RUDIMENTS, pt. 152
Making Cars
Because we lived right on the
railroad tracks, 70 feet off anyway,
and because Rahway Prison was in
our backyard across those tracks,
relatives would come over and end
up saying things like 'How can you
live here? Doesn't all this keep you
up?' Fact is, the train noises never
bothered us (me) a bit. I in fact
always rather liked them. In the
same way that I'd go down to the
end of the block just to stare at
Route One and all those cars going
'somewhere,' the train cars represented
escape. Of course, for most of the
people on them they probably didn't
represent that at all - dragging back
to daily jobs and routines, slogging
home. Schedules, travel times, etc.
In the early darks, of Winter and the
seasons of low light, I'd see all the
heads rolling by in the lit windows.
It always fascinated me and I never
took the thought past that point. The
same way with the prison - I always
figured people were playing mental
games with themselves, reacting to
'prison,' the word, as if they were
some Pavlovian dog. For all I knew
the prison itself could have been
a shoe store; it wouldn't have
changed anything. The thing that
these people were reacting to was
all imagery, the stuff that had
been drummed into their heads
about all this. It wasn't like that
at all. That's what was crummy
about people, a big letdown all
the time. They'd just react instead,
no real thought. What was the
prison to me? After all, as a kid
I never certainly sat around thinking
about 'justice' and right. Those
guys, whoever they were in there,
had gotten themselves mashed up
with something, the system got
them, and it wasn't my problem.
Bank robber, wife-beater, or killer,
all the same to me. Everyone always
thought something like that reflected
on the people who lived nearby to it.
My father never sat around thinking
he was within 1000 feet of the prison
yard - he was just fondly proud of
having his house, along with the 80
or so other houses nearby in a row.
Sort of like - one set of inmates
over there; another set right here.
Make the best of it, and look
what I got!
-
My father was a local First Aid guy
for a while - they'd get calls to go
into the prison. He was never worked
up over it : heart attacks, injuries,
stabbings, strokes, fights, all sorts
of things. He'd say what it had been,
how they went about it all, the big
rotunda, the emergency entrances,
etc. I'd think it wasn't any different
from the same way anyone else goes
down, in Beverly Hills or Hollywood.
No stigma there, so what's the big
deal here? Every so often some
rumor would get started about an
escapee roaming, or whatever. I
never saw any truth to any of it,
and, heck, we'd see prisoners every
day, nice days anyway, out on the
farm fields doing their work - tractors,
corn harvesters, plows and rakes. A
few guards, guys with rifles, and of
course the ever-present tower guards.
But it was always quiet, and nothing
ever happened. My whole idea of
'theology' as primitive as it was,
got off to a very vivid start there.
As a 6-year old, what else does
a kid do but connect what he
sees, his real 'experience,' with
the concept he's fed. So it was
with God and me. Someone
always on the high wall, always
watching, always at the ready
to smite you with some horrible
fate or punishment for screwing
up. The bullet hand, the trigger-finger
of God the Guard, God the uncrossable,
God the ever-present marksman.
-
How much of that carries over?
What does a kid bring with him
or her self? I grew up essentially
just putting all that behind me,
forgetting about everything else.
Stratification, or even caste, like
the caste-system in old India, kept
me separate from all that. I might
not ever have been much, half a
poor kid, and the other half dumb,
but it was never the level of the
populace out of which prison-terms
feed, bad crime sprees, lock-downs
and pummelings. That all went
with another land and territory
entire, and later in life as I'd run
across that I'd just stand there and
gape. 'How the hell did I get here?'
Here of course being New York
City, the belly of the beast, in all
its wrong parts. It was like a
cross-handed double-cross mistake.
The flipped coin with only one side.
'Accept this all, my brother, for here
you are' - that became my personal
motto. Once I integrated myself into
the drive of all that machinery, it
became almost impossible for me
to go back home. When I did, even
for a day or two, it was impossible
to accept the feel again. There are
plenty of NY places where you can
get on the train or subway in an area
that's nice and quite congenial, and
20 minutes later step out into some
hell-hole of Harlem or Bed-Stuy
or something - back then anyway -
some horrendous, blackened and
torched, situation of ruined streets
and near-dead bodies - and whenever
that happened to me it never struck
me with the same, lost and horrendous
feeling I'd get back in Avenel. Stepping
off the train in that little squankum
place, walking again those streets of
chain-link fences and miserable plots
of nothing, I'd feel the dead-grind of
a certain 'suburbia' that I abhorred.
The driveways and lawns, the lights
and just the manner of the people
I'd see - closed and parochial. I'd
shaken all that off myself, at least.
It's funny because, 1967, that was
just about the same time that the
prison-farm was taken away, the
horrendous government-school-camp
for retards and inmates was put in,
all those fields were gone, there were
weirded-out, screeching Mongoloids
at the State School roaming the yards
of their little satellite cottages, clinging
to the fences and staring out.
-
I'd lived there my whole live and this
all just about broke my heart in two. I'd
cross the tracks and go right up to the
fence - like you do in a farm or a
barn-yard expanse when all the
animals come running to the fence
to be with you, bleating and staring
out. Kids would come to the fence.
These were children so severely
retarded or mis-shapen and broken,
that even their own parents couldn't
keep or tolerate, and they'd been
turned over to the State, as wards.
Holding pens, each building, with a
few staff and nurses to, basically,
do as little as was needed, letting
them be. Some of these kids, I could
see their eyes and faces, no matter what
they where, just wanted touch and
warmth, and feeling. They certainly
could not verbally communicate, it
was all far past them and became
instead some string of animal noises,
grunts and groans, all leading to some
form of need, a noise for connection,
or love, Humanity. It just used to
break me up. The noises, at some
times were constant, and wailing.
Man, that hurt, and it all rattled me.
-
Maybe one needs to be really dumb
to be insensitive. I realized I wasn't
dumb, and I realized I wasn't
insensitive either.
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