RUDIMENTS, pt. 362
(avenel's first-hand treatment)
All along my times of
both growing up and
local schooling, in the
early grades, I felt that
no one ever really leveled
with me. They talked all
good with that wonderful
America stuff, great country,
amber waves of grain and
all that, but at the same time,
and underway then, was the
dismantling and subverting
of that entire scheme. The
part and the manner of my
living in Avenel was fairly
indicative of that : Normal
1950's stuff with the usual
unseen but always expected
regularity. Now, 50 plus some
years later, everything has
been proved wrong. No one
ever told us that a water crisis
would ensue (because of way
too many people, and extreme
and wasteful overuse). That
was always something that
was just expected to be taken
for granted. Wherever you
went, there'd be water on
demand for pennies. Not so
fast, Sylvester! It's a real
problem, with monthly water
bills in places like Napa, and
Malibu and Palm Springs,
California now averaging three,
four, and five hundred dollars
a month, respectively. So I ask
you, how wrong were teachers
and parents to just ignore all
that and move us along oblivious
to any costs sustained by the
natural world. And it's now
only just beginning. I'm sure
the day is coming, but in our
present day one cannot just
mix up a batch of water. But,
at the same time, we have the
water-intensive luxury, in
supermarkets and the like, of
choices of some 69 different
brands of toilet paper, each with
their own densities of paper,
and softness, and 'absorbabilty.
Excuse me, what? All we ever
got in Avenel were rows of
dumb-ass bubble-top 16-foot
round swimming pools filled
with probably-toxic water. Up
and down the blocks, one after
the other, and it's all still like
that mostly except now the
money's gotten better and
the pools are fancier and
often in-ground too. What do
people think of themselves -
all day larding around their
basket-fulls of valuable water
wasted for a chlorinated
de-bacteriaization so they
can fester in it? I swear, they
worry more about the waxy
finish on their SUV's than they
do any about the future of the
Earth and it resources.
-
What I want to know is how
we could NOT have been made
aware of the reality of things?
What sort of myopics were
running the Avenel follies,
even back then? Didn't schooling
owe us something, or was it
all just a nose-picking,
baby-sitting waste of time?
Another usual adult scam to
eventually fire up the flames
of war and send kids off to die
for made-up notions? Hell, yeah,
I had my notions and answers,
and no one was going to tell me
different. One thing I learned,
later, living on the farms that I
did, was that you can't skin your
animal if the head's still on it.
You've got to sever that connection
and make SURE that thing is
good and dead before you rip
it open and gut it and splash
out its insides all over, and
clean it and cook it. So's
then you can eat it and later
wipe it off your butt too with
one of those water-heavied,
super-soft, useful toilet-tissues
you get at any endless selection
in Shop-Rite. For that's
glory, amber waves of grain,
and pass me another beer.
-
When I got to New York City,
in whichever ways my feet could
carry me, I let them. I had an
entire and new realm to discover,
one which I'd only dreamed and
imagined for years of looking
up the highway from Hiram's.
Hiram's was the trailer court at
the end of my street, and past
it daily went thousands of cars
and trucks headed intently north.
Junkyards and playlands there
abounded, half the stories of my
youth took place right there, and
now it was over. I tried fitting
the Avenel jigs into the jigsaw
puzzle of my life, as it were,
under construction now, and
very few of them fit in NYC.
In fact, it all went kind of
uselessly away. An old mumble.
I might better have been from
the hollows of some Tennessee
for all it mattered - there was
simply no thread and no continuity.
The concerns and attitudes and
outlooks were totally different.
As were the personal politics of
moment. I never once wished
for home, even as I occasioaanlly
thought about it. Back in Avenel,
one of the pesky priests at St.
Andrew's, a half-predatory guy
named Chester Genecki, used to
swoon all the time about how he
loved his posting to Avenel because
it reminded him of a small New
England town. I used to laugh in
his face (and say get your hands
off me) and tell him I thought
he was dreaming. There wasn't
anything at all New Englandy
about this location, not even the
water lappng at the burgling
eddies of the storm sewers
us kids would climb through
underneath Costa's. He stuck
with his silliness however,
and I went away to the
seminary, thinking often
of his illusion and banking
that against much of the
rest of the illusionary nature
of the church stuff I was being
taught. Thinking to myself,
'Yeah, typical, these people
must all be gullible in the
same way.' Genecki (whose
brother was the Mayor of South
River, a nearby to Avenel but
slightly more bucolic and staid
old town, where maybe that
kind of thought made more sense.
was 'projecting?' But isn't that
what religious-church-people do?
Not brave enough to stake out for
God on their own). From Avenel,
most any Friday, or Thursday,
or Saturday night, for that matter,
he had this thing about driving of
few of us 'boys' around, in his '62
Plymouth. Myself and, usually,
one or two others. Obviously he
delighted in the touchy-feely
presence of being with boys,
there was no denying. He'd take
us to one or another ice cream
stand in any of 5 nearby towns.
We'd sit in the car, never got out
or walked or anything, and have
our milkshakes or ice-cream
cones, while he jabbered. Then
we'd get the pinches or the
slight touches. He was freaky.
One time, one of the friends,
Albert Clark, from Avenel Street,
down at the Rahway Ave. end,
like the last house where the
Dunkin' Donuts is now, spilled
a vanilla milkshake all over the
car seat, while twisting and
squirming away from a tickling
or a touch. Old Chester went nuts!
White milk shake goo everywhere.
(That sounds suggestive, but it's
just so in the re-telling).
-
One last thread here, that connects
all this back together : years later,
at St. George Press, I did the
printing-account for the Diocese
of Metuchen; a constant, weekly
jam of little program books, liturgy
music books for this or that mass
or special celebration. The guy I
worked with was Michael Alliegro,
an old classmate of mine in the
Seminary. He was from Fords, as
a kid, when I knew him. He'd
become Monsignor Alliegro those
thirty years later, and he worked
under Bishop McCarrick. A creepy,
way too happy guy wh had been
appointed as Bishop of the relatively
new 'Diocese' of Metuchen, based
there. I never liked the guy, big-
deal Bishop or not. Michael Alligro
(who is dead now, leukemia) told
me, on the whole, he hated his
position in the church - he said
had he known then that it would
have turned, for him, into all this -
administrative stuff, books and
balances, juggling things - he'd
have never gotten involved. Oh
dear me, oh dear Avenel, oh
Chester Genecki, oh St. Andrews,
Oh Bishop McCarrick. Now I
see what it all meant : the 'Bishop'
had finally been hauled off, from
his exiled retirement after being
shunted to Rome, for sexually
abusing, and then paying off,
the boys and their families whom
he'd abused, and keeping it all
hush-hush and quiet. Poor Monsignor
Alliegro, rest his living soul, having
to juggle books and facts and
figures from his Diocese office.
If I only knew, back then, how
all this was being done, I could
have helped out. I could have
told him we had a real, swinging,
New England small-town guy
we'd had over there in Avenel.
Poor Michael, he only wanted to
find God, and all he got
was Mammon.
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