RUDIMENTS, pt. 247
Making Cars
Early on, my father started
with the Lionel toy model-train
stuff. I had no interest but he
was ready to go on it. I think
in the early/mid 1950's it may
have been something underscored
and promoted in those 'raising your
kids' books (except I don't think my
parents had any of that stuff, if they
even knew about it), or the post-war
guys, perhaps, were way into power:
of coal and steel running locomotives.
My wife says it was all probably
nothing but good-will and well
meant, but I'm not sure. She's
always too sunny anyway. There
are numerous problems with the
entire scenario. I think it was
to inculcate the idea of controls
and listening, following orders,
in us. In essence, it was meant
to be destructive to our individual
selves, and instead promote our
mass-character of timetables, rank,
control and straight lines. None of
the roadways on these train-set tables
ever meandered or curved. In the
the roadways on these train-set tables
ever meandered or curved. In the
same way that fire departments
are, at heart, nothing more than
militant organizations with severely
structured formats, so too I think
these railroad sets were also
militaristic. Some men just really
want that stuff. I know, in my father's
case, he was nutso over it all. Not
one huge piece of plywood would
do. As a base he had to have two!
And make an L format out of it,
no less - bridges, tunnels, lights,
little houses and businesses, signs
and billboards, a fake lake and a fake
river, fake trees and shrubs, even
fake, mowed lawns. Nothing ever
'grew' so of course the idea of Nature
was never put across; grasses and
bushes remained severe and trimmed.
"Nature' was portrayed as something
for iron and steel and fire-power
to tread over, willy-nilly, cutting
through hill and dale. One or two
fake rises, hills and a mountain
(tunneled through) meant nothing.
There was no discourse ABOUT
Nature, just the pride in this seeming
mastery of it. Of course, no train
set-up worth its salt would ever have
shown the truth - fetid runoff pools,
junkyards, acid ponds, leakage,
wrecked cars, tires and dead fish. It
all had to be pretty, pleasant and
positive, without even being realized
as that. I, however, finally realized it
as propaganda. I mean to say, it was
no stretch of the imagination then
for me to understand what was
being played out with Barbie dolls
and Patty Play-Pals for the girls.
Pretty much the same disgusting
pattern. And I say 'pattern' for a
reason. in Elmira, years later, I
got mixed in with a group-home
bunch with whom my wife was
working - they took retarded kids
and declared they were giving them
an occupational and social leg-up
- so they could make a few pennies
doing odd, weird, retarded-people
tasks, like taking buttons off of junk
clothing, or separating gigantic bins
of goodwill-drop off clothes. They
called these lessons 'patterning.' I
didn't like that phrase one bit and
was really against what she was
doing there. Even though there's
a supposed church-state separation
thing, this had something to do with
the Elmira Presbyterian Synod she
was hooked up with at a downtown
church. I just kept away. Patterning,
just like these train sets, was nothing
more in my eyes than indoctrination
and the infusing of propaganda to
make silent, mindless automatons
out of people who'd otherwise be
that anyway. I'd just scratch my
head, realizing that my own 6-year
old kid was in school daily, and
by force, undergoing the very
same process, just called 'schooling'.
There was something amiss in the
Emerald City.
-
When my father got into this
train-set thing, he just assumed
I'd go along. And I did, not having
much choice, and not really caring
either way. Adults were just bizarre
creatures to me, never saying what
they really meant, worried about
niceties and parties and food and
things. Always wanting you to be
dressed properly, and going out
correctly and with nothing amiss
or off-kilter. One of that 'patterned'
herd, to be sure. As if any of it
mattered. I realized, and it took
a while, but it did eventually hit
me, that it was all about sex. [I'd
better state there, that I myself had
a son, and never did trains with
him, and never worried over sex
with him, meaning his behavior,
training, reticence, etc. So I may
be, in a way, just disproving my
case here, but who cares that either?
No one really reads this stuff.] The
parents were in fear for their lives
that these 'kids' of theirs were soon
to be breeders, fornicators and
driven by hormones. Absolutely
everything that was done - all
the things I just mentioned, school,
clothing, dance, play, games, Little
League, Scouting, trips, and the rest,
was done to avoid or forestall that
issue. The entire world was one
psychotic mess. Sending phallic
symbols everywhere - missiles,
torpedos, bombs, rockets - cars
with sex-fins and breast-like
bumper protuberances. It was all
a post-war madhouse, and these
people. all the parents, were
cracking up. 'President' Eisenhower
was like an 8-year blank. He was a
generic, plain, most general version
of any parent-uncle-grandpa you'd
imagine. Safety. Patterned like
an Army automaton. Beware
that wedge, for sure.
-
Just like the girl who has the biggest,
splashiest wedding, and her mother,
and all the pizazz and gowns and
hoo-hah, is the one with the most
shame and trepidation over the fact
of publicly acquiescing in her sex,
and having the gigantic splashy
wedding to distract or cover that
unseemly fact up, so too did my
father, our parents, an entire adult
generation, keep busy and crazed
distracting children and teens from
the facts of their own crazy, new
hormones. It was fantastic, and it
was crazy. In my own house, it was
the trains that did it - then boats,
and fishing. In that order. All
vapid distractions, which I really
disliked. The basement train setup
became immense and overdone,
painted backdrops were erected,
a long, elevated trestle section
over which the train road, and
always these had to be the full-size
Lionels. None of the slap-happy
HO Scale crap for him. There were
all sorts of train cars - coal cars,
auto-transport cars, automated barrel
cars which, on a particular siding,
would have the little barrels neatly
shaken off them by an electric
conveyor thing. A crane-car.
Some sort of water-feeder
storage car, or whatever it
was. And, of course, I already
mentioned all the fake landscapes
and the billboards. We had a
veritable kingdom going of
destroyed natural-world stuff
and we were supposed to revel
in it? Never figured a scrap of
this out.
-
Here's the worst of it. My father
is dead now, long time. He treasured
this ridiculous train set. When I
moved out to my middle of nowhere
country property and house and barn,
he drives up one day, a 5 hour trip,
mind you, with all this stuff in his
station wagon. To give to me. It
was his idea that, for our own son,
we'd want to have it to erect there.
He left it all behind. To be honest,
I took it all and stacked it vertically
alongside the wall of one of our
outbuildings, where it all just sat.
One day, my friends from Inman
Avenue come out to visit (they
used to come up now and then
and stay some days), and sees
the trains, remembers the whole
deal, and asks to take them away.
I said sure, go ahead. Problem being,
they were the across-the-street
neighbors from my father's house.
My father sees them being unloaded.
He runs over, makes a scene, and
demands them back. (Eventually
they ended up in my brother's
possession and the whole mess
got destroyed and thrown out in
an ugly divorce in which his
ex-wife heave-ho'd all the stuff
he owned). Oh well. Brutal all
around, probably especially on
my part. But you gotta' live with
this stuff, and you can't ever live
it down either. I'm patterned
that way.
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