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.
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
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.
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.
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