RUDIMENTS, pt. 141
Making Cars
There was a time at one of my
jobs that I got a turkey each year
at Thanksgiving. I was never
really given the 'option' of taking
the money instead of the turkey,
so I took it and we used to walk it
over, 18-20 pound turkey, whatever,
to the homeless shelter soup kitchen
operation that ran constantly out of
a building down along White Street,
and turn it over to them. I did this for
probably 7 years; they were always
grateful, and I of course wasn't alone
in giving food to them, so it was never
a cause for getting a big-head or
any of that from doing it. It was just
something nice we liked doing. The
people in the place were always all
official over it - I had to sign a
donation-sheet voucher or something,
and they'd always try to push off on me
some form of tax-deduction receipt
or whatever it is. I always demurred,
and passed on the tax sheet; it never
being important to me and certainly
not worth much anyway. Just a another
penny-ante try at deducting something
from a task worth pennies. Don't get
me started on tax people and deduction
slaves. ('Hi, teachers').
-
The worse part of this - or the saddest,
or at least the part I liked least - was
having to pass along the line of homeless
men (I say men because I don't remember
seeing any women) lined up, sometimes
in a long line, hugging the building, to
await the food-distribution, whatever
the evening hours were. It was sometimes
pretty heart-rending : these were some
sad-eyed guys, sorrowful cases, emaciated
looking and sunken, cigarettes and shaky
hands, long dirty coats and trench-coat
type jackets. Some looked ready to cry.
Their big Thanksgiving feast was but a
few days off, and I was bringing them
some meat to eat, but it didn't help.
This wasn't the Bowery - where the
same thing went on - a few blocks
off, but it might as well have been.
Along the Bowery, the larger mission
impulse was often with a religious angle;
you'd first have to listen to a sermonette
or some prayer, before eating. In addition,
along the Bowery, the missions offered
beds and bunks. Horrid stuff really, back
around 1980 and so, but they could be
had, a bed or place to sleep, for maybe
a quarter. The problem with Bowery
lodgings - and this was a legendary
problem - was the constant infiltration
of crime and alcohol, and some drugs
too. But the worst of it all was just the
usual petty crime of theft. Usually while
you slept someone would invariably end
up going through, or just taking, your
belongings, whatever they may be. As
a solution, because of that, each bunk
or sleeping niche had chain link fencing
around it, with a gate for entry - and
over the top too, for people had been
known to simply climb up and over
and do the same thing. So then, adding
to their misery, these guys ended up
sleeping in a fenced-in, open cubicle,
not much different than a dog cage.
It was pretty horrid and hardly worth
a prayer. So, anyway, the people at
this White Street mission didn't have
to deal with that, except they were
outdoors, it was getting cold, and
they were still hungry.
-
I don't know what the human
condition ever ends up offering
us really - when you come right
down to it mostly hardship, sorrow,
and grief, but I always watched these
homeless guys carefully. Some of
them were so regular to their spots
you'd get to recognize them and
know them. Others seemed to
come and go. And there were
some, always, who looked to be
sick and dying. 1980 was an era
different than today : for one thing
the whole communicable disease
and virus immunity stuff, was all
different. I don't know what ailed
these guys before today's diseases,
and for all I know it was the same
illnesses being spread that we get
today, only before names and
awareness. But they looked and
acted differently. More like it
was all a WWII era operation :
those dark and grimy streets,
shaded men in oddball tophats,
cigarettes everywhere, piles of
ratty clothes. Unshaven, dirty,
grunting and not so communicative
people. It's way different now. What
passes often for homeless and beggar
on the street is most obviously, to my
mind, a day-job fake. Many have, on
square, cardboard placards and things,
hand-written sob stories of pathos
and grief, but often so flat-sounding
that you know they're artificial. Sorry.
'Wounded, out-of-work Vet, lost my
house in a fire, kids are sick and wife
has cancer. God Bless, Any help
appreciated, thanks. Gallingly, they
often enough sit there (all day) with
a dog. Or reading a book. With a
phone. And a hundred-eighty-dollar
sneakers. I figure a real Vet could
get at least some sort of help at the
Veteran's agency, without advertising
for it. Some have the exact 'bus-fare'
they need showing, to get 'back to
Indiana before my sick mother dies.'
I'm not going to go on, but you get
the gist - these old guys were real
cases of need and neglect. I, at least,
can tell the difference.
-
Chumps fall for this stuff all the time.
The guys sitting there with nice-enough
looking girlfriends too (always 'Help,
I'm pregnant'), they always get the
coins and dollars. It gets pretty easy,
I guess. I spent my share, in my
initial, Summer '67, nights on the
street, but I'd have never thought
to ask others for something, let alone
with a concocted, malarkey-based
story. There was a certain coterie
of hippie-loser types (myself included)
who more easily took to just stealing
what was needed, be it an apple, a
banana, or a sandwich or someone's
leftover food, from a restaurant or
whatever. It wasn't that hard.
-
Living low, it's real easy to learn crime,
and in those lower echelon spots of
New York City, crime was everywhere.
Not just food crime or petty dollars and
quarters stuff. There were ways to get
into the open-docks operations, if you
were skilled or lucky, or had the right
'connection'. You could get two dozen
boxes of shoes, say, without any knowledge
of what they were or what was in them as
far as sizes or styles, and put them out
on the sidewalk the next day for three
bucks a pair, and maybe walk away
with eighty dollars for nothing. No one
ever tracked anything, security was
lax everywhere, and all those sloppy
truck bays and sidings were leaky as
a sieve. Things don't 'fall off the truck'
for no reason. Hats, caps, baseball
gloves, sewing kits radios, socks and
slippers, the list went on. In 1967 to,
America was suddenly pretty flush,
learning to be rich about itself - youth
culture becoming a market of it own,
fashion in turmoil, things loosening
up. No one gave a thought to where
any of this stuff they lived with came
from or were generated out of. In the
same way you don't know where your
milk comes from or how it gets to be
where it is, so in the same way everyone
then was oblivious to things. They just,
'wanted,' and that was that.
-
It was a funny time to be, anything.
Where I was, in the basement parts of
the Studio School, what amounted to
a nice studio sort of apartment lodging
for me, others would come down, just
to sit around or look at stuff, or eve eat.
There was, or I had, there, a record player.
It's difficult to imagine now what that
was like - something new would come
out, someone would have gotten it, or
gone out and bought it, Beatles, Dylan,
Airplane, Donovan, Blind Faith - all
probably a hundred other music things
of the 'youth' moment, and people would
just sit around listening. A regular, open-
invite, listening party. It was all informal,
but, too, held its own small sense of
importance as well. 'Music,' junk music
I mean, was important than, as a cultural
guideline, a thread maybe, always changing
its twist, as people followed it. It and was
something to see, even in a place like that,
where ostensibly, all that was to be cared
about was the high-minded stuff of
Morton Feldman and John Cage types.
No comments:
Post a Comment