RUDIMENTS, pt. 162
Making Cars
I used to give a lot of thought
to the idea of what would have
been my life - and the lives of
so many others too - had our
and my parents not opted for the
move to suburbia. The Avenel
kind of suburbia anyway -
which was mostly taken up
with low-class trash and
concerns. You know how they
say you can't make a silk purse
from a sow's ear, and all that
stuff, well, in the same way,
there's simply no denying that
Avenel and environs was a
dump. A side-line on the way
to somewhere, from which most
people never left anyway. The
post-war era was an odd time.
The oddities seem to often have
settled down to the swamps.
It was near enough to the airport,
and highway, that a surprising
number of 'Dads' had airport
jobs. Same with Newark and
Elizabeth, back when they were
manufacturing towns. Avenel
was within a 15 minute's
claw-reach of all that - and
the areas all south of it, from
Perth Amboy and Sayreville
down, had not yet been developed
or opened up. One little period of
time made this spot the southern
terminus for all those post-war
transplants looking for new and
cheap GI housing to get them out
of places like Bayonne, Irvington,
Jersey City, and Elizabeth too.
There were other suburbs -
Scotch Plains and Westfield,
for instance - but they bespoke
more 'real money' and more
'prestigious' jobs (not so much
'service industry' stuff) to live in.
More 'management' class. My father
was never envious of that sort of
thing, he just didn't like the people
who had made such a grade. My
mother, on the other hand, was
envious of everything : bigger
homes, finer grounds, better things.
Split the difference, subtract a
bunch, roll the dice, steer clear
of the prison at the tracks, and
you get Avenel. Swamplandia.
Turnpike Neck, NJ
-
So when I used to think of what
my parents had done - leaving
Bayonne - that wasn't enough;
it wasn't the level of 'city' I meant.
I used to have a crying-out shamble
over why they weren't living in New
York City, in some nice walk-up
or brownstone building, aware of
nicer and better things, art and
cultural stuff, parks and museums
and places and people. Things I
could really connect too. Instead,
I got like Two Guys, or Two Indians
Trading Post, or Robert Hall's or
American Shops. Little local things that
were weirded out by bargain-hunting
and cheap or second-hand stuff. It
was, obviously, that I was out-classing
what I really was. I'd go into NYC,
when I was there, and those little
Greek diner cups, with the Parthenon
and such on them, in blue ink, for
take-out coffees, they alone would be
enough to send me to bliss, just in
thinking about the 'cultural' awareness
they represented. It was all fantasy, yet
it always kept me going, somewhere else.
Far better than getting a printed paper
cup in Avenel that read 'Yo-Mo's
Mini Mart' or something that dumb.
It was just a different world, an
entire great divide, and my parents,
in their ease and comfort, seeking their
respite from the 'world' had decided
to hide out, and hide me out then too,
NOT in the city. Not even in some
other city, Philadelphia, say, which had a
great and polite ease to itself, and still
had and treasured all that culture and
learning. Boy I missed that stuff - I
missed and, because of it, probably then
over-compensated on my own, later,
diving head-first into all the requisite
dung heaps of avant-garde, offensive,
leading-edge, bawdy and blaring
colloquial cultural stuff derived from
a probable backlash to the over-stuffy
cultural backwater material I'd been
force-fed. I found that I was unable
to explain any of that - how can
anger be explained anyway, without
hurting others? My parents wouldn't
have understood if I called them out
for dumping me in a cauldron of bad
soup such as Avenel was. My father
had no idea where I was at, in my
head. Nor my mother. Neither of
them shared anything, that I could see,
with me. I never knew how that had
occurred - how I'd gotten mixed up
with them, through them been brought
into this world. It was part of my
constant confusion - how'd I get
here? I kept this little court of justice
in my mind, deciding that it would
never be fair to call others out on
perceived shortcomings while they
never called be out on being so far
beyond them. Two worlds, two far
and separate languages.
-
Now, what is it that WOULD have
happened, had I been a city boy?
I often thought of that while I was
there. If all or any of that had been
mine since age 5 or 6, instead of
gravel streets and lookalike new
homes, what would it have meant?
I don't know; what I do know is
that there are grand and enormous
money divides now, in NYC, as
there were when I was living there
in the 60's, yes. I had an aunt, who
lived in Rutherford, Lyndhurst,
that area - which again, like Westfield,
was a 'suburban' area but far more
monied and old-line, bearing no
relation to Avenel, and all she
ever talked about as she and I
would be sitting and talking (I
always considered her my more
'cultured' aunt, with a European
husband, and a subscription to
'Paris Match' (a famed high-lustre
magazine of the 50's and 60's)
and an awareness of culture
and learning), and all she ever
talked about with me, and filled
my head with too, were her plans
for retirement, when they planned
to sell all that and move into a
nice little place, affordable, wise,
and comfy, in Greenwich Village,
apartment or town home and partake
of smart and cultural city living.
It never happened. They ended up
in an over-55 community for oldsters,
down the Jersey shore somewhere,
he died, and she finished out her
days there too. It was always sweet,
but always almost sad as well.
There's also the apparent real
contradiction in the idea that a
building or apartment floor that
could have been had for thirty-eight
to fifty-thousand dollars then would
today be worth five to seven million.
There was a place we considered
buying, in 1978, for thirty-five
thousand dollars, down by King
Street, west. We decided against it
for reasons of having a young kid,
his prospects for schooling (it was
a dungheap around there then). Now
it's all worth eight-million a unit (in
fact the very same, free-standing
unit, about ten years ago when it
re-sold). So, you see the imponderables
of everything? And, then, by living
there, we'd not have the seven million
we'd have gotten for selling it, which
would have necessitated a move to
something else, and where would
that have been? Tired and weary
of an elitist city, probably right
back here! Go figure.
-
I've tried to shake the city from out of
my bloodstream and bones, I've come
close, but the legacy and heritage it
all represents remains too vital and
too important for me to leave. Even
as it's mostly dwindled away - layers
of Indo's, Paki's, continental Africans,
people selling wares all over the streets,
third-world and tribal merchandises
I'd have never heard of before. It's
all different, but beneath it all that old
city is still there, and I scratch and
dig for it all the time. I guess
a lot of it is just memories, and
a lot of it too is just the blues.
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