RUDIMENTS, pt. 144
Making Cars
A writer named Elizabeth
Hardwick once wrote, 'Making
a living is nothing, the great
difficulty is making a difference
- with words.' Would that it were
so easy, yes. She probably lived
in dandelion fields of money;
try saying that when you have
nothing, and see how far your
'words' will get you. I guess I'm
saying (maybe) she was a little
bit wrong, and a little bit right.
I immediately fell into those grubby
pitfalls of having to do something
to make, or get, money. I had
pulled out of New York, coming
away with basically nothing. I'd,
high-tailed, with that nothing, into
the deep-country absolute wilds
of far-Pennsylvania with no one
knowing any more about me than
my own whisper had told to them.
And then after more sojourns and
still with nothing, I sort of sensed
the 'time had come.' I had to do
something. So, and notwithstanding
the wonderful words of Elizabeth
Hardwick, I took a job. Oh boy,
making a living is nothing.
-
It only consumes every waking
moment, and forces you to beg.
Cajole. Be nice. Cooperate. Get
along. Dress nicely. Remain both
common and sedate. Understand
what your heart doesn't really care
to understand. Go on about money.
Reason with unreason. I had a kid
in grade-school, all of a sudden,
and a house again and a very nice
wife. The family diagram was
beginning to look like one of
those ideal-American charts. I
think I pretended I didn't notice.
All around me, back again in NYC,
things were exploding : punk clubs,
a decadent advancement to the
music scene, the 'youth' scene -
which I realized I was about grown
out of and wasn't going to be listening
to me anyway, and it wasn't 'music'
either, in the way I'd been trained.
The plodding pilferage of ripped-jeans-
three-chord-shout-riffs might work in
the local booze-hall filled with
nipple-pierced girls and wayward boys,
but it made no sense outside of that
jagged spotlighting. My path was
elsewhere, but losing it was truly
going to be a commanding pain
in my ass. So, making my choice,
I stayed with it all, the parent/house
BS and the kid-raising stuff. It got
easier, and I traveled a lot. The
bridges and tunnels were still cheap,
my varied cars worked well, and, all
into the early 90's, I knew where to
park and where it was still free. It's
all a lot different now; everything's
a million dollars, parking-fee kiosks
are most everywhere, and I've become
an old man on a half-fare train ride.
-
I don't grumble about fate, mind you,
just about myself. How many of the
ways and means I've taken that have
been wastes of time, completely, and
now, for the most part, ('career' stuff)
my life is over. I guess that's what galls.
All the days I spent cow-towing, doing
what I was instructed, following the
rigors and routine of pathetic work-task.
For what but nothing. Some shit-full
pocket's worth of weekly money? Big
deal; it's all worthless in the end. The
thing that bothers me is never having
told others to just go to Hell; with their
sniping concerns and worries as they
were parlayed into use-of-me for their
concerns. I look back sometimes at
photos of that little stupid, bicycle-riding-
with-a-big-smile little 6-year old Inman
Avenue kid and I want to puke. Like
Delmore Schwartz in that story about
his parents, I want to yell out 'No, No!
Don't do it! Run now! Hide!' (In the
story by Schwartz, entitled 'In Dreams
Begin Responsibilities,' he's in a movie
theater watching, supposedly, a film about
his parents, and when it gets to the part
of them marrying, joining up, and
producing Delmore, he stands to shout
that 'No! No! Don't Do It!' episode. My
rendering is close enough for my own
purposes anyway). My expectation of
life had never come down to the things
that really happened. I was blind-sided.
-
Sometimes as a kid I used to work Spring
and Summer Saturdays with a guy named
Eddie Aetoff. From 'Aetoff Farms', in
East Brunswick somewhere, he had an
open-back vegetable truck. The place was
what's called a 'truck' farm, meaning the
produce was trucked out - how they got
to the dumb simplicity of that name I'll
not know. Truck farm sounds totally stupid,
unless maybe you're a Tonka Toy. Eddie
would swing by Inman Ave, early, on those
days, and pick me up; I'd ride in the cab
with him, as he'd slowly sidle through all
the local Woodbridge neighborhoods, and
Avenel, and local places. The rear of the
truck was open, just like a supermarket
deck of vegetables; a scale hanging there,
etc. It was pretty cool. The truck had a
bell that he rang - like an ice cream truck -
and the housewives and such would come
out of their houses as he stopped, to
purchase vegetables and fruit. I'd pick
and weigh the little bags and all, dispensing
things, as he did the cashiering. It was
much fun, I loved the truck, and the
constant experience. There were bushels
underneath the shelves, to re-stock. By
the end of the long afternoon, he'd get me
back home and pay me a few dollars.
There were places he wasn't supposed
to be, like, for instance, Ideal Trailer
Court, at the bottom of Avenel. There
was a back-road entrance, and he'd go
in, invariably, and eventually, getting
stopped and thrown out, but it was
fun each time to see how along he'd
get. The trailer people liked it. It
was peddler's license stuff, or no
permit, or something. I was young,
but that was a meager line of work
I at least could understand - real
stuff, fruits and vegetables, real
people, and something they needed
and wanted. All that's been destroyed
long ago by supermarkets and
marketeers, by the layers of poison
and pesticides now thrown onto
everything, and by the indifference
of people for what they eat and
consume, and what goes into
them - cancers and blight
notwithstanding. (That's the
second time I've used the word
'notwithstanding,' here. You don't
see that too much). One funny
part of it all, in my young mind too,
was the inevitable conflict I'd construct:
this guy Aetoff, at the end of the day
he paid me, and I took it happily. OK.
Yet, at the same time I'd think of
him in my Che Guevara mode and
think 'how could he charge these
people for food?' Why would anyone
attempt to claim the right of profit
on necessary foodstuffs for everyone?
Utopian thinking, in a very primitive,
communist way. Remember, Elizabeth
Hardwick said 'Making a living is nothing.'
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