RUDIMENTS, pt 205
Making Cars
There was a big wake-up
call for me in the year 1961.
Up until that point, in Avenel
and its grade-school years, I'd
been taught, mostly through Mr.
Ziccardi, in sixth grade, about
the cradle of civilization, early
man, Mesopotamia, the Fertile
Crescent, and the beginnings of
man, agriculture, cities, society,
and all that. I guess because it
was school it was all presented
without any real reference to
'God' except for the ridicule and
abuse of various, supposed, ancient
Gods and belief structures. There
was somehow a way, he thought,
to get past all that flim-flam and
early-Mankind stupidity without
making much of a reference to our
own versions of it then current.
Now - I have to say this - that
was all very familiar to me, already.
I knew all his errors in teaching,
the odd hubris he brought to the
opinions he had of ritual structures
and enlightenment, and the false
pride with which he somehow held
up Corn Kix, Alpha Bits, and
Kennel Rations, and his own cool
new car, as high points of a true
civilization. Boy, did I have news
for him. Mr. Ziccardi didn't know
it, but I was fresh off the boat from
ancient Mesopotamia and the Gods
and Demons who went with it and
were at work within our own
civilization (for lack of a better
'word'). Oh, by the way, Kennel
Rations was a 1950's dry dog food.
I'm not sure if our high society
yet makes it.
-
No one would have ever believed
me, any of those 6th grade kids,
or the teachers either, but I was
extra-terrestrial, to them, and
would be so called, had I been
outed. I was closer to Sumer and
Babylon than they were to their
own undergarments. So, having
to 'learn' and do reports on
ancient places and beliefs meant
nothing to me. It was parlor talk,
and if they didn't believe in me I
wouldn't believe in them, and
we'd call it even. Parlor game,
and gentlemen's agreement.
-
The next year I got sent off to a
different, new, school, in Iselin,
for 7th grade. That brought me
to 1961, the centennial year
of the American Civil War. When
I got to seventh grade, one of
those changeable classrooms,
there was in one of them -
one that we used for 'History'
class - a full bulletin board, the
entire back wall, all set up and
arrayed with Civil War facts
and figures, names and places,
maps and photos/drawings. I was
immediately fascinated. This was
something - unlike Sumer and all
those false annals of 'Mesopotamia'
and all that - that was new to me
and into which I could get my hands
and eyes and interests. It was exciting.
It was but a mere 100 years back.
It could be traced, proven to be
factual, and some historic 'logic'
could actually be made from it.
We were still living its after-effects,
and they were constant and not
some quasi-religious false cover
for the modern world. Plus, all
those amazing place names and
battles fascinated me : Spotslyvania,
Chickamauga, Wilderness, Shiloh,
Antietam, Manassas, Richmond,
Fredericksburg, Petersburg, and
Chancellorsville, to name a few.
Early photos, by Brady, all that
dark smoke and battles and wagons
and dead bodies piled and bloated,
horses and mules slaughtered over
fields of blood and carnage. Men
left for days to writhe and scream
in their wounded agonies until they
died; often enough mass-buried
still alive. It was brutal and horrid
and real. And it made everything
else pale by comparison, including
the 'new' halls of the crappiest
George Jetson style new space-age
school I'd ever been seen or forced
into. I immediately realized the
complete folly of having the North
'win' that war : Efficient modernization.
This new school reeked of the present.
It had green blackboards, for one. I
never got that; weren't they then
'greenboards?' Plastic seating, both
metal and wood shops, a domed
auditorium and some other thing
that doubled as a lunch room and
a basketball court, at the switch
of a button. At 11:30 you're having
school-lunch, and by 1pm you're back
there for gym, or playing basketball.
Too bizarre for my aching brain -
which was still back on that field
with my shooting arm blown off
at the shoulder. (Both gun, and
basketball too, I guess).
-
I could hardly talk. I gaped. I started
reading weird guys, people who wrote
on the Civil War. It was eerie as hell:
'Mortality defines the human condition.
We all have our dead - we all have
our graves. Every era must confront
its like miseries and its like consolations.
In the middle of the 19th century, the
United States embarked on a new
relationship with death, entering into
a civil war that proved bloodier than
any other conflict in American history,
a war that would presage the slaughter
of World War I's Western Front and the
global carnage of the 20th century.'
Yeah man. 620,000 guys, just like
me mostly, killed by each other,
stupidly, in mass, dumb, frontal
assaults, often where they could see
the hairs on each other's young faces.
What a sham and a shame this
all was - that was all I could say.
I defended nothing at all, nor did
I ever want to.
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