RUDIMENTS, pt. 154
Making Cars
I can hardly remember Bayonne,
which is the place I was born; like
an Impressionist painting to me now,
it's all sensations, spots of light as
recalled, and images from a weird
angle. I guess that weird angle is the
one kids get, plodding along, first
having learned to walk, when
everything still remains clompy
and jiggy-jagged. (Ever watch a
new kid walk; it's like a rollicking
belly-roll from left to right, over
and again). If you were focusing a
camera, it'd be a disaster, even at
fast shutter-speed. All the light I
remember from there is actually
a dark light, one of shadow and
substance. Mostly a place of
sadness. My section of it anyway.
I was born, as I've said before,
at the base of the Bayonne Bridge
(actually the physical 'birthing'
was in Bayonne Hospital at the
other end of town; but people
never use those references). 'I
was born beneath the Bayonne
Bridge' is the way I always put it,
and that works good enough for
me. It was sort of a bleak time,
far bleaker than now anyway. And,
really, if it was a photo, all it would
have gotten was black and white.
That's exactly the feel it had. A
hard, post-war kind of 'thing' was
in the air; people trying to get back
on their feet, counting pennies, as
it were, seeing where they could
take them, where it would go.
(Surprise! For about 1200 bucks,
with 40 bucks down, it could get
them to a new house, in Avenel!).
Everything around was still old,
bleak, almost Victorian in its
brickwork and decoration, if it
was 'decoration' at all. How does
one dress up, after all, a funeral
pyre? Men who'd been wounded
(I lived in the veteran's projects)
were still wounded and raw,
learning how to live with it, the
splice, the limp, the loss of this
or that. Everyone smoked.
The cars were squat, bulbous,
they had a presence. Back then,
oddly enough, not everyone had
one, a car - they were still an
item of envy, to be sought for.
Televisions were new. All I can
recall is the warm-up period after
it was turned on, the receding
light or whatever it was, upon
turning 'off.' The screen, for
those in luck, was perhaps 10 inch,
and that was large. Even piddly
laptops today have 15 inch screens
to start. I remember a pedestal,
in the center of a room, with a
TV upon it, like a God, and men
on folding chairs, near it, noisily
watching a boxing match, or a
series of matches. Another time
I can remember a baseball game,
being watched by a man, in isolation,
alone, in that same room - an uncle
perhaps, kin to me but not 'family.'
More than anything else, that
oneness of his being alone
stayed with me. That aloneness
seemed against all the TV
was portraying.
-
Outside it was always grim; boats
passing, the noise of tugs and the
smells of water and oils, not art
material, I'm meaning the odors
of marsh and tide and the oils
atop the waters. They were all mixed
- somehow the 'future' meant chemicals
and plastics. Everyone had forgotten
about the 'real.' There was even a
company, Philips or DuPont or
Union Carbide, or someone,
whose advertising motto was 'Better
Living Thru Chemistry.' Up the
street from us was a Maidenform,
or Playtex - one of those - underwear
factory - bras and girdles. Women's
stuff. For a while during the war, I'd
been told, it was requisitioned to hold
German prisoners. Whistles and toots,
the noises of tugs and barges, I can still
hear all of that - the oil sheen of waters
lapping rocks. Just as in Sewaren and
Woodbridge, 'Boynton Beach,' everything
here too had been sold over to corporate
and government giants - for industrial
use, and forget the land and water. Still
more tank farms, oil transports, gases,
solvents, metals, things leeching into
the waters. No one cared. All along
that waterway, in our section, ran
Uncle Milty's, a dime-shop of an
amusement park loaded with silt -
games, rides, more noise (but noise
of a different, higher, pitch, with
its own syncopation and rhythm).
People strolled at all hours.
-
Again, like Boynton Beach -
an abandoned and done away
with resort, in Sewaren/Woodbridge,
now with no legacy or remnant except
oil tanks and sludge, Bayonne, where
I lived, once too had its famed resort,
with ferry service and hordes of, in
this case, 19th century visitors and
revelers. It was the La Tourette
Mansion, at first, long ago. A large,
beachfront estate with acres of bucolic
land around it. There really once was
a time when, within 6 or 7 miles of New
York City and all those teeming hordes,
you could find peace and countryside
that nearby. Then, by the 1920's,
Sewaren was the newer bet, at 18-20
miles off; still with ferry-service and
hotels. Here, at the Bayonne location,
initially a DuPont family estate, and
then the LaTourette estate, or the other
way around, I forget, these lands too
fell to the crooked lure of lucre. The
waterways and harbors were destroyed,
and the old waterfront mansion fell
into ruin, or were burned, or just were
scuttled, like on old ship on a fiery
old sea. And that's where I came in -
born and raised right there.
-
One other thing that always bugged me :
I had to find all this out myself, later in
life, digging and ferreting out information.
Why no one was aware, or couldn't just tell
me to my face the information of my days,
and theirs, is and was beyond me. And
how they could just roll over and let
'government' step in and take all these things
over, and make these decisions for them.
I don't understand other people too well.
Land of the free? Home of the brave?
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