RUDIMENTS, pt. 242
Making Cars
I was pretty fast, fast at most
everything I did. In one of my
first jobs, NJ Appellate, the guy,
Ron, told me to slow down.
Flat out, just like that. He said
'Working fast is good, but good's
not worth it if the accuracy's gone.'
By which he'd meant to say, take
a deep breath and watch what
you're doing. I took his advice,
and from then on rather enjoyed
my own, set, pace. It was rather
funny though, in light of the fact
that this was the same guy who
would hand me the keys to his
new Ford and tell me to get down
to the Courthouse docket room in
Philadelphia's City Hall before
it closed in forty-five minutes.
(The material had to be time and
date stamped for arrivals, and
most things just made it or were
'paid for' to be back-dated. Yes,
business is crooked everywhere).
So, behind the wheel I'd get and
at breakneck speed I'd terrorize
my way all the way to 'Philly.'
It was OK to be fast sometimes.
By the way, in the same way
that the locals in San Francisco
never say 'Frisco' and detest those
who do, in Philadelphia no one
ever says 'Philly' - even if the
cream cheese people say it in
their advertising, and the Philly
Cheese-Steak people do in theirs.
It's usually enough to get you
bopped upside the head. I began
thinking about all this as I drove.
It occurred to me that in my own
home environment - being lower
class, with Dad a laborer and a guy
who just 'produced' endlessly, I'd
never been brought up on 'quality.'
In that sense, working at my first
job like that the only idea I had
was to please the boss, and that
pleasing, to my thought, or my
non-thought, simply meant giving
as much out as 'finished' as
possible, forgetting the accuracy
or quality. It was 'quantity, not
quality,' for sure. It was pretty
simple, and stark, but it was
the only way I'd been brought
up. Now it seems so obvious
as to look stupid. A peon, a
slave, only wants to please,
and if pleasing comes from
giving more and more, at
breakneck speed, so be it.
The erroneous idea was that
the more you did, the better
notice you'd elicit. Not so.
Accuracy and quality were
more important; but I'd
never been shown or taught
that. It would have taken my
father a bit of self-reflection
to grasp that and turn it along
to me. But, he was never that
kind of guy anyway and I just
don't think he did those sorts
of things. My aunt almost
always refused to drive in
any car of which he was the
driver, because, as she'd put it,
'Andy, you drive like a cowboy.'
I'd joke with her, later on, 'Hey,
Aunt Mae, you should drive some
day with my mother, over train
tracks; that's fun too.' (Referring
to the train wreck). Whenever my
father would build anything -
although it got done and worked
and all that, whether a closet
he'd build into a corner, or a
doorway he'd install, or molding
or whatever, it was always
over-sized, heavy-looking,
too large, and just never quite
exact. Never a thing of beauty,
just of a ham-handed, large and
heavy, function. To this day I
dislike large, bulky objects.
-
In some ways, I think that's
why, early-on I took a turn
for the cerebral, with Art,
writing, thought, poetry,
reading and philosophy and
all that stuff. Stuff which made
him cringe - but he'd exposed to
me the 'wrongness,' for myself',
of the physical. I was no good
with 'objects,' had no feel or
finesse for 'things' and wasn't
concerned with the time it took
to properly measure, scale, cut
and plane. He also needed noise,
and the social, and other people
around. I hated all that. I would
revel in solitude, sitting at the
big, empty, night kitchen table,
drawing or reading, or whatever.
He'd come in from watching TV,
where the others were, completely
befuddled by my acts. Why I would
do these things, why wasn't I in
the other room, watching Bonanza,
or Rawhide or, whatever it was.
To me that was all large, stupid
stuff, bounded by logic and law.
To me, all this other stuff, the
small points of my life, were
without boundaries, and open.
-
By the time I was 10 or 11, I
already knew I wasn't much for
this world. I shared little of it,
understood less, and had interest
in even less than that. My terms
of words and poetry, by 9 years
old already, were the strange
and obscure names I'd see on
baseball cards. People (I thought
they were 'old' then, now I see
they were piddling kids) with
names such as Clayton, Derek,
Cletus, Elston, Marv, and
more. That was a whole, other,
poetic word of possibility to me.
Faraway farm boys, hokey, and
from other places for sure. Add to
that the multi-layered enticements
of National Geographic Magazine,
which back in those days was
everywhere - lobby, waiting
room, office, wherever. It's a
little difficult to imagine now
how that was, once, the only
gateway out to the rest of the
world to someone who versed
in either other, far-off places,
or the distant lands of global
travel. For kids such as myself,
that glimpse of things was
mostly all we got. The way
the world goes today, kids
watching whatever they want,
on phones while in trains, buses
or cars, it twists my mined just
to think of what world-view
they must carry around. 'Every
distance is not real,' as it has
been put. If distance, like
quantity, grows large and
bulky, and attainable and
everywhere with ease, what
happens to the small,
local stuff of 'quality?'
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