RUDIMENTS, pt. 322
Making Cars
Some nights I used to walk
on up to the trailer park and
junkyards and just get to Route
One and stare out at all the cars.
Mostly the ones going north,
because I figured, or imagined,
they were headed New York City
way. Going south I never much
cared about. All the Jersey Shore
stuff, the beaches and the boats,
none of it meant anything to me.
It was a big deal to my father, yes,
and when really young (me) he
dragged me there with him often
enough to go crabbing and fishing
and bring home whatever we'd
caught. Most often it wasn't very
much, but every once in a while
we get flooded with fluke or
flounder, crabs, for cure, and
on really good days, bluefish.
Bluefish catching was like
gold to him. (I never got that
'what did you catch' thing. It
was more like you 'catch' a
cold. Fishing or hunting you
really don't 'catch' anything
unless you kill it first). So, sad
for me, and way beyond any
comprehension was how any
right-minded human could revel
in the gagging, suffocation, slow
death of a bunch of wriggling,
sorrowful-eyed fish. Crabs were
even worse - at least the fish
died and only then you did all
the cutting and cooking and
stuff to them. Crabs ended up
being boiled alive - teeming
hordes of frothing crabs being
slowly killed in boiling water.
yeah, right. I hated the hooks
and all the paraphrenalia; the
boredom and the waiting; the
talk between bouts of nothing.
What do you do - even as a
kid - when what you're being
made to do bores you stiff?
That's one of the injustices of
youth - you get stuck in school
or church, pretty much always
against your will, and when you
do get time they still prank you
into something else. Like idly
killing fish.
-
No matter; beside the point. I
was interested in North; screw
the sandy south and all the beach
bum stuff - my aunts and uncles
all had houses down that way, and
they could keep it all, for what I
cared : boats, barbecues, pools,
jingles, and jangles too. Somebody
like Springsteen or one of those guys,
they milked all that boardwalk and
Madame Fortune-teller stuff, in
my eyes, for nothing. There was
never any underpinning to the
premises of that alienation, except
maybe for hedonism, which I
abhorred, and seashore, honky-tonk
booze, which I didn't do. For the
real dark and heavy-thinking stuff,
you needed a real city. The rest
was just pretend, and fluff.
-
So my tremolo went north, played
the northbound lane, ran the white
line all the way out, past the junkyards
and the GM Plant and the coffee factory
and the airport, past Newark and over
the skyway, right into the Holland
Tunnel. And no, it didn't take you
to Holland, boys and girls, it took
you instead to something more real.
I never pine for home, even though
maybe I write all that Avenel stuff
like it mattered. I just do that, like
I never went 'fishing' fishing, but
I tell the stories about it - because
I was there, just hated all that stuff.
At the end of Inman Ave., my street,
the junkyards and the trailer court just
piled up, real quick. Cars and trucks in
heaps, getting squished into scar-metal
blocks, or taken apart, or just sitting
there for years in gasoline and rust
puddles of gloom. But that was all
me. All.
-
The only way up was out - northbound
please. I'd sit and watch the stream of
lights passing and wonder about nearly
each car - where they were headed,
how'd they get to that point, the pure,
breakaway freedom they possessed
to go at all, to anyplace. In the mid 60's
cars were all different than now. They
often ran really badly - poorly jetted
or bad carburators, exhaust leaks, old
metal, sagging shocks. People ran
everything they could, down into the
ground or at least until it died. The
foreign car contingent was around
too, but nothing like today. It was still
pretty rare, seeing an Alfa- Romeo,
or a Jaguar, an XKE, something
like that. Mostly cars were still of
American manufacture, large, tall
broad and wasteful. People headed
into NYCity made me proud just
looking at them. I'd think about the
horizons they must have started out
at - those Illinois and Pennsylvania,
and Georgia plates. It was a whole
section of people, on the move, and
it all made me wonder. About New
York. It seemed like everyone came
from somewhere else - all those
people I'd read, their stories and the
books about them, they all filtered
in, probably many right past here.
It was amazing. Route One back
then was the main artery for any
movement in, from a wide spectrum
of places, and it would bring people
right past me. God, stop and pick
me up, please! I was always paining
over this stuff. What grubby festitude
was here all around me : Like broken
concrete or a crumbling facade, these
little faux-suburb junkheaps of places
seemed to hold nothing for me. Any
items of interest, anything they once
may have held, had long been filtered
away, betrayed and lost. I was stuck,
or surely it felt like that to me.
-
Slowly but surely, I was working on
my getaway and my changing of the
world I inhibited. I knew it would take
time, and that would just have to do.
-
Once I finally made it into there,
Holland Tunnel and all, I immediately
got to know it lock, stock, and barrel.
Like gold, remember, it was MY
bluefish! Caught and baited by me,
but to catch ME, wriggling and happy
on the line. Funniest thing was, I
soon learned, along the lower westside -
Washington Market and and Gaansevort
Market, each name for the streets they
were on, was the central marketplace
for the city's meat, vegetables, and
produce. That was the westside. The
eastside, along the East River was
fish - Fulton Fish Market, endless
fish vendors and suppliers, East River
fishing boats, up and down. I used to
go to both sides (each too was crime
infested, and each with their own sort
of criminality); learned them both well,
and absorbed everything I could. On
the fish market side, by Fulton, there
were a number of super-shady diners
and dives. Filled with cranks and
eccentrics. You could learn a lot.
-
Lastly, here, one interesting fish note:
There were guys there, fish workers,
cutters, filletters, (I made that up, for
'those who fillet fish'), those who
weighed, sorted, and displayed, they'd
throw, and I mean heave, entire 20
pound fish, freshly caught,and dead,
I could only assume, to each other,
between each other, as if they were
loaves of bread, or softballs - 20
or 30 feet maybe, 15 or 20, I don't
know, just lobbing fish around for
their next chore. It was so weird, so
wordlessly fascinating too. I'll go on
next - about how everything was
washed, sopping wet, glistening and
never gloomy, though always sad.
The kingdom of the dead/dying fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment