10,733. RUDIMENTS, pt.286

RUDIMENTS, pt. 286

Making Cars

I was never one to 'announce'

things, go real loud, or make a

big fuss. I rather liked just

keeping it to myself. Half the

time I wasn't sure enough of

what was up or where I was

headed with something anyway.

So my version of hedging all

bets was to lay low and stay

quiet. Which put me for sure

in a minority : I've since known

people who make raucous noise

over football and others sports

games, cheering, betting, waiting

on pins and needles for this or that

game-date. That's all stuff I

never drove with at all  -  don't

have the reckoning of it. Long

time ago I gave up on all that

sports stuff  -  televised games,

lives events, etc. It was a big

let-down to me when it occurred,

mainly because of the insight

that led me to it; to the giving

up of all that. It's going to sound

really strange to you, in reading

this but, incredibly, modern-day

physics has borne me out: All

these games have already been

played. More on that later.

-

Talking like that, of the time

continuum, etc., is certainly not

the stuff an Avenel boy was

supposed to be doing. I don't

know of, or hadn't ever heard

of or known anyone who came

out of, Avenel who'd done

anything sterling or of note.

It was all mostly a bunch of

drudges going about their tasks.

Just a look at the place gives all

that away  - certainly without

pretense. Back then, at least, I

can recall 12 or 15 homes  of

the old, turn of the previous

century (1900), style structures

that have now all been taken

down, built over, with nary

a mention. There's no past, so

to speak, no legacy. It's just

a place. Great if you're junk

metal : salvage yards are

everywhere, and even down

in the drecks of the swamp-lands,

there were, (now all apartments),

huge junkyards  - Ira Rhodes, and

this Dafchik guy. I went to school

with his daughter, 'Constance.'

Except for their old house on

Rahway Avenue still being there,

the junkyards are all gone. They

lived at the house, and their salvage

yard was about a mile or so off,

down along Homestead, down

from Olsen's. Up at the house -

which was and still is right across

from Ideal Trailer court  -  he had

a nice-sized lot, fenced it with

the house, and all up to and

through the 1960's anyway it

was filled with Dodge cars. That

was all he ever kept there. Maybe

12 or 15 decent enough Dodges,

1958, '60. '61. The funny-looking

kind they used to make with that

weird reverse twist upper-rear

fender thing on each side. They

just sat there. I never got to the

bottom of that story, and this

girl 'Constance' never let on : I

used to really like that name. I'd

never known a real person with

it, before her. Previously it had

just been in the history story-line

name from those old Pilgrim days;

that one family that came over with

the Mayflower bunch or whatever.

They all had weird names in that

family. John Mather. Increase

Mather. Cotton Mather. Constance

Mather. Like the Leave It To Beaver

kid  -  who was a 'Mathers.' too.
Close enough.

-

Anyway, if you went down

Homestead Avenue, down from

Olsen's Garage  - which was also

a Gulf Station back then (Ira Rhodes

and the family had an Esso station

at the corner of Avenel Street and

Rahway Ave., too  -  it's now a

Dunkin' Donuts), it was nothing

but weird stuff  -  old, broken

down woods, with turn-offs and

sidings and dirt roads. There were

places that ended in log-hollows,

with felled trees and what looked

like camp-spots. A few of my friends

went down there with their fathers

as they were learning to drive.

Stick-shift and all, trouncing on

the dirt lanes, slowly enough to

learn the clutch and gas pedal

and all that. I never went that

route; instead I just learned by

doing, in doing whatever I had

to do on whatever roadway I

ended up doing it. No one had

automatics back then  -  the first

ones I recall, about 1958 maybe,

were on expensive cars, Chrysler

Products  -  push-button stuff too

sometimes. There were a few

years, Plymouths or something,

that had push-buttons on the

dashboard, in a vertical row.

 'D' - 'P' - 'R', and all that, with

no suggestion of the old shift

lever or anything. Automatics

were too easy, girly-stuff to

drive. Blair Road, and Homestead,

and whatever else was down there

in the old days, were known for

that. Wild, crazy lands. There

were a few Indian families

there too, in ramshackle old

homes (American Indians, not

the South-Asian kind like now).

