RUDIMENTS, pt. 78
Making Cars
I've always liked impending storms,
anything to add some turmoil to otherwise
complacent times : the darkening sky, the
low gray, the manner in which people
hunker down to withstand what become,
at base, their own imaginings and the
fantasies of what they are experiencing.
I don't mean to be callous, but most of it
is, 95% of the time, a crock. I remember
when Hurricane Agnes ripped through the
valleys of the Susquehanna and the Chemung
Rivers. We lived in Pennsylvania then, but
were unable to return home. Elmira was
inundated and evacuated, some 10 or 12
feet of water, destruction and reconstruction
for over a year. My job had gotten wiped out,
(Whitehall Printing) and it wasn't until nearly
a year later that they were able to re-hire me.
Everyone was still around, the old network
of people eventually all re-grouped. All my
good-old-boy work buddies got back to their
Tuesday night after-hours showings of porno
films projected onto the big, white concrete
walls of the print-shop. Myself, I never went,
because of the mileage involved still living
in Pennsylvania, but the cool, big discovery
for them, endlessly retold, and totally funny
to me, was how they discovered that by
pulling the film projector back, farther and
farther from the wall, they could focus and
enlarge the image, way big. I used to call it
'the two-foot dick that devoured Elmira' film
night. The other thing was, after the flood,
all these guys suddenly had beautiful, top
of the line, brand-new pickups, with names
and decals and things on the sides (factory
graphics) - Chevy 'Colorado' - different
names, things I'd never heard of. Hardship
was good to those boys.
-
During that flood time, we got chucked into
some weird Red Cross station in the field
somewhere out by Sayre or Waverly. They
had cots and folding chairs, games and junk
for kids to pass the time (all pre-computer,
this, and pre-phone too), food stations, all
sorts of things to drink. Basically it was a
place you had to wait because no one could
get back across the river anyway. I used to
wonder if they changed the name of Big
Pond, for that year, to, maybe, Bigger Pond.
The river(s) did go down, over 4 or 5 days,
but the places hit were all disasters. Bridges
out everywhere, over the rivers. Hardship
and destruction too. Elmira city, both sides,
north and south, were decimated. I never
thought they'd come back, but they did. A
lot of differences when it was all finished
again : the 'new' architecture stuff was all
cheap and bogus, like they had taste right
up their ass when it came to aesthetics.
The whole place just went for 'cheap' and
everything ended up butt-ugly. But, no one
knowing much of the difference, it was new,
so 'it was good.' Sad case. There was a
point, in the real flow and height of the
storm, when coffins and things were
floating down the streets. Some local
graveyard had gotten really spattered, and
the wet ground, having turned to an ugly,
swirling lake, just started letting loose with
coffins floating up and sliding away. It was
the talk of the recovering town for a few
good years. I don't know what they ended
up doing; I guess just catching all the escapees
and re-burying them. There was a really nice
Civil War cemetery there - monuments and
obelisks and some great-looking graves and
battle memorials. It was out in a field behind
a Sears store and parking lot. Sears never
did come back as Sears, though the cemetery
returned to some semblance of its old self.
-
I was saying I like the impending change of
an up-and-coming storm, yes, but with Agnes,
oblivious as I was to most things then anyway,
I never thought of it being more than maybe a
two-day rain. They didn't have all the weather
junk they have now - coded maps, storm tracks,
obligatory Armageddon stories as they watch
the storm's approach and babble on with made-up
possibilities. And even if they did, it wouldn't have
affected me. It was a June 22 storm and, I figured,
what bad thing could ever happen in beautiful
June? It came in slammin', fierce and hard, and
quite uncharacteristic, historically, for the sort
of weather-hit the areas of NE Pennsylvania and
the Finger Lakes/Chemung Valley and Susquehanna
River usually got. The wind was in from not one
but every direction, in evil swirls, driving a rain
like steel-sleet or nails to break your teeth and
face. The windshield wipers on my '67 Ford
Cortina (English Ford) got lifted up, while
working full-bore too, by the wind and ripped
right off the car. I couldn't see but behind me
and that too was a memory-dream of where I
might have just been. All this went on for some
three days, while the rivers rose and crested
and wiped the place clean. Our Pennsylvania
house and acreage was untouched by damage,
thankfully; just a lot of blown-down and
flattened tall grasses and, of-course, a long
dirt road turned into a river of mud.
-
Right away, I noticed, all usual bigmouths,
including the Geology teacher guy I had later
at Elmira College, started their babbling about
how it was a 'hundred-year storm' that was a
total fluke, a confluence of events so rare and
uncharacteristic that it would never happen
again, or if it did it happened only once in
a hundred years. The entire concept of blowing
something off because you suddenly switch to
geologic time instead of next year, or NOW,
while you're shoveling 8 inches of sticky mud
out of your living room was so senseless as to
make me glad I didn't have a gun handy. There
are still plenty of such head-up-their-ass people
who can start bloviating right off about the
rightness of their long, and settled, and wiser
viewpoint over that of the ordinary stupid
little guy actually experiencing the hardship.
These are the sorts of people, weather-dykes
and TV-camera freaks, who can't even tie
their own ties but can tell you all you need
to know about living, while the camera-light
is on and they're knee-deep in pancake make-up.
Yep, that old storm period was one hell of a
learner for me. Cows. Barns. Feed and hay
and mud. One last item: In Elmira there was
this guy named Vince Murphy, a real goofy
slob kind of guy in an ill-fitting suit. He was
also an Elmira-to-Binghamton route bus
driver, from the local bus station in Elmira,
starting out each day abut 6am, maybe 3 or
4 trips back and forth over the day's shift.
In the evenings, at 6pm, on the local TV
station, WELM I think it was (there was
also a WENY) he was also the weather
guy, forecaster, talker abut the weather.
A real goofball, in, as I said, that constantly
ill-fitting suit. Anyway, in the midst of all this
destructive Hurricane Agnes stuff, he one
day (he was fired the next day) stopped
his broadcast and started going on about
how, while driving his bus that day, the skies
opened up, light streamed down, all was
calm, and he saw Jesus in the sky, telling
him the worst was over, all would be fine
and prosperous once again real soon.
Goodbye Vince! Craziest stuff ever.
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