10,951. RUDIMENTS, pt. 367

RUDIMENTS, pt. 367

(avenel tweedle-dum)

The only sense I get out

of life is the sense that life

is going to be over, soon,

if not soon enough. None

of this is a good feeling,

naturally, and no one

prepares you for stuff

like that. Especially for

a kid, it's all presented as

forward motion, everything

ahead of you, all that 'to be'

stuff. That's the way it should

be anyway, and has to be.

Growing up means getting

all that together, and going

forward. Half the coolness

of a football game comes

from all that smashing of

heads in the great, heaping

hope of gaining some ground.

Metaphorically, what better

fit? Even in sixth grade, with

Mr. Ziccardi and all that crap

in the portables   -  making all

those papier-mache models

of Mesopotamia and the fertile

crescent and Assyria and all

that; it was all a look back only

so that we could then learn and

forge forward. That was the

idea anyway, and even though

I never cared about it either

way, I got his message. As

garbled and inarticulate as he

ever made it, I surmised the

moment. History was bunk, as

Henry Ford had put it, but not

total bunk  -  because whatever

fictions we adopted, from them

we had to make our futures, and

that was the task of a lifetime.

Boy, I should have just flunked

sixth grade, right then and there,

and been done with it all.

-

This was Kennedy time, remember.

Even in Avenel he had somehow

swept right through every heart

and spirit; thinking him bold and

young and fresh and adventurous.

But, if they only knew. My father,

I can remember, went ballistic

when our neighbor, Ralph Miranda,

put out a big 'Nixon/Lodge for

President' campaign sign on his

lawn. It was seen as a betrayal

of the dumb and the poor. And

the Catholic too. I have to add

that because, in reality, it was

a big undercurrent of that

election. The Mirandas were

from Brooklyn, he worked

in the Schaeffer Brewery there,

still, every day, and his and

her visiting parents often

came with their New York

license plates. They were a

bit Godless, in Dad's eyes

anyway, these Mirandas,

because they were Eye-talian

but in no way church-affiliated.

To him that too was a vastly

betrayed inclination , something

necessary for right-living.

Little did he know, of course,

little did anybody, that this

Catholic Kennedy was porking

his brains out with any piece

of fresh meat he could find.

That made a mishmash of the

entire proposition of being

Catholic, righteous, political,

and 'right.' Dad's standards

there were pretty low, and  -

until his brains were creased

by a bullet, old JFK was

getting away with a real lot.

It was class-war stuff  -  the

VP guy for Nixon was Henry

Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts

Brahmin, high-toned elitist

of the other school entire.

They would just as soon

be Catholic as dead. There

was a lot going on in that

race  -  Kennedy had unseated

Lodge 6 years previous, as

Massachusetts Senator, and

and Nixon chose Lodge so

as to run it back in, as a

grudge, and also fight that

Massachusetts elitism with

his own version of it, in

Lodge. No one knew any

of this stuff, and it wasn't

common currency around

any Avenel water cooler,

but my father somehow

got the gist, and the gist

was that old Ralph Miranda,

Brewmaster, had screwed up

-  with pretension, with

distancing himself from

his own reality, and with

that of his friends and

neighbors. But, my father

always fought with everyone,

so it little mattered. That

was it for him.

-

I don't want to get too deep

into this 1960-election and

politics stuff. Suffice it to say

that there's not a politician

worth his stripes, from either

camp, who'd ever be coming

to Avenel to plead for votes.

I'm sure they'd just send a

postcard and maybe a message

previously recorded as well.

It would never have mattered

anyway, then or now. Why?

Because to get people's minds

and attention, you've first got

to get them to shut-up. One of

the problems I had, in NYC

and elsewhere was 'how do

you tell other people, when

they ask, where you are from?'

Just saying 'Avenel' is useless.

References to other things

are good, yet they make

no qualitative sense. 'Just a

1/2 mile over from Rahway

Prison?' No, that doesn't

work, because you've

already put another name

in the mix by saying Rahway.

You could say Woodbridge,

but no one really knew

that either; just a bundle

of towns all jammed

together with useless

names. Like saying 'Maurer'

or  'Barber' (two lost towns

right here by Sewaren, lost

when Standard Oil or Shell

or somebody put 2000 acres

of fuel storage tanks everywhere,

in the name of 'National Defense,'

no less, and shut down and

destroyed those two towns,

and forced everybody out).

No one now even knows those

places, as there's only one,

telltale, identifying (recently

closed too) street-sign that

even makes mention of it.

Some sources treat them as

one waterfront town together,

ship-building, smelting of

iron, etc. There were streets

and houses. Until recently,

the old ASARCO plant was

still there (American Smelting

& Refining Co), but that's

all coming down now too  - 

warehouses and Amazon stuff,

trucking and storage. If you know

where to look, there are still a

few dead ends around, and 5

or 6 really raggedy, leftover

places from back then, mostly

now left as rickety Spanish bars.

Tire shops. A car wash. You

can't even see nor get to the

waterfront that once was there.

The creepy oil companies took

everything over, and the entire

nation changed, leaving all this

shitty debris behind. Ain't no

Nixon or Lodge or Kennedy

visit due here, Dad. We're poor.

-

I wrote a small note about all

this to the local newspaper once,

a history-column guy they used

to have. They printed it all, and

then also added some boilerplate,

generic stuff about the march of

progress having subsumed so

much of the old waterfront and

the ways of life of the old Raritan

Bay communities. The usual

crock-of-shit cover-up stuff. Man,

how I hate that crap. Nobody tells

the unvarnished truth about

anything, including all the local

natives who we driven out and

massacred so we could have our

freaking oil-tanks and lawn-weed

killer petroleum-based poisons.

I also wrote another article, about

'North Edison' (another dip-shit

little place here along the road to 
nowhere, actually abutting Fords, NJ).

They had these banners and stuff

hung up and a school by that name

'The Clara Barton Historic District.'

I new it was a croc, so I wrote an

article about 'What's So Historic

About the Clara Barton District?'

and did some little research. The

same newspaper guy piped up :

there's no connection at all, Clara

Barton (a Civil War nurse) probably

never even set foot in New Jersey,

except perhaps once, if she did, 

crossing over from Philadelphia to

Camden to visit Walt Whitman in

last years when he lived there on

Mikel Street. The entire thing was

made-up crap. They changed the
signs, which now simply read as,
'Historic Clara Barton-  whatever
the hell that's supposed to mean.
What really then pissed me off

even more was when they got 

Susan Sarandon, supposed native

and local movie-tramp, came by to

'light the Christmas Tree' on the

lawn of the 'Historic' Clara Barton

Schoolhouse. Man, everything

makes me sick at heart.