RUDIMENTS, pt. 258
Making cars
Since this is all sort of a
look-back, I'm not often
shy about saying what I
say. It is, after all, a
documentation of an
American life. I found
that grime wasn't really
so bad. There was a good,
solid year, in all honesty,
in which I had no washing
of my hair and only the
most minimal of soap.
Including shower and/or
bath. You learn to live with
all that. In addition, there's
a lot to be said for not
having to continually be
changing clothing. What's
serviceable is good, and
it stays on until it's not. A
person soon learns the feel
of things - the upper thighs
of pants feeling greasy, the
cuffs fraying, that certain
smell of clothing too. I can't
remember about shoes except
that I do recall once or twice
raiding the left-behind things
of the bound-for-Canada AWOL
escapees we pushed along on
their northward journey. (For
a while it had all the earmarks
of the Underground Railroad,
except being for deserters and
not just runaway slaves -
even though these military
people were, in essence -
just that). The food part of
it all was the easiest. My
friend Jim Tomberg could
always be visited at work for
some sort of food, and in the
very beginning, at that ice-cream
and hamburger joint next to the
Fillmore, there was plenty of
junk to eat. But it was a little
difficult being surreptitious.
Plus, the people there were
strangely annoying. I've made
mention before of a lot of this,
but it was all these weird guys,
4 or 5 anyway, who were pretty
vicious dudes, or at least their
cover-stories were. That big
giant Mexican guy in Colorado,
for instance, who'd just run from
killing his wife by throwing her
out from a speeding car on a
mountain pass. He was running
from the law, hiding out - but
blabbing all this too. I never
figured that out. Maybe they
got points in some killer-society
for following protocol about
spilling their own stories.
-
Some of the sweetest people I
ever met, I'll have to admit,
were these people undergoing
the worst times of their lives.
The runaway military kids,
basically all my age or a few
years older - and all just Vietnam
fodder and they knew it - had
fear and sadness, and anxiety, in
their eyes. There really was a
time in America when people
made willing choices to flee,
to leave the country, for what
they didn't know. It was just
movement for the sake of that.
Most people would say, 'Canada?
Oh, yeah. I've been there; we
visited Niagara Falls.' This was
all a bit different, This was flight,
and the funny thing was, just a
few years later, by 1972, Canadian
Toronto had become one of the
hottest and hippest cities around.
I often think now about some of
these people I met - wondering
what became of them, if they later
re-entered the USA, took up other
lives, maybe stayed in Canada?
Found what they were after? Of
course, at that moment, no one
had a clue as to what they were
after except escape. It's a very
strange feeling to realize your
own 'country' is forcing a situation
upon you, of which the end result
is exile. Nowadays the 'Military'
is a choice and well paid, with
benefits and bonuses and an
entire array of surprisingly
evil means of enticing poor
young minds into service -
to kill and maim, remotely, or
in person. All that 'employer of
last resort stuff.' It's amazing how
it's not seen for what it is : child
abuse. But, whatever. This was
one's own country, out of the blue,
forcibly selecting you for that
privilege. Death. Murder. Killing.
All skillfully woven into the
propagandistic motivation that
you were saving or defending
your country and countrymen
and 'freedom' too. Quite a crock
of garbage, but a heady milkshake
to be forced to glug. I faced the
same thing myself, except that I
turned criminal, in my way.
Safe-house, stealing, running
people to Canada, formulating
mishaps, 'comforting' people,
putting people up (16 at a time)
at 509, and more. Until it all
became too dangerous and
too much. But that was my
response and I pitched in with
gusto, along with the others.
-
There was a nerve-gas at work.
None of us knew it, but it was an
almost self-destructive concoction
of pith, spite, and anger. Sitting
in 509 e11th street, there were
some nights I was scared shitless.
I'd just arrived, barely a month
or two in, and was easily and
already up to my neck in trouble.
I'd sit there as an 18 year old, and
realize that in this very place,
this strange, horrible, run-down
tenement, generations of earlier
immigrants had lived, produced
families, probably slaved too, at
piecework, cutting garments and
all, and died (where did people
go, back then, to die, if not at
home?), to raise their meager,
tenement families. Seventy-five
years later, in 1967, there I
was, usurping their holy space,
somehow, for my own pitted
and broken ends. The modern
day, I figured, was really
disfigured, and I was in the
the middle of it. What possible
use was I? From Avenel, NJ
to 11th Street New York, was
a tale of woe and grief, wrapped
in a sort of Wanderjahr* of my
very own. Death and the police
intervened.
-
Sometimes now, as I sit and this
window writing and typing, I
see out and it's a moon - new,
full, waxing, waning. Or it's
another of those murmurations
of birds that we often get here
in Spring and Fall. Great swoops
of them, two, three hundred little
birds at a time, noisy with chatter,
swirling and dipping almost as
one. A great noisy tip of birds,
rolling in the flat sky. And then
they land, engorging a tree with
birds, like black olives, chattering,
on each limb. I never knew these
things existed; no one teaches
you this stuff, nor was any of it
ever mentioned. Avenel then
knew nothing of it, and of course
my situation in New York gave
me none of that. I don't even
know if it existed in 1967, as it
seemed the entire natural world
was dead.,
-
During this time my motto was,
or could have been anyway,
'Remain in Place.' I don't know
why I just didn't disappear, or
kill myself. I always wanted to
hop a freighter and just be gone.
I would have worked my way
anywhere : Distant lands, faraway
Asia or Africa, Australia, Cape
Horn. California, Maine, or
anywhere. I was solid, dumb
and stupid, all at once. I
remained stubbornly fixed
in place, a real do-nothing.
My mind was never right;
I never found fit. Girls passed
me by and I was often beside
myself with frenzy. The guy
I was sharing the apartment
with, Andy Bonamo, had
nearly a different girl a week,
right there, on the floor. It
soon enough became nothing
for me to see nakedness
everywhere. Immodesty ruled,
also freaking me out. Very weird.
He was dealing drugs regularly,
and the money was everywhere,
strewn about. People were coming
and going all the time; bodies
asleep everywhere. Andy kept
cowboy boots in the bathroom
doorway area, one for nickels,
another for dimes, another for
quarters. It was sort of 'help
yourself with honesty, but don't
ever take more than necessary.'
I guess it worked. Hippie bliss.
-
That sad little apartment was quite
something else. I wish I had it now.
The kitchen sink doubled as a bathtub;
if you wanted. Like in the old days,
there was a hinged piece of plywood
that you could flip down for modesty,
(modesty? what was that?) while you
sat there, naked, in the tub. Three
plus feet up off the ground. It
was something like you's see in
an old 'cowboy' movie, with the
trail guy finally getting his back
scrubbed by Mrs. Maytail, the
proprietor of the rooming house.
What they called a bathroom (in
this place I'd guess it was an
afterthought) was a 2x4 room,
with a toilet and a sink, and a
pull-chain. Black and white tiled
floor; all ancient. no window, no
air, no venting. There wasn't even
much to do except stand up and
sit. Stand up and sit? What kind
of a command was that, I'd
wonder. I'd just come from a
land of small but new homes,
and even the crummy bathrooms
had dressing counters, mirrors
and a sliding vanity or medicine
cabinet. This didn't even have a
tray for soap.
* Wanderjahr - German, meaning
'wander year' - a post-school period
when Euro-kids took to wandering the
continent.
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