RUDIMENTS, pt. 388
(a story of nyc to avenel, pt.1)
My father was born at the
west end of 42nd Street, at
a section now all gobbled up
by the Lincoln Tunnel ramps,
roadways, and entryways. Also
generally the area of the Javits
Center. It's all still there, but
his residences and all that are
long gone. If I didn't tell you
there was once something vital
there, you'd never know it.
There had been a real community
there; and there was, until
recently, a large Mercedes Benz
dealership there too. Some
stressful striving for class, in a
way known only to New Yorkers,
who need a car like they need a
hole in the head. I suppose the
tunnel was needed as well. The
scene amounts to hundreds
of cars waiting in traffic; horns,
impatient people, buses. You'd
never know it by seeing it now,
but it was once a vital, large,
and strong Italian community.
There are cops around, directing
traffic and stuff - but back in the
1980's, in spite of the cops, there
would be five or six whores going
car window to car window trying
to make a sale. I used to watch.
Very few ever got a deal going,
though some did - how that
could be with traffic exiting
the city, not entering it, was
beyond me - but I guess there
were quick-dash turn-outs for
the really beggared and horny.
(Did I say beggared when I
meant buggered? I don't know).
The actual church he was part
of too is gone, but near to it,
and still remaining, is some
Croatian Church, Sts. Cyril
and Methodius. After the long
demise of all the Italian stuff,
in 1974 they took it over, but
they kept all the records and
papers and photos of the old
Italian parish that once had been
there. The Croation lady inside
the church office let me in
once, on a quiet, late, Summer
Saturday afternoon, and she
willingly - after I'd explained
the deal - opened cabinets
for me to peruse the 100 or
so hand-written record books,
of some 100 years, of baptisms,
weddings, deaths, communions,
all that stuff. Plus I got to look
at numerous photos of the once
thriving old Italian neighborhood
that had been there. Festivals,
parades, processions for money,
etc. I did eventually find birth
and baptismal entries for my
father and his brother, but little
else. There was, also, no real
emotion involved for me - it
all meant nothing : paperwork
and drudgery, maybe that was
all. I stayed cool about it all,
simply more or less trying to
situate my father in any of this.
It was difficult, but I'll get to
that.
-
I have to level with you :
Italian and church piety, and
all that simplicity and nativist
stuff mean nothing to be. I
hate humility, and I can only
stress a progressive attitude,
not one of subservience,
which is all that amounts to.
Peasant numbskull stuff was
never for me. So, be all that
as it may, all these wonderful
church people, whether Croats,
Italians, Father Duffy's old Hell's
Kitchen Irish (that parish too was
once right here, in ringing and
competitive fighting wards,
nationality vs. nationality and
saint vs. saint. So, how stupid
was all that?) can have it. They
can have it all. From this location,
and a terrible deed for him - a
life-long scar that he never got
straight with - his family of
siblings was broken up, fostered
out, and re-organized partially,
later on, in Bayonne, where
nothing good happened either.
They were soon enough
broken up again, one sister
sent to Brooklyn to live with
nuns and get a real 'education,'
while the mother, in Bayonne,
was institutionalized for the rest
of her days, and my father was
(unfortunately) kept by a family
in a house now gone. (He
cheerfully drove me to see it
one day, I guess I was 10 or
11, and when we arrived
all he saw was the hole in the
ground where it once was. Sad
scene). Also weird, this foster
family somehow, for the authorities,
had him registered as a female,
so that, on the days when the
welfare inspectors and relief
department were coming, he'd
have to be dressed as a young
girl for their presence. Bad
news, believe me, and it stayed
with him forever.
-
His father (who would have
been my Grandfather, but I
never saw him and he died
early on) was - from
what I'm told - a Mafia
boss up at e116th street,
where a lot of this Italian
community had moved
to, and only saw my father
there once. Only once. He'd
sent for him, sent a car, and
my father was ushered, he
said, into a large room with
HIS father, in fancy clothes,
sitting at the head of a long t
able, with others there to do
his bidding. He touched my
father's head, said some words,
gave a blessing, threw him a
few bucks, and that was that.
In the later 90's, I found his grave.
Way out in the cemetery area of
Queens, in a three person grave.
He's the name at the bottom,
slightly different spelling, and
because I did not know the
other names, and asked about
it, I was told by my aunt,
before her death, that that
was his 'other' family.
Beats me now and 'I could
care less,' as the saying
erroneously goes. It's funny.
This was all for years my
own father's heavy burden,
and now in some ways I find
it's mine too, but twisted
even differently since they're
all dead now. I've got nothing
except apocryphal tales and
stories about some hoodlum
match-ups and factions in old
blood-feud NYC. Everyone
died violently. And I should
care? It's like a blood-libel
stuck onto my head, without
any reason, mine OR theirs
(mostly mine), but which I
still find I can't shake. My God,
how do people get so screwed up?
-
Anyway, my father took all this to
Avenel with him. In fact, he landed
there with the crazy-guns already
blazing. I was four. Avenel might
as well have been called another
name entire, because calling it
Avenel and meaning today's
Avenel, is meaningless. It's a
complete and other place. That's
all another story, and I'm not
going to be the one to start the
telling all over again. To Hell
with the present day (that's
already etched on my gravestone
for future use). Of course, where
he landed so I landed as well.
My dominoes were not in a row,
let's say; everything was a mess
and all I could do for the years of
my ensuing youth was watch
his anger and madness tremble.
Tremble like the leaves on a
poplar tree, in a gentle rain.
Even just the idea of a breeze;
that's all it took for him. Always
flying off about something -
an imagined slight, a betrayal,
some words spoken and taken
wrongly. Fights. Arguments.
It was nutcase-holyland-hell.
And it was home for me.
In Avenel. (At least that
rhymes). In the clear-light
of my own being, I can certainly
see why my spiritual embodiment
tried early-on to get me out and
away. This life sucks. First, at
8 a train wreck; then the enforced
isolation of the seminary; then
free easy and dumb and stupid
too, loose on the streets of late
1960's NYC. Some assholes
really are made, not born.
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