RUDIMENTS, pt. 260
Making Cars
I sat around here today trying
to determine if, in the writing
of this chapter, I was describing
other people or just myself.
And I'm still not sure, and it's
going to be difficult anyway
to put any of this across. I
don't know if all this is a
universal experience, with
something like this, or of this
nature, going on for everyone,
or if it, perhaps, was just my
strange family, or IF, in fact,
it was just me. Congressman
Tip O'Neil used to say 'all
politics is local,' which was
a Boston way of speaking of
graft. "That guy wants his
warehouse built on contaminated
land; take his money. Let him
have it built; we get his and his
people's votes forever." It was
O'Neil's way of saying that the
politics of Washington DC - all
the Red Russia and Red China
stuff was fine, but that didn't get
you elected, or re-elected. What
counted was the local scene, and
shaving the laws for the right
guys. I want to here say, 'All
misery is universal.' So, let me
here get started; and I get no
one's votes, nor want any.
-
The mid 1960's, I'll attest, were
vainly gruesome; mystically
horrid. As if the sceptre and the
lash of Satan had finally landed
in the guise of, say, Santa Claus
and his ridiculous reindeer and
elves. The longevity of that crank
story was long past its due date
back to the Library of Hades,
but it apparently never got there.
Year after year, the same ten
thousand suburbanites making
up Woodbridge and Avenel, and
everywhere, times 10,000 too,
were doing the same things :
stringing lights on their homes,
bushes, gutters, sheds, gates and
lamp-posts. (Worse than that, in
the dept of NOW! - people do it
to the fronts of their cars...).
It hasn't really gotten any better,
just more vain and more stupid.
Being sure of a fidelity to the
Christmas story and season
showed a sure infidelity to
any level of Reality, but it
went on. The low buzz
underneath everything was
'Bobby? Oh I want to ask,
how's he doing in Vietnam?'
That was undercurrent mystery
#1. Another was the falling apart
of the Catholic Church - that
same weaselly tendency that was
behind most of this, aligning
itself now with business interests
to peddle the largest commercial
hoax on its own people that has
ever been concocted, anywhere.
Pope John XXIII was underway
with all his ecumenical council
stuff, bringing everyone in, with
all that hugging and kissing of
the vernacular, and then altering
both the format and the language
of the age-old Catholic Mass
traditions. If the church leaves
its sense of being a 'Church' and
instead aligns itself with the
secular power, than what good
is it? I'm not re-writing history
here, just, rather, explaining a
bit of it. This had all become
Avenel to me, by age late-16,
and my more-advanced mind,
frankly, was ready to be rid of
it. And of my family too. It's a
difficult scene to live through,
and eventually, if you do get
yourself settled out, it all comes
back to you, your place and your
rightful attachments, but for those
years it's difficult. I was cut and
lost. Without anchor. Drifting.
-
Part of the American myth, a la
Huck Finn and all those other
iconic drifter things - Kerouac,
On the Road, Easy Rider, Catcher
In the Rye - has always been the
idea of unfettered, new, possibility;
the breaking away of old bounds
and ties setting out. The drifters,
the clowns and hobos and circus
people. All that 'outside the law'
stuff. They make films of these
images - Badlands, Bonnie and
Clyde and all - and build
mythologies around it - the
runner, the loose man, the new
renown. I'd only wished I had
some of that. I was, instead,
pretty much enslaved. Again,
the church, which had just
flipped its coin and let the
secular world win, was in
on this all, the source of the
betrayal. Before this, it was,
being a Catholic, at least
something of a hidden, more
magical, secretive, cult. All
the gibberish, those statues
and weird names and feasts.
Saints for this and saints for
that. Edicts against sex, but
allowances for you to screw
if your only intent was - you
promised - to make more little
Catholics. Only then were your
flying seed pods acceptable.
Now they'd thrown it all away,
and everyone was just like
everyone else in a false
bonhomie of peck and kiss
backslapping celebration.
People began attending
church looking like beach
bums, hippies, or slobs.
There was even a section
of seating, in St. Andrews,
labeled : 'Girls dressed
and looking like hookers.'
It was always filled. Special
seating for that shit. Everything
had fallen apart. Giuseppe Roncalli?
Pope John XXIII? Hey, have you
ever looked carefully at a face-
picture of a Pope? Any Pope?
They all look like Evil Incarnate.
Dude, you compromise with
Caesar, you're dead meat.
-
What really galled me - and thank
God I did have New York City
to run to - was how the same
old rancid crap was always
underway in these little towns,
like Avenel. Wrecking and ruining
kids' lives. I almost wished to be
a mass murderer myself. My Father,
and my Mother too - I won't just pin
it on him - were farcical enough to
continue this junk, year after year.
One year, my father, heavily wiring
and lighting the front shrubbery
of the house, had a yew bush, at
least 18 feet high, go up in flames
from a short or something. It was
pretty hilarious. I fully expected
fire department geeks with their
Sergeant Hardy uniforms and
clipboards to be parading around
enforcing new anti-home-lighting
edicts; but it never happened, the
continuation of the base fantasies
being too important. Take at look at
the photo of Christmas cheer for
that year, '65 or 66, whichever.
Five miserable, nervous, unsure
faces, plus one disastrously
suicidal-looking Santa. Can you
believe this stuff was once really
treasured? Can you see the embroiled
angst and rage buried within? Of thee
I sing, I'll be home for Christmas,
and The Star-Spangled Banner,
somehow all wrapped together
as one. What a long strange
trip it's been.
No comments:
Post a Comment