Sunday, December 3, 2017

10,247. RUDIMENTS, pt. 154

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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