school and stores and things - there
were often one or three very 'happy' ladies I'd
drive to their destination : The Troy Hotel.
-
One of my favorite things, also, was to always
be sure to take a slow and good gander at the
parking lot of that old hotel : it had, constantly,
the coolest vehicles this side of the lunar-rover.
Anything in there that could be stitched together,
masking-taped in place, and throw some sort of
head-lamp illumination as needed, seemed to be
dragged there, and left, always for what seemed
like really long periods of time. They'd, yes,
always eventually leave, and sometimes I'd even
see the rollicking, good-natured driver hop in
start it up and drag off - without a care, sometimes
even without even so much as a look down the road
for anything perhaps oncoming in the near future.
These driver-guys, to me, also always seemed so
tall; I could never figure that out. Drunk and wobbly,
yes, but tall. The cars would be seen going down
the most-often smokey road, sideways-leaning on
their bad suspension, and many-a-time looking
as if they were meaning to be going sideways
rather that straight forward, the alignment and
frame and all being so off. Cars from thirty years
back, or from five years back, all the same.
-
A few years later that place was torn down, the
local bank next to it greatly expanded itself, and
some sort of small, chain lodging place went in its
place too. That kind of stuff is a real shame because
by it we lose all reference to what real-world things
truly were like. You'd be hard-pressed now to try and
explain singular lodgings and situations of this type
to anyone of today's rat-ass tribe of kids and parents
who know nothing except chain-stores, restaurants,
plastic, and sameness everywhere. In fact, just
today I made the mistake of saying aloud, in
response to still another clutch of kids walking
from the high school, along and across the road
to the nearby McDonalds: 'Doesn't anybody go
to a school anymore where they have to freaking
(I didn't say 'freaking') do something, and learn?'
Simple comment. Remind me not to go there again.
Some clown answered me, 'Oh leave them alone I
guess, they're just kids and will grow like anybody
else.' The two of us were outside of a liquor store,
from which he'd just exited, so I let it all go.
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