They stayed to themselves, and

were just kind of like leftover

poor  -  not a care in the world,

and no one seemed to care about

them either. I never saw any

Indian kids in school, so I don't

know how that went; but when

I was doing a paper-route back

then, The Newark Star-Ledger,

there were a few deliveries to

that area. Every day; a real pain

in the bicycle butt. I called them

'the way-outs'  -  and in bad

weathers I usually had my father

drive me along, whatever time

it was, and sometimes we even

skipped days, if it was rainy or

bad or snow, and just gave them

three or four days worth at one

time. No one ever cared, and

they'd eventually pay-up on

collection weeks. Little bundles

of change they'd kept aside.

I remember too, one of the

papers, they had this little

perforated tan card with

tear-off tabs for each of

the pay-weeks. I hated that

too, because it was awkward

and they'd stand there staring

at me while I struggled to

get the weeks right. Creepy.

-

The Dafchik junkyard - (that name

spelling is approximate and only

phonetic to what I remember) -

was the coolest. It's all apartments

now, filled with beleagured people

stuck somewhere. I've been thrown 

off that land a few times by these

same two Russian guys who look

as if they may truly have once been

KGB gunmen  -  there's a nice,

walkway alongside the place,

marked as public, and it even had

(once) entry and guide ropes, but

they consistently throw me out. 
None of that 'public' crap seems to
matter, at least in Woodbridge, where
it was all, in reality, probably just a
trade-off or a scam for some other
shenanigan in transferring the
land. Someday I'll get pissed off
enough, if they throw me off, to just
slam-dunk the whole bunch of 'em 
with a 4x4 from Abbe Lumber, right
in the crooked, dirty, forehead.
In honor of Avenel, you know. No

matter; crimestoppers networks, if

you follow them, the radio trails, all

end at town hall [note to Dick Tracy].

All these apartments  -  and there's

a ton of them  -  were once junkyard

lands. Deep in the middle, back then,

was some sort of old house, and a few

worksheds  - almost foundry-looking.

You could drive in, say what you 

wanted  -  car parts and stuff  -  and

(I think there were a son or two

involved)  -  they'd get it for you

and you could go along if you cared :

the soil was the neatest black/brown

muck you could imagine. Here and

there would be a welding arm, some 

sort maybe of an open fire. The

old man was intense and gruff, but

he knew his stuff. The whole thing

was like a small village of Tennessee

bootleggers, but hard at work salvaging

car parts. I used to love it. By contrast,

the Rhodes junkyard, over on the next

street down (I guess Omar now), was

orderly, cars in rows, everything

arranged. No fun at all.  This Rhodes

guy, and family, was the reason, 

by the way, for the underpass being 

dug. Leastways that's how the story 

then went  -  he'd lost a son at the

grade crossing when it was level-street. 

Back then another really cool old-world 

thing,  entering Clark from Rahway,

was this guy named Beutle. That's all

we ever called him  -  he was lame,

and quiet. He had a house there

with a workshed in the rear. On his

front grass, a small sign advertised:

'Beutel - Welding.' Which is what

he did. People would bring him

most anything  -  and he'd mend,

would, fix, braise, or connect.

He was like the equivalent of a 

junkyard, but for welding. The

place is still there, but I guess,

like the rest, he's long gone. I did
somehow figure all these guys knew
each other and kept in touch. 
The thing about the bottoms there,
Blair Road and all, was that it was
all mysterious. Like the underside or
backside of Avenel  -  where things went
on and borders were crossed, that you
never even knew about.
-
You could pay-off (then too) any 
inspector you wanted to, when all 
that started happening. They all
took dough. The new variances and
'laws' as they were, which were put in
place only later to facilitate all this
dirty swapping of properties, that got
rid of any mystery there was. My friend
used to work at Pilot Labs, right there,
down by Rhodes' Junkyard, the cleaner
one, and my old friend Larry Campion,
who ran the Independent Leader back in 
its day (a local muckraking and whistle
blowing newspaper that used to be in
Woodbridge, where Woodbridge Olds
was, and the bar at the corner - it's all 
now a Quick-Chek and a closed up
Riffy's bar, and even all that is now
going fast as they've sold the town out 
for money there too. Same stuff, just
different crooks, and they're smaller
now). Larry knew freaking everything
there was to know about Woodbridge 
stuff, Mayoral crap from Adams to 
Barone and after. He, and my friend
at Pilot Labs kept me filled in one some
of what was going on  -  and before long
that old Blair Road scene was just a
memory. All they left was Pilot Labs,
yes, and a sleaze-ball titty-bar called
The French Maid. Figures. By then
the whole place had been sold off
to Hell anyway.