RUDIMENTS, pt. 311
Making Cars
There are hidden aspects to
everything, and I think they
were among the items I was
always most after. Unless you
really scratch and dig, half the
real stuff of the world will
never come to you. No one's
ever going to tell it to you -
it's probably hidden to them
as well. But it's all there, for
the finding, if you just work
a little.
-
Some of the days of my
kid-hood were spent pretty
blissfully, absorbed in every
sort of reverential wildness
you could think of. You need
to understand that - in the
period I'm speaking of -
1954 thru the turn of the
early 1960's the entire area
behind my house, and I kid
you not, was - the NYC/
Rahway/Jersey Shore railroad
line, always running. Probably
2 trains an hour anyway, at
the least, coming through. In
itself, that's 48 trains, easy.
Playing along the tracks, and
crossing the tracks, was easy,
with a smidgen of vigilance
thrown in. No one wished to
be train-mush (a new sort of
breakfast-gruel?).Once across
the tracks, however, that's when
the real fun began. Prisoners.
A real farm. Prisoners and guards
working the fields. Rifles. Guys
in prison togs riding tractors, or
planting or harvesting corn.
No one ever talked, to us, at
us, or with us - but neither,
really, did anyone ever bother
us. Laissez-faire was the one
attitude ('Hands off' - in French)
prevalent. Nowadays there'd
be kid-counseling for the poor
brats who had been unfortunate
enough to be on the loose and
had seen (Gasp!!), or had been
unwittingly exposed to, criminals
working. These were white guys
too. Looking an awful lot, some
of them, as any of our own fathers
did. It was before the days of the
general incarceration and societal
foundering of races of people -
blacks, gangs, Hispanics - who
now conveniently flood our
prisons and learn the Muslim
faith. In the 1950's, up here in
the North, they actually did
whites too. One of the odd things
was, later on, as I did some research
and learning, (having heard blues
songs from the old South, which
often referenced 'Parchmen' Prison,
etc.), I found out that there were
two version of Prison Farm. One
where, like this one at Rahway,
prisoners grew their own prison
crops for use within that prison's
food chain, and - the other version
of 'Prison Farm.' where prisoners
were 'farmed out' to work at other
locations and thereby bring a small
income back into the prison. Out
guys never left the grounds. Some
of the cool old, Southern, nasty
places of imprisonment (not saying
this Rahway one was a cakewalk)
were Parchmen (Mississippi State
Penitentiary); Pine Bluff, Arkansas;
Montgomery, GA; and good old
Louisiana State Prison on the
Mississippi.'
-
All it ever took me for fun was
a stick or a few branches. A few
trees. Some water. That was my
solitary confinement and it was
OK by me. I had no clock at
all, and just came and went at
will. Besides the regular bow
and arrow stuff (that was our
most constant, it seemed),
when we'd just randomly
shoot at targeted areas - piles
of cast-off corn plants, etc.,
we also had this weird thing
where we'd search for right
branches - light, pliable,
fresh - from willow, I think,
and, with string and penknife
notchings, stress the curve
of the whole thing up into a
version of a 'homemade' bow,
and, then again with good,
straight twigs and a knife-notch,
we'd make our own pointed
arrows. It was pretty useless
work, never worth much, and
right now I can't recall what
we did for the flight-guide
feathers, etc., on the other
end. In any case, stuff like
that took up hours and days.
-
At the same time, some of us
went to Boy Scouts - which
somehow - some crazy how -
then tried to indoctrinate us in
all of this activity - to be done
in prescribed, coordinated, and
very literal/programmatic, ways
and, by means of the Boy Scout
Handbook, or manual, whatever,
made sure, as well, that it was
absorbed into the proper, societal
means of some bizarre form of
good-citizenship and awareness
of self or something. It always
sounded, sorry, a little too 'gay'
for me (before that word was
around). Like instructions maybe
on putting on a condom - that
sort of tedious obviousness. We'd
been doing all this cool stuff all
along - knots and archery and
swimming and field events, etc. -
in the most natural, free-and-easy
ways we could come up with, and
then, sure enough, a few nitwit
adults get involved and it all has
to be tracked and channeled into
only one, proper and mandated,
way. There was never much sense
in that stuff for me. It was like
having a parking attendant tell
you where and how you must park.
'Shut up and just let me park.'
I always hated meddlers.
-
Another thing that always crimped
me up was the idea of 'Paradise.' It
was all always more along the lines
of 'What is that?' People always
used differing words for the
same concept (I found out
along the way, as I read and
learned): Eden, Paradise,
Utopia, Shangri-La. They
were all a sort of series of
one-interchangeable word
things for the same concept,
which was always presented
as ideal and wonderful, and
real and original, and authentic,
and to-be-sought. And then
everyone, right away, went
ape-shit destroying the
concept; messing everything
up, as the Boy Scout thing
just did, and regimenting us
- school, home, church and
all - into NOT trusting our
feelings, not wandering from
the path, never getting out of
line, and at no time ceasing
to prepare for a crummy life
of job, responsibility, duty and
rigor. Paradise my ass! Who
was really running this show,
I wanted to know.
No comments:
Post a Comment