10,476. RUDIMENTS, pt. 214

RUDIMENTS, pt 214

Making Cars

So, let's figure : the fakery and

the farcical, here in Woodbridge,

lasts ten or 15 years. A bar-room

with an old, false, crusty, and

out-of-place British referent, of

which most everyone has no

knowledge anyway, and which was

imposed on them by the napkin

drawings of a large-glittered

woman and a rambunctious

developer guy looking to make a

buck   -  in a different fashion,

to try something new while all

his other businesses still ran. You'd

like to say 'totally foreign concept,

it'll never work.' But there's acertain

level at which it doesn't matter. The

entire platoon of 'B. F. Packee'

operations lasted well enough. The

usual Iselin  and Woodbridge highway

drinker crowd, night after night,

stayed alive enough so as to keep

it going. In time, whatever the

references were with the whole

'Packee's' thing were lost; no

one cared, no one knew 'British'

from Schmitish. It might as well

have been 'Packers' to them and

a football reference. The towns

that make up 'Woodbridge' had not

enough authenticity any longer, not

even enough to carry the burden of

holding onto to the old, manufacturing

base with a barroom on each corner.

That was all over, and only the highway

beckoned : travelers, high-speed traffic,

parking areas, and the rest.

-

It was only maybe a year before that

when another of my 'clients' had come

in  -  some young Turk representing

whatever development company was

coming in to build over the claypits

and make what came to be known as

'Woodbridge Center.' It wasn't then

'Simon Company,' the big mall

developers; I forget the name. They

came from Minneapolis or somewhere.

This sleazeball rube comes in, again

on a steady-account basis, while the

project was underway  -  building,

grading, roads, etc.  -  constantly in

need of whatever  -  blueprint and

plans reproduced, policy packets, the

usual publicity crap, etc. He was a

know-it-all (like I'm not; yeah, I

understand). I really disliked him.

He seemed to work alone but really

had an office full of underlings, all at

work on this project. Right about then,

(my boss was heavy-involved in the

Chamber of Commerce, local Kiwanis

Cub, etc; all the usual businessmen

hovels where deals get golfed over

and done  -  out on the grass, where

no one hears), after all the deals were

made and the shenanigans arranged,

(Sorry folks. I got to hear all about it),

this jerk comes back in, in full lecture

mode, and stands in the office and

starts spieling to me  -  'You have to

understand, what we're doing here

is 'essentially' building an entire city

where nothing  has existed before....'

I wanted to garrote his ass right then

and there, and I think his presumptuous

ego knew it. Essentially his use of the

word 'essentially' is what threw me

over the edge. I figured it was time,

so I piped up and gave it right back

to him : 'Does it never occur to you

that what you are doing is actually

destructive to the 'city' that was

once already here, and that the one

you're supposedly 'building'  -  with

all these parking plans and security

people and overseers and rentals,

is, under one roof, setting out not

to create anything, but rather to

destroy and advance the ruination

of the town and place that actually

once DID here exist  -  for many

years and fine without you?' I wasn't

done by any means, and I was sort of

boiling over. There already was one

of these pitiful monstrocities ('monster

cities?') right down the road maybe

three miles along Route One southerly,

called Menlo Park Shopping Center,

or Mall, whatever they called it. Now

these two false behemoths were going

to go head-to-head with each other,

ripping and gouging and clogging

Route One and the surrounding

small-scale lands and roads. And

this idiot from Minnesota was here

to faciltate it all, as if WE, the locals,

didn't know any better?

-

There was no talk from him about what

his operation was really doing: I don't 

think he knew. Drainage, water, wetlands,

claypits, woods  -  it was all junk and

unused land to him. It was sellable and

stealable, ready to be built over for ends

of profitability and contracts galore. He

probably was already fully aware of 

where his next project would be. 

Memphis. Akron. Des Moines.

Philadelphia. Or Cherry Hill.

-

I then began going on to him how real

cities grow, they're not 'made.' How 

they're unruly and dirty and noisy and

have good parts and bad parts, and 

how they are NOT usually under the 

command and control of pencil 

pushers from somewhere else. And

how they don't just 'appear' but rather

start out, small and slowly, with a

lineage and a small history behind 

them, of characters and cranks and

local legends and writers and artists 

and troublemakers, even unwanteds 

and early slaves, and criminals and 

need and pain and anger, hunger and 

hurt, and I told him he could look all

this up, if he chose to, and learn first what

a city actually was, and what geograpy

really was, before he went spouting

off about his great, hard, work of

'building a city.' What a shithead. 

The account was taken from me and

it was turned over to a co-worker and

part owner of the business, who had 

a more level head and actually enjoyed

all this corporate stuff.

-

More on all that another time. Let's get

back to B. F. Packee's. Had anyone

taken that Packee's concept (if that's

what it was  -  to me it was more like 

one of those Rick Burns documentaries

on the Civil War or New York History  - 

the info's there, maybe, but it's made all

gauzy and unreal, connected to nothing

except its entertainment value) and

brought it to Princeton, I bet it could

have worked, held fast, and had a more

sensible attachment within the community.

There's a whole 'aspirational' quality to

a dumb concept like that. The locals of

Woodbridge had no connection to it,

and aspired to nothing pertaining to it

except maybe getting drunk or just

being entertained. A mule was the 

same as a John Bull to them. But

in Princeton there was a certain

elementary quality to the idea of

British heraldry and elitism, with

the attendant eccentricities, that 

could have held fast and taken off  

-  those 'Princetonians' would have 

actually thrived on that; and probably 

sold hand  towels and bush jackets 

with that logo emblazoned upon it. 

It 'fit' their concept already and 

wouldn't even have had then to be

squeezed in. Every third professorial

type already ascribed to that entire ethos.
Plus, of course, they drank like fish.

-

Too bad, the way things go  -  lines 

which run parallel never meet. Any 

of those riverboat gamblers who run 

on this stuff  -  mental card-sharks

always dealing  -  they come up with

these fake ideas and think they can just

turn them to gold because the populace

around them is an ignorant bunch of

fluffheads. Frank Greek to the rescue!