10,634. RUDIMENTS, pt. 256

RUDIMENTS, pt. 256

Making Cars

In something like 1976, 'round

about then, a local author named

Gail Sheehy wrote a book entitled

'Passages.' It was, at the time, said

to be (it wasn't at all) one of those

groundbreaking books part of the

burgeoning 'Women's Movement.'

That was all hype, it empowered

no one. The fact that it had been

written by a woman was traded

upon as an example of some sort

of 'new precociousness' by which

women were to take it all back.

There were plenty of signals

missed here, and the media hype

just went on and on. They'd

'created' their own character,

and they were running with it.

The book itself was a series of

interviews with some 30 or so

couples, married, etc., undergoing

their mid-life exchanges. Being

discontent, but living with it.

'Getting' plenty at home, but it

still not being enough. The set-up

was easy, a puffball, and an easy

play for an author. What was left

out was that she was Clay Felkner's
(the Editor of New York Magazine),

wife, the times were ripe, New York

Magazine's slimeball journalism

was pushing all this anyway, and

most females in those years, thanks

mostly to 'Our Bodies, Our Selves,'

were examining carefully their own

nether regions with mirrors and

group sessions. Maybe grope too,

what do I know. This was all undue

bullshit praise, a carnival of the

animals, if you will, being pushed

by fanatics. Manipulation. What

was just as equally bizarre and also

underway, about 1974, and by

the same people, was this

perfect exaltation of some crap

called Charlie's Angels, and its

three, rather ludicrous, stars. One

of them in particular was a gigantic

pig of nothingness whose poster, for

about a year and more, graced every

wall, window, and store, where it

could be peddled. Nipples. Big

horse teeth smile. Some sort of

oddball bathing suit pose. Farrah

Fawcett was the name. It was

ludicrous, the sort of cultural abuse

one couldn't avoid. It was at every

turn, and from both sides, as I've

just explained, the same people

were covering both angles. (I don't

know, could this be a Charlie's

Angles joke too?)...Gail Sheehy

was a piece of crap, and so was

Farrah Fawcett. By these words,

we live. The fact of the matter, the

real fact, was that that was the way

they wanted the '70's to be, and they

got it. Hideous stuff.

-

As I've mentioned here before,

this period of the mid 70's

presented me with the breaking

down (finally?) of all that hippie

crap which had just before been

everywhere. Elmira itself was

flooded with airheads; peasant

blouses, beads, funny glasses,

family grains, oats,  and granola,

chanting, 'natural' this and that

from childbirth to orgasms to

tofu bathing. Communes and

small knots of the hip still

lingered around, breaking up

everywhere. The local Elmira

McDonald's had somehow

developed into a recruitment

center of Qaddafi fans. The

Libyan guy, Muhammar, back

then, was seen somehow as an

enlightened guru who'd be

leading us all to Nirvana. Weird

thing is, he was nothing of the

sort. I never knew where this all

came from, but people did fall

for it, and gave money constantly:

Always a money-collection table

out front of McDonald's, manned

by one or another disjointed, weak

hippie leftover. Forty years later,

even weirder, our own government

killed him. Goes to show.

-

Of all places, Elmira. There wasn't 
anything in Elmira worth befitting 
leftist politics, if ever. Qadaffi fit in

there like a horse fits on flypaper.

That one always baffled me, but

up there in the hills of nowhere, the

funniest things went on; things got

twisted around. A North African

potentate, some sort of Muslim thing,

spouting anti-American rhetoric

constantly. Hell, that could have

probably been cheered and accepted

up the road in Ithaca and Cornell.

But Elmira? Neither the who nor

the why ever fit. There were two

hippie clothing stores right there,

'Glad Rags,' and 'Fat City.' Plus,

back then, local Elmira boy Tommy

Hilfilger was running his own little

clothing store, ('People's Place'),

a mere step away, then, from just

being a tee-shirt store  -  and then

he hit the big time, a little later.

I never asked him about that one,

how it  happened. The way it went

off, it was almost Qaddafi-like.

-

There was another guy around,

here and there. I never much got

to the bottom of him. last name,

I think, was Cohon. Then he later

changed t to Peter Coyote, or it

was already changed, I forget.

