10,826. RUDIMENTS, pt. 317

RUDIMENTS, pt 317

Making Cars

It sometimes got funny,

looking back, for me to

try and find a back-story

to the times I was born in.

Harry Truman, President.

When Dewey ran against

Truman, 1948 it was, and

all these newspapers, so

cock-sure of the result,

printed all those headline-

issues the night before

that read, 'Dewey Defeats

Truman!' It was a shocker.

Of course, I knew nothing

of it at all, until much later.

They had to throw all those

papers out, revise, and reprint.

But, later, all the revised references 

were unerring: Dewey lost because he

was boring; he looked like the little

guy on the top of wedding-cakes.

That plastic character you'd see.

Maybe that was true, but what

did Truman look like that was

any better? A short little plug

of a guy, like a pugilist, all

tight with bluster and ire. I

didn't know a thing about

politics and it wasn't ever

really openly even spoken of.

Why should it be? All these

guys were home from the

most recent war and, if there

had to be another one somewhere,

they wanted little to do with it.

All those new Korean War guys,

they were mostly forgotten

before they ever returned.

Truman, all anyone knew, had

dropped two big bombs; the

ones that had ended the later,

Jap, part of that big war, and

for that he was to be thanked.

Period. No questions asked. It

was said ll those people who died,

and the cities which were fried,

they deserved it, and they saved

further Americans from dying.

That was my back-story, I guess;

the one to my time of birth. Even

if it wasn't, who cared? When I

was in my earliest years, 1,2,3,4,

along the waterway in Bayonne,

being pushed like an infant slob

in a stroller, or not, I didn't know

any of this. I just knew colors and

movement and action and lights.

Cars. Boats, The oiled glisten of

the 1950 waters  -  which I can

still remember as liquid black,

something I'd just learned to see,

whether it existed or not. For all

the rest of my life, no one has ever

mentioned liquid black to me.

But it's the color of industrial

water, flowing. They don't make

that crayon, kiddies. You've got

to find it on your own.

-

It was all pretty weird how

everything was already in place.

No understanding needed on my

part : how or why I got to this

location and this vein of Life. I'd

never know and no one ever tells

you. It could have been deep in St.

Petersburg, Russia; it could have

been Amsterdam or Rotterdam,

or any of those 'dam' places.

Here it was, however; as American

as apple pie, New York City waters,

tugboats, freighters, steamers,

barges and tankers too. Bayonne

NJ  -  where the language was

English and the air was foul. I

guess I had some genetic thing,

some longing, to be at waterways

and all they brought forth: flow,

flux, change, freight, and movement.

Nothing kept still. There were lights

and whistles all the time. At about

the same time as all this, in Bayonne,
at the Eighth Street Station (a train
stop and bars) or whatever that railroad

spot was, nearby enough, the train

traffic was running down. No one

knew quite what to do anymore

about buses and trains and transit.

All they had seen in Europe was the

poor, the beleaguered and the bombed;

desperately searching for transit.

Only poor people used trains and

they were, evidently, because of that,

turning their back on all that. Moving

up and out. By 1947/48, I'd read,

there were hordes of jobless men,

angry too. The Government had the

picture it wanted, the blueprinted

layout for the next hundred years

but riotous ex-soldiers could sure

muck that up. So they gave away

'schooling.' The GI Bill got all these

crazed, nightmarish men going again:

'Give them something to do, learn

a trade, get a profession, and they'll

leave us, finally, alone.' That was

the motto. Fifteen years before it had

been the same sort of situation, but

the WPA and all those Depression

work programs kept people in line;

and then (finally!) the war solved

that problem. Now they were all

back, wanting more again.

-

I only learned this stuff because I

wanted to. No one will ever tell it to

you. Again, Mr. Ziccardi, my Sixth

Grade teacher  - the first and

nearest person I'd run across who

perhaps, maybe, [hope!], would have

been a truth-teller, turned out not

to be that at all. He was stuck on

clay and papier-mache model

projects of Mesopotamia, the

'Fertile Crescent,' (always sounded

sexy to me), and his own damned

Korean War, in an endless pantomime

of uselessness. 'What'd ya' do with

your bayonet, Mr Joe? Cut necks?

Slit throats? Bust guts till the

intestines flowed out?' Yeah, we

need to know that stuff. I really

can't stand gung-ho teachers who

push military crap into young kids'

heads. Y'know. What's with that?

