RUDIMENTS, pt. 98
Making Cars
I was always a walking wounded, of
my own wars, slugging through some
sick 1960's and '70's minefield of all
that assorted mortars of crap I'd been
lobbed and force-fed. Truth wins out.
Sometimes I would get tired of the
same old thing - it still happens. It
seems like each year very many of the
same stupidities get unearthed and
brought back out to the light of day.
By lazy reporters and feature writers,
or whatever. Everything of the mundane
and ordinary world seemed always to
be on replay. For instance, how many
times, approaching Nov. 11, has 'that'
article again been dragged out in which
a mention is made of the atrocious quality
of WWI, (and they're always about 5 wars
behind, too), poison gas, mustard gas,
trench warfare, earthen bunkers, the
dead littering the field, etc.? And of
course the annual and ever-present
(somehow always emblematic) mention
of 'western front' farmers, even today,
working those the now-peaceful fields,
and unearthing the bones of soldiers
killed whose bodies were hurriedly
'buried where they fell.' And,of course,
the 'ghostly armies of the missing, whose
bodies were shredded or vaporized.' And
then they pile on with today's version,
except now they're called 'warriors', and
like some video-game extension they're
supposed to be applauded for their valor
and sacrifice. Yeah, sure. They should
put an end to that crap, once and for all.
And oh dear - all that. Appearances try
to make some lineal peak from the
Civil War to WWI, where it is topped,
and then a slower, downward curve
(of what would we call it, better-quality
warfare?) to WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
Such tarnished crap. On Inman Avenue,
as a young boy, let me say that a
proportion of the fathers there were
wounded veterans - the shrapnel,
the limp, the scar. Nothing much was
ever mentioned, and I don't know
what these guys took to bed with
them each night nor if there terrors
or unfinished arguments with self
underway. The Centopath in London,
of which I saw pictures in about
4th grade, was a memorial built to,
as it says 'The Glorious Dead.' After
WWI, the 'quality' of that glory was
altered. Apparently, no one ever
died so nobly again. War movies were
another joke. There were many of
them made as the 50's went by -
most of them rather sleazy re-tellings
of fanciful versions of stories in the
'Favor-America' light : big brash forceful,
strong men, innocent perhaps but just
as tough, fighting the ridiculously sloppy
and stupid enemy. German or Japanese,
to be belittled and hacked. I couldn't
see this stuff, even then, without gagging,
wondering 'do people really fall for this?'
It combined so many aspects of a ruthless
righteousness, stars, directors, film moguls,
actors and actresses, all walking the same
line. A party line to be sure. Just like the
old phones, everyone babbling at once,
aloud and over one another, about
nothing at all.
-
On Clark Place, around the corner, I
had a friend, in about 1957 or 58, Jan
Teppert, whose house burned. It was a
novel experience, something I'd never
seen before. The next morning, after
the blaze, their stuff was all over the
street, things strewn about, just thrown,
some soggy and wet, with the gaping,
burned wreck of the house and its open,
black holes in the roof. It was quite the
fire. By a year later, the house was rebuilt,
fixed over, changed slightly, and they'd
moved back in. Not much was said, but
it was startling for me to see the quick
destruction, the surprise destruction,
that could take place so quickly. And
then, just as surprising, the way things
all were returned quickly enough, to
order. I don't know where they stayed
or what happened, but Jan Teppert
stayed around during the entire time -
remaining in school. It was only years
later, in 1978 to be exact, in the midst
of a huge snowstorm (by our standards;
10 or 12 inches) that we were tooling
around in my father's big Plymouth Satellite
station wagon (few cars were braving the
roadways), taking someone somewhere,
with my father in the car, that we chanced
on picking up, of all people, this Jan Teppert.
She was trying her best for a walk, about
about three miles, through the storm, to a
nearby pharmacy to pick up medicine
for someone or something, badly needed.
I gave her the ride, and return ride. She
was, at that time, living somewhere else
but not really far off from her old,
burned-house location. There were
few cars out, as I said, and I was slowly
braving new car paths through slightly
drifted streets - really no big deal,
but people panic. We talked, compared
notes while passing the drive-time,
and she's never been heard from
again. So do things pass. It's funny,
too, how those treacherous, strange and
slow car rides trough deep snows, freshly
fallen, with so few about and roads snow-
clogged, remind me of those bombed-out
cities in movie wartime scenes.
Sometimes it all just felt like a drag-line,
with me trying to tell others about
something they just didn't share. This
place. Look around you. This place.
