RUDIMENTS, pt. 321
Making Cars
It always amazes me now
how I can remember when
fathers used to come home
and say they 'just want to
relax and read the paper.'
It allseems like another world
here - and I know in my
house it was. I'm not talking
here of the New York Times
or the Herald Tribune or The
Washington Post either. My
father had a hard time just
getting the Newark Star Ledger
(only on Sundays). The rest of
the week it was this puny little
Perth Amboy Evening News;
filled with local notes and
maybe countywide news, plus
the 'headlines,' of national and
international note only if they
were somehow deemed important.
My father, and others, left it to
others to make that decision for
him. If the local Evening News
editor didn't deem China or Cuba
right important that day, you heard
nothing, or read nothing, of it.
My father used to say, for instance,
referencing even the once-a-week
Newark paper, 'I don't live in
Newark. Why do I want to know
what's going on in Newark?'
Pretty small-scale outlook, I
always thought - and Newark
was nothing compared to the rest
of the world. Soon enough, all
that changed and the entire edifice
began crashing down. By my own
day, 1967, NYC, I was glad to be
part of the takers-down, even if
it was ineffectual. So what.
-
I'd left a lot of markers out and
around. That little bomb factory
on 11th street, for instance, that
was a place due a lot of retribution.
More like a payback factory. Then
it blew too. There was always talk
out on the street - crazy talk. But
the wiser person didn't listen to
much of it, and kept low and quiet
about the rest. Sometimes I felt like
an underground man - at 18, and
already marked and wounded. Like
the guy Harry Lime says, or whoever,
in 'The Third Man' way up atop that
Ferris Wheel, when all his hiding
out is catching up to him and the
slow wheels are turning: He's sort
of explaining his actions, his act
of having taking stances, effected
things, even harming others, like
the dead penicillin kids. He says
something to the effect that one
'needs to take stands, and do
determined things in order to
fully exist. To live. Look at the
Swiss, all those years of neutrality,
not taking stances, what did it
produce? What did they ever give
the world? The Cuckoo Clock.'
Maybe I made that up, but it
sounds right to me
-
The word now is apoplexy. A father
now could never come home to 'relax'
and read the paper. First off, of course
all time-habits have changed. No one
does that anymore. We no longer
possess those blocs of time into
which people would pour personal
moments. Now it's all cluttered up
with phones and textings and all
that usual distraction of online stuff.
Music and shows on demand. People
drift away. What you do read, or what
this proverbial Dad now would be
reading would cause him anything
but that old 'slippers, robe, and cigar
idle time' relaxation routine. He'd be
in a crawling, crazed frenzy in about
five minutes anyway, over something.
Apoplectic over something. Take 'yer
pick, like you used to do for restrooms,
Dad. No more. They're all the same!
-
It was like that all around me at home,
the runnings and the distractions that
go into everything of the everyday.
There was a time, still is, in my head,
when I could close my eyes, and go
right down, or up, the block I lived
on and describe each family's car;
what it was, how they kept it, how it
looked rolling down the street. Such
vagaries of circumstance change, yes,
but the chosen freeze-point I've kept
is probably about 1968 when a family
at the economic level of our area would,
back then (before leasing, credit, and
easy loan enticement) be at its best
with maybe a 5 or 7 year-old used
car of some sort. Each was a signifier
in ways I can't put my finger on. Like
an accent or a way of talking - the
way the car leaned or sagged, the dent
or two, how it was kept, where it got
parked. It was as if everything 'object'
embodied its own flame or glory,
high or low, and that in turn was
reflected by its people. The whole
world was a different club, and all
the membership was way different.
Dogs mostly were kept in the yard,
some chain-distance, miserable
little dog house had to suffice.
All weathers, no formalities; the
dance of Gravy Train and water
went on. Like life, you make your
own sauce.
-
Our street at first was not tarred
and paved, for years. There was,
instead, a small coating of pebbles
spread and laid down by the town
trucks and guys with wide rakes.
It only took a few months, each
time, with the traffic-zoomers up
and from Rt. One trouncing along
the street - which in many ways
was a torturous-one lane shortcut -
for those road pebbles to get pushed
or blown or shoved aside by the
passing cars into little piles at the
gutter and nothing much on the road.
Skinned knees and elbows from those
long, ridiculous football scrimmages
and such by wild kids were nothing.
It was like playing on a coarse,
killer sandpaper. Plus the noise - a
40 mph car shooting by kicked up
all those undercarriage pebbles and
made a racket. It was a sort of audio
speed-control, in that you could tell
just by hearing how atrocious the
speed of the car was for the situation
along the street. What it was good for,
yeah, was getting up to speed on a
bicycle and then jamming on the
coaster brake (that's all we ever had
back then); it would, the pebbles and
looseness, give you a royal, streamlined,
skid, for a good distance sometimes.
And if you twisted the bike ever just
so, it resulted in a magnificent, very
visual, sideways swerve to a stop. It
was as good as being a circus performer!
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