RUDIMENTS, pt. 221
Making Cars
'Destroying the future as we
honor the past.' That was
always my own little catch
phrase for what usually
happens. Like when a guy
comes along and develops
75 acres, by putting up
80 houses, or whatever -
sewers, drains, roads - and
all the town guys on the
approval boards and all
that, they give him the nod
for anything he wants. He
builds his houses, kicks back
the money necessary to the
various party committees and
voter groups so as to keep all
those guys in power, stay under
the radar with payoffs and all.
It's done every day. It's all clean
and it's all secret. Then when he's
all done, and has cut down every
tree around that ever was except
maybe for the last three remaining
oak trees, he turns and calls the
place, on the sign, 'Oak Estates,'
or 'Slumbering Shade Arms' or
some really stupid thing like that.
And then, to make it all worse yet,
the town comes by and puts up a
stinking little sign that says, '...On
this site once stood Hectorama
Farms, an active social center of
the old town, which for many years
served as center and parade grounds
for civic activities. It is said that
here, once, George and Martha
Washington strolled beneath the
bowers.' Stuff like that really
galls me. And people fall for it
all the time. It's like reverse
engineering. You pick the place
and the era you wish to evoke,
tear it all to pieces, destroy, build
and pave all over it, and only then
get all righteous about what once
was there as you re-engineer the
entire category for what the need
is for the now. Which need is,
then, usually, just a bunch of
lacy-drawer fat-cats raking in
the dough. I could never figure
that out.
-
It was never like that in Avenel,
nor anywhere I ever saw either
at the seminary grounds - which
were old pine-barrens sand roads
mostly leading either to a dumps
in the scrub woods or nowhere at
all - some meandering, wild-run
sandy car path with, here and there,
a few slump-bungalows or old,
tall and rickety houses from farm
days. In Avenel, nothing very
special was around at all, and there
simply wasn't really any history to
speak of. I don't think even the
Lenapes came here. All there was
was an occasional farmhouse or
some large old house in the
swampy marsh or atop a little rise,
and you'd maybe hear a story about
the old family which had lived there.
There were a few American-Indian
families living in ancient, old houses
down in the low areas of Blair Road -
the old version of Blair Road, which
is nothing like now. Running a
paper route through there was
Hell. Wooded turnoffs, dirt roads.
Little short dead-end paths that
came to a halt at an isolated
house surrounded by twisted
old limbs and branches, cars here
and there, just left, junk all over,
and some mute-looking kids who
just stared. I never even saw
half of them in school. Why
they even got the newspaper
was beyond me. I'd just throw
it into the yard and be gone.
How the usual guy ever collected,
to get the money every two weeks
(I was just an Avenel fill-in sub
kid for delivery), I never knew.
No one ever seemed friendly,
nor like the kind who'd cooperate
with a schedule. Used to call all
the people who lived down there,
for newspaper purposes, the
'Way-Outs'. Catch phrase for
meaning the people who lived
way out down there. Funny thing
was, somewhere out there too
was a School 5 teacher, living
alone, with her son my age,
Paul. The last name was
Gasperi. He seemed a real
mama's boy too. We never talked
much about anything, certainly
the subject of where or how
he and his mother lived
never was a topic.
-
So all the rest of my life there
never really was a point of this
or that being historical. I never
heard of it - there are other places,
not quite so ripped and torn, like
Scotch Plains and Cranford, and
Westfield, other larger places all
over the state, which carried grandly
a huge historic backlog of events
and tales. Besides the usual factors
of old Newark and Elizabeth. In
the early run of things, colonial
America and before, those were
really, really big places, transfer
points for river-floated cargo, and
freight to be off-loaded for overland
and inland transport. Big-time stuff
in a world much different, one that
was run by waterways, not highways.
Boats, not cars and trucks. That's
was, where some real history was,
but all that's gone now. People look
at me like I'm crazy when I mention
Mosey's Creek (Linden), and the
port, out at Elizabeth. Everything
is dead now, from the real old past,
and people just don't believe a thing.
-
It used to be dirt and all that mattered;
water-borne travel and direction. It's
all different now, roads changed
everything. You've got northbound
routes that run 15 miles southbound
to eventually get you northward.
People running northeast on a highway
to go south. Very weird, but the old
ways of clinging to the land and
treading over the geography of
where the old paths took you, or
of following the lines of the river
and waterways - that very natural
and sometimes spiritual connection
to place - that's all gone. And today's
world doesn't get any of that at all.
-
Meanwhile, over in New York City, a
person could trip over history at nearly
every turn. The location , or the 'place
where' anyway. Everything else about it
is long gone, probably built over five
different times already and each time
larger and stronger and taller than the
time before. They don't really make
a big deal out of any of that, certainly
never replacing things and naming the
new spot after the old. That's so blatant
as to get laughed at. Maybe that's some
sort of respect after all. But newcomers
know nothing. If I tell someone entering
the Amalgamated Gopher's Bank, with
a beehive for a logo, that this was once
the site of Aaron Burr's fruit orchard,
they'd go even more blank than they
were and probably look at me like I
was crazy and say, 'What? Get the hell
out of my way you hairy, freaky bastard.
Go back where you belong....'
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