RUDIMENTS, pt. 128
Making Cars
The day Nikita Krushchev was 'removed'
from office, in the Soviet Union, and
replaced with what was supposed to
be a dual-premiership of Kosygin and
Brezhnev (that occurred but didn't last
that long, and Kosygin eventually just
fell away from the scene. Brezhnev
ruled for a long time, almost both
ineffectively an invisibly), I was
standing outside of the sports-field
doorways at the seminary. Somehow
that little tidbit of news had come to
me; it was about 2pm, a clear, chilled
afternoon (Oct. 15, 1964), and I don't
really know why it even mattered, except
that at the time one of the things I was
doing, in order to keep my sanity, was
getting a subscription to the Washington
DC 'National Observer,' which was a
liberal weekly sent to me at the seminary,
newspaper format, 28 or 30 pages. No
one knew what it was, nor what to make
of it, it never got stopped at the mail-
censorship stage, and I always had it
around. Literary, movie, theater, art,
commentary, and politics - it was all
I had to latch onto. There was only so
much of the saints and the religious
iconography stuff I could take, and if
I had anymore of that stuffed into me
I swore I'd soon develop stigmata.
So, perhaps that's where this haughty
interest in Soviet and political matters
was generated. There were not very
many ample pickings of diversionary
intellectual matter there, in the seminary,
and I grabbed what I could. It was often
pretty dismal in an often '1960' collegiate
way. I can remember once or twice, a
group of what we called 'upperclassmen'
a year or two ahead of me, one time, 5
or 6 of them sitting around one of the
dining area tables - what we had to
refer to as the 'refectory' - and in a
showy, loud way they were going on
about 'parallel lines' and curved space
and how they could prove that there
was no such thing as parallel lines
that would never, eventually, touch
each other (intersect, sorry), because
the 'curvature' of space through gravity
would eventually have the two lines, at
whatever great distance, bend into each
other. OK, that was fine, I thought to myself,
these haughty idiots, talking their strange
theory while believing in dogma too, but -
I also thought - aren't they missing
something? (And weren't they supposed
to be like getting the Pope's permission to
think about this stuff, or was that just
Galileo?). If their two lines were bending
like that, why in the world (or out of it)
would they bend into each other? Wouldn't
that mean the bend was in two different
directions? Or was their point that the
immense distances would eventually
just merge everything into everything else
anyway, and prove life to be just this big
messy illusion? I was ready for combat
on this stuff, but these fools in their
chino-leisure pants just sat around
panting all this stuff. And anyway,
why weren't they just talking about
girls, like any normal 17 year old? What
was going on and what was I doing in
the middle of it all? The skags of relativity
were here, sitting about, pontificating (good
pun) about the state of the universe, when
their church and God was still stuck in
some medieval rut about transubstantiation
and water and wine and bread. Yeah man.
The Jews had unleavened bread too, but
at least they never called it God. They
ate manna from Heaven, which manna
had fallen each night just for them in
the morning. Good God! (nice pun).
Talk about room service and brunch
combined! Ah, yes. I soon realized
I was, true, quite crazy.
-
Krushchev was pretty cool. At least I
always liked the fat little bugger. When
he took his shoe off and started pounding
the table at the UN, screaming his 'we
will bury you!' rant, no one knew what
to make of him. The newspapers then
all quickly picked it up and started
explaining it away - 'Oh, it's nothing,
it's an old Ukrainian curse meaning
'we will outproduce you!' - yeah, sure.
I remember reading a little essay by
Saul Bellow about this visit, somewhere.
In it, he's walking along (Bellow) on
Third Avenue and the fleet of Russian
Volga limos drives out, Krushchev's
entourage, and the garage attendant says
to Bellow - 'It's him, Krushchev, dat nut!'.
That was 1961, and Krushchev had
self-invited himself into the NY-UN
confab, the usual September opening,
when all the bigwigs show up as they
will, each September, and make their
speeches - proud, nationalistic peacocks,
all. 'Krushchev was a self-invited visitor.
He did not arrive with our blessings, and
he did not have our love, but that didn't
seem to matter greatly to him.' He caught
all of 'our' attention, walking about the
streets, giving interviews and press-
conferences right out on those streets,
trading insults, even singing. He was
photographed giving a pantomime
uppercut to an imagined assassin. He
played to the crowd and luxuriated in
the attention. At the UN, he roared with
anger. Stalin died, Malenkov 'retired!',
and there was Krushchev, and then he
too was gone. I loved the 1964 phrase -
'retired to his dacha.'
-
Long after the seminary, about 1972 or
1973, Brezhnev too had taken some sort
of shape. At first he too was a complete
blob of nothing. I again watched in
fascination. He had this thing going
with Nixon - each time they met, at
a conference, summit meeting, any
sort of international top-level event,
they'd exchange 'gifts'. Personal
stuff, even though they were supposed
to be State gifts, and not personal
possessions. Each time Nixon saw him,
Brezhnev was presented with a car.
Not just any car, I mean one of
America's best, new, top of the line
autos. Brezhnev, a car fancier, it turned
out revered and treasured each, and
kept a collector's stable of all these
grand, American cars from like 1968
through the period to 1974. It was
pretty amazing and I saw a few
photo spreads and even, I think it
was, a '60 Minutes' segment, on CBS,
covering it, and Brezhnev, and the
car collection. I don't know where
they ever ended up, but he too was
long, eventually, gone. It was also
about then, 1974 or so, that I saw the
one UN event, same sort of September
confab, that topped even Krushchev's.
Yasir Arafat, at that time leader of the
PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),
a bona-fide Israeli-fighting anti-Jew
organization, was there to make his
first ever appearance and speech, after
they'd finally gained UN recognition
and representation as 'Observer Status'
members. Israel, and the US, were livid.
The security was intense. Arafat, for
his own safety reasons, instead of using
the streets of NYC for his arrival, comes
in with his cohorts and bodyguards on
the East River, on a swift watercraft,
docks at the UN (unheard of), and comes
in that way - and gives his speech with
a pistol in his belt, along with his PLO
head-dress thing, and the usual desert
clothing. It was absurd and stunning,
together. 'Abstunning', we'll call it.
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