One of those drug-induced

peyote-enlightenment names

from a seer or something. I

never cared much for that

stuff, and it seemed always,

each time, to have a Jewish

origination. I never knew what

those folks have against religion.

Like the rest, changed name,

altered specs, big ideas of

working off the labors of others,

he too became famous  -  he's

a big-deal actor now, does

narrations and voice-overs too,

for lots of those intense, lefty

documentaries and such.

Movies too. Big time stuff; he's

also written two or three books.

At this time, I'd still had my

memories of the Diggers in NYC,

and all that Free Store stuff we

were doing, and Coyote and

others, like Emmet Grogan,

they'd founded the Free Store,

Diggers idea, for the USA

anyway, out in San Francisco,

in hippie heyday. They'd

occasionally be around, and

from what I recall, Peter Coyote

and a bunch of others had some

east coast dealings going on with

a big-time but then-faltering

commune on some Peter Fink

fellow's old family farm and

lands in eastern Pennsylvania.
It had once been a really large,
Jewish farmstead, from NY 
people. That was back in the old,
agrarian 1930's with the Fink family.

Like I said, all of this stuff was

falling apart by then, the Tinker-Toy

Wonderland of Hippie Kingdoms

everywhere had fallen away to

nothing, and anyway there were

all of a sudden like way too many

8 and 9 year old kids running on

empty. Problems began immediately,

over schooling, parental placement,

and even the solutions needing to be

created for plain, old abandonment.

 Big new problems no one had ever

thought about back when Mommy

was flapping her legs open and

one Daddy or another was flapping

his stuff around. Short-sighted

hippies; a dime a dozen.

-

So, this Coyote guy was running

a lot of the deal for a while on

Fink's commune. A far-off, pretty

large old farm, nestled somewhere

between two PA towns that pretty

much bordered NJ too at the area

of the Water Gap, on the Delaware.

Rugged, high, rocky land that then

broke out into nice, soft, green

fields. The place names (not that

'maps' mattered) were Portland

and Marshall's Creek. Both places

are still there. It's the sort of once-

meandering countryside that is no

more, in most places around here.

I can still taste all that in that air.

They had these little caravans of

junk vehicles, for supplies, with

people walking next to them. A
group of ramshackle buildings, a 
large barn, dirt lanes, and a gigantic
old, rundown farmhouse. The

little town of Portland had its own

tiny version of hardware and supply

stores. Now it's mostly nothing

but a tattoo place, an abandoned

rail terminus for something, and

a strange thrift/antique store where

I bought a six-dollar jacket some

years ago that I still have. Somewhere.

The owner was one crazy, old man

who had 1950's glasses on a 1950's

nose for sure. I just surely wanted

to ask him, or any one of the super-

tough-slick biker dudes at the tattoo

shop, and the babes there too, if,

just perhaps, anyone would know

of Coyote, or Fink, or the commune,

or the old farm. I chickened out;

bought my jacket, and left.

-

It's all nothing anyway, just of

interest to me. I've found, now, 
mostly, no one know anything 
about what's not right in front
of their nose.The thing is, material

like this always leads me to other

material, and each 'link' then goes 

to other things. There was a cement 

factory once, in Portland. Which is 

from where the town took its name.

I used to swear that Portland Cement

was developed there, but found out I

was wrong; that was some British guy,

Aspdin, in Dorset, and the reference

was to Portland England. Some very

caustic, lye-ridden, powdered stone.

In the 1960's, I never knew about

any of this stuff. It's was a different

world for me. Edward Marshall, he

was another guy, early Pennsylvania

settler, Indian hunter, finally turned

into a peacemaker of sorts to get the

area of his lands pacified with the

Indians. Marshall's Creek is named

after him. Eveything thereabouts 

was so unsettled, and for a long time, 

that even after this Marshall guy

thought it was all worked out and 

he'd come to landed and good 

agreements with the Indians, he

came back one day, after being away

for a bit scouting the areas around

what's now Marshall's Creek, and

his entire family had been butchered

to death, killed, and his homestead

destroyed. By the Indians. The

myths around there run deep.

Talk about 'Passages' for sure.

They don't make them like they

used to.