RUDIMENTS, pt. 233
Making Cars
The first time I saw Blackwood,
NJ, the town, that was a big
surprise. I'd never really been
anywhere, nor seen much else
except seashore stuff - that was
my father's constant big thing:
'Gotta' see the shore, go 'down
the shore' (a peculiar Jerseyism).
There was no getting around it;
it simply meant something
really vital to him - I, on the
other hand, hated it. People
go on and on about the romance
of the ocean - pounding waves
like the beat of a heart. They sit
there and stare at the sea. The
operative word there is 'stare,'
because that's all they're doing.
Staring 'at,' or staring 'out'. Big
difference, pretty much the same
way people do in a nuthouse -
they put you out on some big
porch, in a chair, nut cases all
in a row, and all that happens
is they stare out squinting. At
some imaginary interaction
with something. People along
the ocean do the same thing. Any
excuse to sit on some squalid
bench, usually in front of an
equally squalid fence or
barricade, on some municipal
pier or something boardwalk for
strollers. All the action is behind
them, anything interesting. People
and cars and events at their back,
but they're too anti-terrestrial
from looking at the sea to not
even realize it. Look at the clothes
many of those old geezers wear
too. Scary stuff; too-long retired,
they've just lost their mind and
can find nothing to fault in
sitting around in what amounts
to children's wear for geezers. All
those bright colors, pictures of
blazing sun, sagged and bleached
patches of disgusting skin, things
errantly growing everywhere.
Yeah, there's some romance in
thinking of all those different waves,
which somehow end up looking all
the same. These aren't exactly
surfers, you realize, looking for
pipes and swells and sprays and
wave-heads. Yeah, there's no
joy in the sand for me, and
there never was.
-
But, as I was saying, I'd never
much been anywhere else. Except
for a Scout camp in the high woods
of the Delaware Water Gap, it was
always ocean. Blackwood, on the
other hand, was southwestern NJ
inland some from about Exit 4 on
the NJ Turnpike. Pine Barrens
fringe stuff - long sandy out-turns,
sand, yes, but not the beach-sand
type of stuff. This was almost
dirt-like, but not dirt. It was a
hard-pack sand that made up
roads and small, local by-ways
to nowhere. It was 85 miles from
home, which back then seemed
like a continent away but now
amounts to nothing at all. A short
jaunt. Here and there was a
shack in the woods - low
pine-woods, nearly all the same
everywhere. Lakes and lowland
tubs of water, little sandtrap
gullies. Lots of water about. The
unmarked roads just ran out and
on. You really just never knew
what you'd find - a shack or two
here or there, someone's crazy
daughter, shut in for two years
and barely ever visiting school,
or some demented, incestuous sons
playing at your head with knives,
or some crazed shotgun varmint
hermit type, always hostile and a
angry. The seminary where I was
going was set in this. Blackwood,
a few miles off, was a small town.
Surrounded by farms, as usual,
disappearing in the NJ way which
eventually turns everything into
developed parcels. It was central,
a grouping of stores, small highway,
a road, and the rest. Once we
got settled in, we were only
allowed to visit the town once
a year - some day in January or
February. It was marked on the
events calendar as Town Day
or somesuch; a free day. We'd
walk the fields, cut through the
woods and some backyards and
that would bring us to this little
town. A 'Hoagie' shop. A few
little stores, a library, etc. Everyone
else was busy - workday, etc. -
and no one ever knew who we were
anyway. All of a sudden some 70 kids
in the course of a day swarming
through their little hamlet. Wearing
black suits, ties, and leather shoes,
no less. It must have looked crazy.
We'd get a sandwich, sit around with a
Coke, walk all over the place. Uneventful,
all. But it was something to do and
it was different, for us. Going back
there now, everything is different.
The roads are widened, places have
been built up, most all of the local
farms are gone, and even the old
seminary s now a county college.
It's as if new highways went
everywhere, and with them the
requisite pit-stops, gasoline, 7'11's,
Wendy's and all that. The big,
large stores, and the small.
-
The unrecognizability factor is the
biggest thing. What once was quiet
and strange, even distant and sedate,
is now just another hell-hole riot
of cheap, fast commerce. Everyone
buzzing around in little cars, no one
wishing to wait for anything, more
that 30 seconds, buses, people,
times and schedules. A real
mess. South Jersey's no real
peach of a place anyway - all
suburban'd out - but they've
only made it worse by stripping
it of any identity whatsoever.
Just like my time there, I've
lost the point of why I ever
brought this up. America is what
it is and does, and this calamitous
jumping off cliffs has always been
their way. You start with a lot.
But constantly chipping it away,
under the guise of one thing or
another, and you end up with that
lethal corridor of mucus and Hell
that now brings you to Blackwood.
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