RUDIMENTS, pt. 177
Making Cars
I always considered a lot of things
to be simply items that slowed one
down. I was all about speed at this
point, swiftly getting things done.
I didn't much think about banking
the angles, shooting off the sides,
or any of that strategy stuff. That
was all for the crafty ones, the
movers who figured they were
going places. Where? Jobs, careers,
stock and board rooms, banking
or government service. I had
a friend, Howie Kessler, who said,
and all he cared about, was that he
wanted to be a civil engineer. He
knew this at like age 14. I said,
'What's that? What do they do?'
He replied, 'They build things
for government agencies, roads,
bridges highways and all.' Huh?
How he ever got to that point is
beyond me, and I don't know if
that's what he actually ended up as,
but he knew what he wanted. Or
so he claimed. I myself was so
mixed up into escape and subterfuge
that any of that looked to me like
nothing but trouble. Man, Howie
was dull. And I already knew that:
he'd gotten it all figured out like
on a platter, and probably pleased
everyone he knew, family-wise, by
the news of his decision. How
rabbinical was all that anyway -
to worship forever at the temple
of the slide rule and compass.
-
It might have all seemed funny,
yes, but then one day I was reading
about this person - well, let me begin
all over. I was reading a history of the
city of Los Angeles, and the later
development and expansion of
California and all that. I came across
this person, William Mulholland - in
this book considered one of the three
big names in the formation of Los
Angeles : Harrison Gray Otis, Harry
Chandler, and this William Mulholland.
Now, I like all that stuff. I can stay up
until four in the morning sometimes
just reading, if it's absorbing. As I've
said before, 'reading' as a writer is a
difficult chore, and it's a very delicate
one. I read for information, and I don't
read fiction, plot, story or any of that
inventive, writing-craft and workshop
made-up stuff. I've got enough tales
and stories of my own to nurture and
develop and write out. None of it's
fictional, and even when it is - in the
poetry stuff - I want it to remain
pure and unfettered; unaffected by
things other, that I may be reading.
So, a lot of that's out - fiction and
fantasy and all that. Plus, it's all boring
anyway. Anyway, William Mulholland
proved to be an interesting case, and
especially in light of the earlier 'Howie
Kessler' tidbit. And it surprised me.
Mulholland had been born in 1855 in
Dublin, Ireland. Regular stuff, his father
was a postal clerk, his mother was at
home. He was utterly bored and at 15
he signed on as an apprentice seaman
and spent is time plying the Atlantic
trade routes back and forth. After 4
years, he'd had enough and he spent
a few years in Michigan lumber camps
hacking about, and then the dry-goods
business in Pittsburgh, where his uncle
owned a store. It was there he heard
about California, had just enough money
to get to Panama by ship, walked across
the isthmus from Colon, and worked his
way north by ship, to San Francisco by
1877. Then he went to Arizona, prospecting
and fighting Apaches for pay; he ended
up in Los Angeles/San Pedro, and then
joined a well-drilling crew -- and this
is where it got startlingly interesting for
me. As he writes: "We were down about
six hundred feet when we struck a tree.
A little further we got fossil remains.
These things fired my curiosity. I wanted
to know how they got there, so I got hold
of Joseph LeConte's book on the geology
of the country. Right there I decided to
become an engineer."
-
I was fascinated - not that I wished to
become an engineer. Frankly, that stuff
all still bored me, it was boring, and I
believed none of it. Any concocted
geologic story lines about fossils and
things beneath the ground are but one
version of the events of this world,
and a not very creative version at that.
(You may say, 'but facts are facts...').
Well, they're not. All facts are furious
fictions, set in place, that fit, and have
been made to fit. Please don't be so
rational. What fascinated me was the
pure and opaque version of the world
that somehow existed in 1878 and those
years around Mulholland. Just look at
what's come of it all now - look at
the vastness of Los Angeles, the lack
of water, the dryness, the rerouting
of rivers to supply water, the dams,
the mis-use of land and water, the
over-population and housing built in
treacherous locations. And you tell
me. Seems to me that governmental
engineering, or any, tends to end up
as a real crock. Mulholland eventually
made it to the top, running the most
critical and far-flung water-supply
system in the world. He replied:
"Well, I went to school in Ireland
when I was a boy, learned the Three
R's and the Ten Commandments, or
most of them, made a pilgrimage to the
Blarney Stone, received my father's
blessing, and here I am." He started
out there (L.A. water system) as a
ditch digger and a clearer of brush
and stones out of canals. One day
he was approached by a man in
a carriage, who demanded to know
his name and what he was doing.
Mulholland stepped out of his
ditch and told the man he was
'doing his god-damned job' and that
his name was immaterial to the
quality of his 'god-damned' work.
The man, it turned out, was the
president of the water company.
Learning this, Mulholland went to
the company office to collect his pay
before being fired. Instead, he was
promoted. Engineering, indeed!
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