RUDIMENTS, pt. 283
Making Cars
When I was a kid there were
certain things that were just thrown
in my face; at least in my house
and around school and town. And
not just my face, it was everywhere.
The kind of dumb crud you couldn't
avoid. Say, Tony Kubek and Bobby
Richardson. They were two guys
on the NY Yankees, Kubek at
shortstop and Richardson at
second base. Sterling combination,
all the defensive talk of the town
for like 5 years. So, OK, that was
cool, you kind of knew about it
from schoolyard and scratch-games
of the all around. And then one year,
whatever it was, Richardson retires
or whatever ball players do when
they're like 28, and soon after
Kubek too. When Tom Tresh
was put it to replace Richardson,
it was as if the entire world shifted.
Will he make it? Be near as good?
Work well with Kubek? Does he
have the speed? The quick arm?
All the usual prattle. I found
myself hating prattle but at the
same time got really good at it.
It was a cinch to be a blowhard.
Bobby Richardson, by the way,
surprisingly to everyone, had
found God, or Jesus anyway,
and became an evangelist minister
guy, going on all about God and
Salvation and religion. Later on
Kubek became a sportscaster.
It was very odd, seeing each of
them in their later professions.
How is it that we adhere to people
in the ways by which we first hear
of them? Funny stuff.
-
There was a harsh, gravelly ball
field behind Schools 4&5 on which
we spent an inordinate part of our
Spring days playing neighborhood
baseball - essentially putting into
a boyhood practice a lot of the
myths and overblown blather we'd
picked up about various Yankees
or Milwaukee Braves or Baltimore
Orioles or San Francisco Giants.
Every idiot kid somehow had a pet
team. The loose gravel, however,
made for a major difference, in that
any Bobby Richardson or Tony
Kubek bound hot grounder was at
any time - no difference how good
you were - to hit a loose piece of
gravel and veer up, at speed, right
into your pretty-little dumb-kid
face. If you haven't already ever
noticed, kids' faces have noses,
teeth, lips, and eyes that easily
split, bleed, break or turn black.
We had enough walking woundeds
by early-July so that any July
4th Parade or field event could
have had a full contingent of
Inman Avenue and Clark Place
boys for a Civil War Veterans
short-people parade contingent.
No, it never happened. We were
too busy playing ball.
-
I spent a lot of time at that gravel
field area - it was tree'd, grassy,
and had a nice shortcut worn right
through the middle - one of those
'people-angle' things that are always
so nice to see. Regardless of the
approved paths and walkways
provided, the simple patter of some
hundreds of short-cutting feet wear
the real path down, the one that
people use. That was us. Also,
the schools had, right there, a
set of three or four what were
called 'portables' - anything but,
actually - and the small interior
stepways there hid you completely
from outside view. Which meant
it was the perfect place to sneak
smokes, hang around and act like
a local punk, scant around with
one or another of the local
happy-girls, or, basically, just
be boys; wise-ass, stupid-dumb,
daring and foul. Just like we
were taught in that school too;
just couldn't break away.
-
Sometimes I think to myself and
wonder how in the ever-hell I made
it out of a mine-field such as that.
Some of the things we did or did
not do still make me wonder. We
reported back to no one but
ourselves. We wrote our own
report cards and discipline sheets,
showed them around, laughed at
them, and promptly discarded
everything. We were born in
anarchy and tried to stay that
way as the young years passed.
Age 10-11 was about prime, and
then it was over. Or, over for me
anyway. because soon in time I'd
abandoned the underworld clutch
for the clutchier idiocy of the
Blackwood seminary. I didn't
even wait for a ride to the
execution grounds, I just
willingly set out for it any
way I could. And the funny
thing is, thinking back on it
now, I had no clue if people
even noticed my absence. Did
anyone ever comment that I was
no longer around? Was my input
missed? Or all was just forgotten?
I never knew, and to this day I
don't know how kids think about
stuff like that.
-
At the seminary, not once did I ever
hear any other kids talking about
their past or previous lives, versions
of self, in old Camp Hill, PA, or
Dover, DE. It was funny in that
regard; we were all ciphers. Two
friends in there, I found later,
Joe and Dennis Vouglas (they
brothers, two or three years apart.
Joe was the older. Dennis was
younger than me), were from
Plainfield, NJ. That surprised me,
in that it was but maybe two or
three towns west of me, close to
get to, and I'd not ever realized
people lived there. That's how
limited my own scope was. I
don't know theirs. But I do know
that everyone was in some sort
of unconscious submission to
just 'the way things are.' It didn't
matter what you did or where
you came from, it was all the
same. Pretty weird. If that was
now, I'd be talking ears off by
the bushel load to learn all
about every different person
and place. The Vouglas boys
seemed like hey came from big
money, but I never found out.
They weren't slobs like I was,
they had some slightly different
veneer - something that meant
better class or learning. We had
a lot of that - kids from Spring
Lake and wealthier Jersey shore
towns, with their fathers being
bigwigs in Trenton, each a state
government, commissioners of
this or that. By contrast - yep -
I was Lord of the Flies.
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