RUDIMENTS, pt. 191
Making Cars
One time when I was about 10 I
went through a period - don't
know why, or don't remember
why anyway - of sending to
any and all assorted chambers
of commerce that I could. Basic,
straight form letters, asking for
information about their city. I
sent everywhere you could
imagine, or 20 or 30 anyway -
St. Louis, New Orleans, Chicago,
Seattle, the whole gamut of state
capitols. And they all sent their
basic, local-themed, packets back.
I wish I had them today, not knowing
where they ended up. Cover letters,
hopes for the future, maps, diagrams,
all very interesting. Sometime after I
left home my mother and sisters
just did a heave-ho with all my stuff.
it was pretty horrid, and thoughtless
on their part, but, what else could be
expected. I had an entire array of
early Village Voices, for instance;
those alone to me were priceless
and I just should have known. But,
even cooler than all that was the time
at about 11, early on, when I sent a
letter to the FBI Headquarters telling
them of my interest in being an FBI
agent, asking for information and
qualifications, etc. I received a whole
packet back from them, with a real
letter from J. Edgar Hoover! He was
thanking me for my interest and my
thoughtfulness about my own future
and the needs of the FBI and the
country. There were agent bio-profiles,
stories of the things agents do, photos
of FBI buildings and historical
moments. All of that too was
thrown away. Too bad. As for
myself, I'm not sure what I was
thinking, and most probably it
was 'something to do.'
-
People since have told me, I've
heard it any number of times, that
I should have been a cop - 'you
think like one.' Noticing things,
little details - something someone
said and how they said - license
plates, quirky, detail sorts of things.
I guess that's what cops do, yes,
but I always tell them back, 'I'm
a writer, that's what writers do.
I notice everything; it's free, it's
telling, and I can use all of it.'
So maybe there is a real connection,
in that sense only, between
cop-orientation and what
a writer does or sets out to do.
I am quirky, I admit. I love seeing
fabrics, especially, as a for instance,
while walking the streets of NYC,
seeing the hordes of touristy types
and the clothing they wear - French
and European fabrics, Chinese cloth,
strange shoes, leather bags - all
the crazy, everyday apparel they
bring here. Sometimes it's quite
exotic. I've been told, on the other
hand, that American tourists, in
other lands, by the same token,
come across as pathetic wrecks,
with clothing of garish colors
and cheap cuts, and plastic shoes.
-
It's like that often : going back to
the previous chapter, for instance,
to my retelling of the lowered
speed-limit and Monroe Doctrine
stuff, I also wrote once a piece -
it went nowhere, and this one no
one saw - about the difference
between American and European
culture as reflected in radial versus
bias ply tires. It's a bit esoteric, and
I'll try to explain - and again you'll
need to think like it was 1974 or so:
When you see any photo of an old,
American car, this large, rigid, highly-
inflated tired you see are 'bias-ply.'
That was the only sort of tire that
was manufactured and supplied for
American stuff. It wasn't until about
1979 or 72, the foreign imports began
coming in , with 'radial' tires. They
took a lot less air, they appeared
almost soft and flaccid, and kind
of rolled around a bit on the roads;
whereas the old, bias-ply tires were,
as I said, rigid, straight, stern. The
old bias ply ties has their metal
strips in them going 'lengthwise'
around the whole tire - thus the
heavier wear and the rigidity. They
took bumps much harsher, and
you felt everything. The radial
tires, by contrast, had their metal
strips going 'across the tire,
('radial'), which softened everything,
took way less air, and rounded to
the road, curved some with the
bumps and the resistance. Softer
ride, more comfortable. I knew
a car mechanic guy up in Rutland,
Vermont, a kind of car-primitive
guy, who was infuriated by all
this and detested the very idea of
radial ties and their 'soft' air pressure.
For years he'd been putting 38 pounds
of air (psi) in big tires, and if the
wimpy little Euro-trash radials called
for 24, well damn them; they still got
35+ and he didn't care none about
any soft-tire, radial-direction ribbed
wussy wheels. (He lost, by the way.
Just about the only sort of tire you
can get today is a radial, and the
very distinction itself is no longer
even made. But, no matter; this fellow
has already graduated to that big
junkyard in the sky).
-
So, I wrote a paper (hello, Elmira
College once again!), in which I
contrasted the American sense of
bombast, power and pride, (as reflected
in their 'bias-ply' tires) against the softer,
more pliant and accepting worldview of
the typical European. (Reflected in their
use of 'radial' tires and the development
of). It was really easy concept to point
out, bring examples and referents to, etc.
To Americans the whole idea of rolling
over and going 'soft' for a bump or a
hazard was unheard of. Thus, their
stark and rigid tire. Europeans, with a
thousand-plus year history or wars,
plagues, and revolutions, saw a much
better sense in ore of a 'rolling over,'
or giving in, ceding an issue. Nothng
past that ever happened from this, but
it was a neat piece of essay writing to
churn out. I always liked ding things
like that. The guy's name, the professor
for this English assignment, self-selected,
was Frank Steber - an otherwise regular
guy with whom I often conversed and
kicked things a around. He sometimes
got pretty enthused about things I'd hand
over to him - give them back with all
sorts of exacted comments in the margins,
etc. One time I did a paper on Emily
Dickinson - her poem about 'I would
not stop for Death, so Death kindly
stopped for me.' I made this big mad
dash from it, almost turning it into a
philosophy instead of a English paper.
He went nuts over it and practically
wanted it published, then and there.
You'd think I'd re-written a Bible or
something really important like that.
Of course, I let him go at it; I sopped
it all up. Hey! Don't stop now!'
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