-

He and any of them might just as

much had said, 'You're gonna' die;

probably at least 3 of you, right

here in this classroom, and 3 probably

in all the others too, are going to

die. Vietnam maybe. Syria. Lebanon.

Egypt. Take your pick. It's good stuff.'

For that we played volleyball? For

that we played dodgeball in a

concrete gymnasium?

-

I studied things. I got to Avenel and

studied things  -  all my harbor

stuff was gone, there. It had been

taken from me, the loss of liquid

black was tough. I was dumped

instead in green swampland, but

at first I really didn't want to be.

-

Bit whatever. Later I heard stories,

and I started reading things. America

wasn't at all what it was cracked up

to be. I found people and stories

I fell in love with  -  poets and

revolutionaries. People like Toussaint 

L'Ouverture, a slave who liberated 

Haiti. Ah! But failed. (I always took

glory from failure). John Brown at

Harper's Ferry. And mostly, near

and dear because he was still alive, 

(died, 1976). Paul Robeson.

-

Paul Robeson was an outcast.

People in America hated him, 

had driven him off. He had

betrayed them  -  his rolling,

black gumbo of a voice had

moved from the traditional and

welcomed songs of folk tradition

and slavery, into a much hotter

arena of freedom songs, liberation

songs. High anxiety songs. No 

longer just the simple songs of

communal love and life and

death  -  they became the more

urgent cries of a people yearning 

to escape their bondage and

break loose. They lived in a

powerful country but were

oppressed and humiliated on

a daily basis. Robeson became

their voice. He took up their 

mantle. The way he sang 'Let

My People Go,' and 'Go Down

Moses,' the words had nothing

to do with comfort and consolation.

rather, it was a demand; a demand 

to break free, and it was heralded

by a deep, powerful basso-profundo

voice that would not be stopped.
When I heard him sing 'Ole Man
River,' I was stopped in my tracks.

I was captivated, and I was just

an otherwise dumb white kid. I

didn't even know a black person,

really, except one or two from 

the hole below Iselin, off Route 

One, where 'they' lived (before

that too was developed). Seventh

Grade maybe, 2 of 3 of them.

'The Silent Brothers,' I took to

calling them. Something was 

wrong, and I could tell.

-

Robeson'e father had been a slave,

and at the time of the Civil War he

fled to Princeton, New Jersey.

Princeton had always been known as,

commonly stated, the 'northernmost

town of the South.' Like the university.

It wasn't much of an improvement,

but it was. He became a minister.

His son, Paul, ended up a big man at

Rutgers. Marked out for great things,

future Governor of New Jersey; fate

called. He threw it all down. The

deciding moment was when, as a

young lawyer, a stenographer

refused to 'take dictation from

a nigger.' He threw himself then

instead, into the vibrant artistic

life of Harlem  -  the Harlem

Renaissance, all that ferment of
Greenwich Village and NYC. Appearing

in plays by Eugene O'Neill, giving

concerts of African music, and

promoting the fierce black cause

brewing inside of him. His fame 

spread with startling speed. Soon he

was lionized on both sides of the

Atlantic, for his voice, his brawn, his

action, his physique. He was frequently

photographed and sculpted, 'as

often as not, naked.' He was the

 'black star everyone had been

waiting for, the acceptable face

of negritude.'

-

One thing I noticed, right off, 

differently, was that Robeson had 

a father and a family life that

pushed and prodded him into 

success. Forcing learning; aware

of things. I'd never had that. 

Anything I ever did, I did on 

my own. I had to. No one was

pushing me anywhere. The level

of life where I was living, and at

home, was: 'Get by. Forget all

that other stuff; be like the rest.

Work, and get by.' Maybe it was

like that for everyone in a place

like Avenel. Whatever colleges

beckoned, I heard nothing, or

little, of them. Others had bread;

I lived in the flour.

-

Robeson became really big in

Britain; a star, on stage, and as a

singer and a speaker too. Idolized

and revered. He married, and they

settled there, while he engaged in

a series of liaisons with English

women 'under his wife's nose,' as

is said. All during this time, with

the adulation and the stardom 

and all it brought, he was being 

radicalized. His friends were

left-wing thinkers and young

firebrands like Kwame Nkrumah

and Jomo Kenyatta, bent on

overthrowing African colonial 

rule. (These names may mean

nothing to you, but in the early

1960's they were big names,

and each became leaders of their

countires after revolutions). By

1943 he was back in America,

playing Broadway. He was the

man of the future, and America

was about to change. 

------continued next chapter.