In the mid-50's there were such things
as 'candy stores'. Open arrays of penny
and nickel candies, a soda 'fountain'
where, for a nickel or as dime, you
could get a cherry Coke, or a regular
Coke or even a chocolate soda, from
'fountain service' - which meant,
much like as tavern bar is, there was
a soda guy behind the counter and
he'd make these drinks from syrups
and seltzer water, serve them to you,
seated at the counter, in a glass with
a straw and a napkin. We'd play
stickball for a few hours, get all
sweated up, and then cross the street
at the school, near the ballfields, and
get a fountain soda with a nickel or
dime we had, whether purloined from
Mom's money or not. To us kids it
was living in Heaven. There was a
wall rack of comics and magazines,
a long shelf with all the newspapers
arrayed upon it, the candy displays,
and, towards the side/back, glass
cases of school supplies, pens and
pencils, crayons and erasers, notebooks,
etc. A veritable office supply store as
well; greeting cards, office items,
paper clips, rubber bands. There
were three or four of these places
I knew of, within a fifteen minute
simple walk down one road or another.
The one we frequented the most was the
nearest - Murray and Martha's, as I've
back previously explained somewhere.
-
Over the years now it's become apparent
to me that if one cannot measure
achievements by the things associated
with success and such - big cars, big
and multiple houses, large bank accounts
- then the least to be done is to claim
every little thing as an achievement; in
a way to 'testify' for oneself. I know I do
it. I can't measure anything by the terms
of success that are tangible and normal,
so I can only goad myself along by saying
that I've done well today in the writing
of those fifteen paragraphs, those seven
poems and the answering of some
correspondence and comments and
notes, the paying of a few bills, the
reading and noting of this or that.
It's an incremental system of simple
self-analysis or self-realization,
acknowledging to myself, at least,
that I've done something, no matter
what others would say or think. A way
to continue bucking oneself up. Small,
quiet, details. Incremental, deliberate,
tidy. It's sort of the way I always
noticed the people to whom I looked
up, the literate perfectionists, the
ones whose lives always seemed in
right order - thinkers, writers. These
were never noisy or active people, just
more sideliners, watchers, people
stand-offish who always were just
out of the boundaries of whatever
activity was underway. There were
always a few of them along the way.
Considered loners, not very normal
people, they'd somehow nonetheless
got mixed into the flavor of people
who'd ended up in odd-mix places
like Avenel. More dark city-dwellers
they were, I always thought, the sort
I'd like to be - the 1920's stalwarts,
the dark ones in the shadows, walking
between buildings, stopped over a bit,
holding their hat onto their heads in a
brisk wind between buildings. In my
head, the soundtrack for that would
always be Borodin's 'In the Steppes
of Central Asia.' Wonderful piece.
I may have read, somewhere along
the way, some items about darkness
and doubt - as they reflected the
bleak and barren post-war world,
the angst and the tropes of existentialism
and nihilistic ruination. The world
did seem, in a few ways, to have just
fallen apart without any of the energy
to put itself back together. No one
seemed to have any light ideas;
everything was dark and heavy.
But that was just the way I liked it
- walking at night, seeing things
under the cover of dusk or darkness,
the barren Winter trees everywhere,
the sad girls in their dark, long coats,
the lines of headlights, stumbling
through traffic, along their ways
in the night. I didn't care much
about anything else : bromides and
Gershwins, talk show hosts and
bakeries. How many stories could
I contain within myself? I never
knew, but I tried staying up on
things. As I've said, deliberation
became the game, and the provocation
- I made it my way to stay steady
with what I was doing. One point
at a time, my small notebooks were
filled, my books were read. I never
knew when to stop.
-
As Philip Roth once put it, about
being human, how we know we're
alive, I post this : 'It's getting them
wrong that is living, getting them
wrong and wrong and wrong and then,
on careful reconsideration, getting
them wrong again. That's how we
know we're alive : we're wrong.' I may
have gotten plenty of things wrong
in my time, but I've never regretted
that. The instant an interpretation
comes back to haunt you, it's over.
Borodin's music, that 'Central Asia'
piece, for instance, it's always reminded
me of 1924. Just like that 1924, the
mid-1920's, when my grandmother
was 24, when the world was still dark
and serious, Henry Miller lurking
around lower Manhattan, Hart Crane
running along Bedford and Barrow,
all those people of Chumley's and of
the White Horse, writers, artists,
argumentatives, brooders. I could
close my eyes and be there; envisioning
perfectly all the smoke and smokestacks,
the truck-paths and workbays, the
docks and the wharfside sheds;
sound sense, feel, smell. It was
solitary, lone, sacred, special.
Nothing like now - lurid and
well-lit. All. As Mary Oliver once
said of the forest - 'Nothing in the
forest is charming, and nothing in
the forest is cute.' This old world
within the new world was my forest;
where I tried to dwell.
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