RUDIMENTS, pt. 212
Making Cars
The first time I ever saw a
Tesla was in Princeton : the
very early hours there would
bring out these on-the-way-to-
office types, stopping and
dashing in, to either Small
World, or Starbucks, for their
coffee. A veritable array of
expensive cars set loose. I
for some reason thought this
was a one-off car that the guy
himself had manufactured. I'd
had no exposure before that to
any of this Tesla electric-car auto
manufacture stuff. After enough
times I began talking with the guy,
and we'd go over his car, and I
learned the finer points of Tesla
electric ownership - range,
charging, power, expense, etc.
These were all big money people,
and this guy was quite proud of
his Tesla ownership. (Here's that
moral-superiority riff again). After
a while, roundabout conversations,
we realized, (he, jokingly - me, to
heart), that the entire idea of Tesla
automotive design was essentially a
farce. This bothered me to no end,
but to him it was massive, miraculous
marketing. You see, the Tesla is
built and designed as if it was a large,
long-hood, muscular, powerful car.
Like some sort of big Jaguar or
Maserati. It's all illusion - the car
itself needs none of that. It could
be shaped like a shoebox as long
as the component batteries and
electric motor were in place. He
said, in fact, that they could even
be purchased, somehow, with the
recorded sound of a bristling,
mechanical power-plant, as if it
WAS a muscle-car. Now I don't
know what obligation, (if any),
that pretension has towards function,
but it seems to me that something
here was amiss - the pretense of
a muscle-car in the real-coat of
a lamb - but that falsity suited this
fellow just right. It's an electric
motor, and if that's the choice you've
made, why then does it need to look
like it isn't? May be it was all
OK and of no matter anyway. I
didn't want to go getting all filled
with philosophical insight over this
issue, but it seemed to me, as I
thought about it, fairly fitting. He'd
be the guy to eat the sugar cube, but
leave out the LSD droplets that were
in all his friends' cubes, just to say
he was there. Come to think of it, as
he ordered his daily 'de-caf' coffee
it made total sense. Completely.
A Tesla was the equivalent.
-
That was, I suppose, what passed for
the muscular in Princeton. Fake cars.
They probably were working on
having fire trucks that no longer had
to make loud noise - just a sign out
front reading, 'Loud Fire-Truck Noise!'
to which you'd have to react. As I said
previously, in the early morning hours
- 5:30 or so on - the Royal Foods trucks
and Sysco Systems trucks would come
barreling in, each with two or three pallets
of a day's supply of eggs, butter, bread,
cold cuts, meats, vegetables, milks, sauces,
etc. Places like 'Olive's' and 'Lahiere's' -
when it was there; 'Alchemist & Barrister.'
'The Nassau Inn', and many others. There
were all sorts of dining places. The army
of slow-street trucks - along the streets
yet too early for any real traffic - was
met by a mass of Mexican heads from
below the ground. They'd come tumbling
out from the Trenton or New Brunswick
buses, 15 at a time, and walk down the
street to their jobs, both males and
females - chattering away and almost
running in place - plus there was an
entire bevy of bicycle-riding, also
Hispanic, locals who lived about and
reported in. These folks manned every
kitchen, washroom, dish-wash station,
pizzeria, and sandwich job you could
find. Beneath the sidewalks, they worked
monumentally each morning - ice, rain,
snow, hail - to get all this stuff in and
down to the basements as quickly as they
could. Deep, narrow stairways, close
quarters, ramps and rollers. I truly
don't think there was a meal in town
that you could by that had not been
prepared by someone other than the
properly named or shown and/or the
titular name and ownership. Massimo's:
pizza, by Mexicans. 'Olive's' - an otherwise
pert and half-classy take-out venue for
heavily detailed fresh and fast foods -
Mexicans and Hondurans, top to
bottom. It was the same everywhere.
-
Princeton was a bubbling illusion,
and even in the University dining spots
and lounges, all the food service, or 80%
of it anyway, was by Central Americans.
I used to try to dwell on this, thinking,
'what has happened here? How have we
transformed all this, this country, from
one thing into another?' There was an
entire, sub-class industry of doers and
servers, underground and out of sight,
and I just wasn't sure this sort of thing
had ever been in the planning of the
nation. Unseen to anyone, a whole
sub-set of serfs doing the all of the
dirty bidding. The whereabouts of all
this complicity, I figured I could see -
all around me. But it was all, by others,
unspoken and unmentioned. I knew
it had happened in New York, and had
seen much the same thing, but there it
was all cut-throat living and people
swam or drowned. Here, by contrast,
it was a form of subterfuge - of others
climbing up all atop the servant class
of slobs that they kept hidden. There
was no talk of this. In the center of
Witherspoon Street, by the library,
there was a sushi place run by the
most in-your-face, brash Asian guy.
He worked; took orders, cut fish and
prepared the such rolls and seaweed,
all the while carrying on a monologue
of sorts for anyone to hear. Almost
embarrassingly rude - a young couple
would come in, clingy and shy, to sit
and order. He'd start going at them :
'So; good looking girl! You lucky guy!
She giving you much yet, ha! I bet
you getting plenty!' Not to be leaving
anyone out, he'd then turn to the girl
and say 'And I bet you likee too, ha!'
Sometimes I'd sit there eating shark
or eel rolls, almost in shock.
-
I never knew how much of any of this
the rest of Princeton knew, but it was
out there, as general knowledge, and
just went on. A co-worker of mine,
named Andrew, first sent me there -
'Go, go, you gotta' hear this stuff; you
won't believe it.' I went. Andrew used
to go almost every day, at his lunch
time, for 'eel.' He'd come pack every
time all fired up by what he'd witnessed.
Was this some sort of ersatz Princeton
theater, a play-act to keep people amused?
What did this crazy guy know? How
aware was he, of how he came across,
what it all looked like? At least it was
authentic - a sushi place with but
two real Asian workers. For real.
Andrew lived in town, was a real
Princeton person, all his life. He soon
left the bookstore, after some feud
with management, and went back to
his old jobs, at the far other end of
Princeton, at some retreat/monastery
place where he helped take care of
'severely-challenged' and troubled,
kids, and at the local health-and
natural-foods store. I last saw him out
on the library plaza, quite near the sushi
guy's place, actually, years back, taking
names and donations for Occupy New York.
He remembered me, and said, 'You likee?'
-
Everything else in Princeton was just
a twist away from real lemon: the nose
in the air type, for whom buying a
pen was a huge process. Let alone
the leather travel-journal. The
sublime there ran right alongside
the ridiculous, and neither saw each
other - because, and by design, they
made sure to remain invisible all
across the board. No racism to be
admitted; nor subservience, or
superiority, or disdain or hatred.
It just all had to work, because
the cameras were always on.
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