RUDIMENTS, pt. 339
Making Cars
Sometime around 1982, high
Summer, maybe even '83, I
rented a car for maybe a week.
1600 miles later, I returned it.
I'd ended up in Vermont, lake
Bomoseen, Rutland, Proctor,
places like that, and then set
out driving across (westerly)
New York State - all those
farm towns and villages, as
far over as Cooperstown, where
I stayed at some motel set-up
on whatever lake that is, with
all that Leatherstocking and
James Fenimore Cooper stuff.
I was into the lore and the
reading of all that for the
entire Summer that year. It
all worked together pretty
good, ending at Cooperstown,
the lakes and the woods.
From Vermont to the Baseball
Hall of Fame - a real weird
jaunt. Anyway, back in Vermont,
in that renal place, the last night
there I was laying back, just
staring up at the ceiling, the
door was propped open, screened
entry, the lake was outside a bit,
a few people milling around. I
was on the bed, atop the made
bed. I'd never unmade it, and
just slept on whatever it was.
I'm watching, and out of the
top sill of the doorway, near the
ceiling, I see this rather large,
black, winged bug emerge. I
didn't think much of it and
really could not have cared
less. I then notice this bug
a'wing, and it quite swiftly
comes right down and alight
on my face. Within an instant
there is a fierce, hot-pointed
pain in the area of my upper
lip; right side, just below my
nose. And then it was gone -
I forget if I swatted at it, killing
it, or if it just flew off. In any
case, I lose track. I tended to it,
the sting, cleaned and washed,
etc. It seemed fine, though it
continued burning. I went
about my-business, non-business,
whatever. Taking off, by car
for the western leg of the trip,
I made it to Cooperstown, two
days later to leave for home.
-
By the time two days later came,
I was still feeling that burn, and
there was a slight swelling and a
lump, it seemed, in the middle of
the swollen area. By the time of
arriving home, my lip had swollen
to the size of, say, a large grape
or cherry, had it been implanted
beneath my skin at the lip. It
was hot and feverish to the touch,
painful, and throbbing with that
burn. 'We' took me right to a
Rahway doctor, seldom used
but the 'family'doctor, on paper
anyway. I explained what had
occurred, he looked me over,
did the usual doctor stuff, 'umm,'
and 'ah, I see, yes,' and told me
that I'd been bitten, and quite
strenuously, by something
certainly unknown to him.'
'Could that be the case?' he
asked. 'Oh, most definitely,'
I replied. All he said was, 'that
stinger needs come out.'
-
Evidently, whatever knitting-
needle sized thing this bug
had bit me with was no longer
part of the bug but had been
launched into me, where it had
remained. The doctor has some
sort of an exacto-blade tool, and
something else that resemble a
cross between super-tweezers
and pliers. A good, solid, silver
tool. The doctor made a slight
cut, blood flowed, as well as
some other noxious fluid, I was
told. And then the act with the
pliers, which had located, grabbed,
and pulled - this stinger arrived.
Perhaps a quarter-inch long (no,
doesn't sound that large, but try
that into your lip and see). He
showed it to me, and said had it
not been pulled out it would
have festered as it tried to
work its way in, and at the
same time my body would
have fought it, trying to
encase it in fluidic pus and
then ejecting it - somehow.
He says it was best I didn't
wait for that. Agreed, capital
'A' on that one. This office-visit
saving of my life was about 70
dollars back then - fair enough.
Examination, identification, and
removal, all in one fell 25-minute
swoop. Good deal, and soon
enough my lip returned to normal
some 3 or 4 days later. Whatever
crazed, dive bombing, exotic,
killer Vermont bug had failed in
its efforts to eliminate me.
-
I never had a problem with natural
things before, and bugs never bothered
me. Even now, I laugh this episode
off as being just so crazy and filled
with overlapping lines of funny
thoughts. I go 600 miles from home
to get stung in the face in some
bucolic setting by an opportunistic
bug who otherwise would have been
happily ingesting door-sill wood, or
whatever they do. I guess the best
way of learning Nature is by getting
it flung at you in one good dose.
All the DDT and poisons in the
world that I'd ingested for 17 years
had not apparently leached into
my system enough to ward off
flying killer bugs. Whoever wrote
Darkness At Noon (that's a joke,
it was Arthur Koestler), or Silent
Spring (that's the serious one, by
Rachel Carson), must have gotten
some of it wrong, because I was
not, apparently, lethal at all. I
wondered if they grew another
stinger and lived on; but the good
Doctor Abramson could not
tell me. He just didn't know.
-
Previous to this, of course, I'd
lived with and survived legions
of New York City bugs : cockroaches
the size of match-box cars, chiggers,
fleas, ants, ticks and whatever else
besides rats floated around. At 509
e11th, when the lights were off there
would be 200 cockroaches, all over
the walls, and once you turned the
lights on, and of course saw them,
they were mostly already gone or
on their way back into their little
holes and fissures. For a while
some jerks had the carcass of a
turkey, picked over, just a bone
shell of what had been Thanksgiving
or something, and it was in a
refrigerator, not turned on. Besides
being extremely gross, (the inmates
there were too stupid or bombed
to even notice). I just happened to
be dropping in, to my own damned
place, which I'd walked out on.
The roommate guy that I'd had,
Andy Bonamo, was by that point
running and paying for everything
anyway, and he'd let about 12 other
wandering occupants, plus himself,
have the run of the place. Two and
a half rooms though it was. Anyway,
I opened the refrigerator and
saw what had to be a hundred,
I assumed, cockroaches crawling
allover everything. This was late
in the game, the two dead bodies
had already occurred, the anti-war
safe-house crap was all about
over, and that was it for me.
The next time I ventured over,
as per my earlier chapters her
and there, the place had been
cop-raided and police-taped, and
all my stuff was gone - bike,
clothes, shoes, everything. But
I never saw that room again and
figured it was high time for my
own escaping. I think that Vermont
bug had been waiting for me the
entire ten years. I guess I had
it coming. I was free, and I
figured I'd 'taken one for the team.'
(Cooperstown sports lingo, like
when you deliberately step into that
fastball just to get a man on base).
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