RUDIMENTS, pt. 110
Making Cars
I used to often think about certainty,
the idea of getting things right and
completely secure, before attempting
them, and then I realized what a dead
end that would be. If that had been in
effect universally, not much would ever
have gotten done : certainly no Wright
Brothers, for sure. Using a most simple
example. Back when I lived up that way,
years after NY City, there was a very
cool place, to which I often went. it was,
back then, a quite ruggedly simple 'Glenn
Curtiss Museum' - as I recall, a simple,
converted old red-brick schoolhouse that
had been turned over to story-line, photos,
info-boards, artifacts, and a few aircraft
and racing motorcycles and cars, on the
open floor and/or suspended. Very low-key,
utilitarian, and not glamorous in any way,
which was its draw for me. This would have
been in the later 1970's. As I look at this
same place now, it's all fancied up, has its
own huge, metal-shed type building, all
sorts of Curtiss things, planes, boats, etc.
Probably also all sorts of high-tech apps
and such for self-guided tours and learning
information. I don't know. What I do know -
which is all I really can know - since it's
about myself in all - is that, the way it is
shown now, all these history-pushers and
guides have done is transform all of this
work into the work of 'certainty'. And
thereby completely killed it. Their
hindsight allows them, smugly, to make
their perfect claim now of knowing
everything he did or undertook, AND
the results of all of it too - which is
nothing of the sort of what actually
occurred. Glenn Curtiss was actually
an early speed-demon madman, a pioneer
in the sciences (before they were sciences)
of speed, flight, travel, racing, speed-boating,
building, crashing, getting blown up, and
getting back up too. Hammondsport, New
York had never seen anything like him -
nor had anyone else actually. He tinkered
and spun; he defied both danger and death.
There was never a second of certainty in
his work, or in anything he did. If you
see the current museum, you'd never
get that. The old museum, as a said, just
a make-shift unused space, was chock full
of chancy possibility and risk. First off, it
still generally looked like a workshop, a
place where someone intense and crazy
would have put in some work hours and
gotten some results. The skies around
there - the Finger Lakes - have good
updraft, pleasant flying conditions, and
not so much 'resistant to flight' weathers.
These were, remember, gentler crafts back
ten - lots of wood and spindles, canvas wing
covers, stuff like that. Believe me there was
no certainty - one was, basically, flying
in a pool of gasolines and oils and the always
possible fire or explosion, besides everything
else, including open cockpit. Funny thing
was, in order to break the nerve barrier
for speeding on high, Glenn Curtiss would
first tinker with the barriers of ground-speed.
Motorcycle daredevil, high-speed stunts and
flat-out straight speeds. And watercraft too.
Surely was a different - and better - world.
A man was a man in all departments then,
and if you didn't like that, tough beans.
Now everyone wants complete insurance,
and assurance too - they want heir fanny
patted first, as they're gently told there's
no danger, all the equations work, and the
computer enhancement and simulation
shows no practical obstacle. Until their
stupid ego blows up first.
-
I don't know who runs the Curtiss Museum
now, and I'm sure it's no longer Curtiss family
people, but I'm sure it's staffed by its own
daily parody of wise-acre know-it-alls with
big mouths to match. As for myself, all these
years and experiences later, I still wish for
those days of old, when I could walk like a
slosh-headed drunk through puddles of
oils and fuels, and slabs of dropped grease
on old floorways of bad concrete. I have
places in my head and heart yet reserved for
those old experiences - the kind of guys who
used to huddle around the Washington Street
fire-barrels in December, 1967 and try to stay
warm, or warm enough not to die anyway.
Drinking from their bottles and lighting
cigarettes with their dirtied and bundled
hands. The tortured old guys who would
talk to me like their own dumb kid, just
awakened by whatever and start spouting
to me of all the things that had brought them
down, or at least to there - which was pretty
much the same thing. If I knew five then I
knew twenty of those old guys. That's where
I still live; in some figment of 'other' that
scientists still haven't figured out.
-
I never did, but some of my friends used to
sell their blood for whatever they got for it,
and I forget exactly how it went - so many
dollars for a pint or something, and you could
only sell so much over a certain period of time.
There were stipulations too - no drugs, the
alcohol stuff, etc., but at this level it was
all almost contraband and no one cared or
checked anything - let alone AIDS and all
that crap, which this pre-dated by at least
10 years. There wasn't a glimmer of that
yet, then. Some guys, a lot of the old maritime
sorts, had tattoos but they were all old, the
tattoos. Not like now, when every third kid's
got forty feet of ink wrapping around their
body and they're insistent to always have
it showing - weird shirts then, with
cut-off holes and peek-a-boo spots, so
as to see some stupid color-patch or flower
of female Goth symbol or whatever. And
it gets worse when they're unclothed, but
never-mind. And that goes for guys too.
I always used to say, at the bars, that I
had a nice tattoo on a 'certain' part of
myself that 'first it says 'Tiny', and then,
in a bit it says 'Ticonderoga New York.'
Always good for a har-har. Back to
selling blood, I don't remember what
they got for it but it was enough for
something.
-
As I started out saying, if I'd boxed myself
into a corner tightly enough to be worried
about the expectations and the outcome
of everything I did, I would probably have
ended up doing nothing. You just can't worry
like that, and I never did. You couldn't
much tell that about me until later, when
I actually, near to like age 19, get a license
and a car. Before that I'd just never cared;
city stuff made it all unnecessary mostly
anyway. Most kids weren't like that; they'd
start dreaming of and going to sleep with
a car when they were 15 or so. All it ever
ended up was for something they could
drive to the mall with or parade around
town with to show off and or pick any
Mable or Matilda who'd jump in. I
never went through any of that stuff.
It was all too much like a kiddie movie
or something for me to deal with. I
remember one time, bring back at
home for something, and a friend
coming by with his car, wanting for
me to drive with him. I figured, sure,
cool. What a bust, he ended up (big
afternoon for him) taking me to
Two Guys ( a chain store with an
Automotive Dept.), to buy new
floor mats for that very car, and
then over to a friend's house in
Hopelawn, to install them. It
dawned on me that this whole
'car' idea had just engulfed the
entire daytime life of three people.
Huh? heck with that; I could'a
been walking somewhere cool.
Could anyone ever imagine Glenn
Curtiss going out for floor mats and
coming home with hamburgers too.
I'm pretty CERTAIN not.
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