RUDIMENTS, pt. 415
(indexing avenel)
As Shakespeare had it (oh
wonderful words), 'Tis too
starved an argument for my
sword.' You have to admit,
it's pretty succulent. It sort
of means, 'I'm too good for
this petty argument,' or perhaps,
'I can't waste my fire on this.'
Or, as Barack Obama once put
it, 'That's above my pay grade.'
Which meant, to him, that he
doesn't get paid enough to
make those decisions (in this
case about when 'Life' begins;
referencing the abortion
debate) about weighty
matters. Kind of a shameful
and wise-assed way to put it,
but, whatever. In political
circles that sort of stuff
actually passes for wisdom.
So, in case you're wondering
why I went there, it's because,
in my case, my whole life has
been about words, and I really
don't know much else. Even
as a kid, it was all about
tyranny. I kept finding out
mostly that words were all
about tyrannizing me -
school, church, home, street.
I was determined that I would
then never allow words to
do that to me and would,
instead, control them.
-
When I used to have to walk
to school and then later, to the
bus stop, there was always a
kid or two who tried to rattle
everyone, run them through
the ringer, and start pushing
everyone around. We never
used to much call it anything
but 'jerk,' and move on, but
now it's all blown out into
proportions of bully and thug;
the sort of thing that nowadays
is seen as having to be stopped
immediately. You'd get to learn,
over time, who the kid jerks
and kid assholes were, and you
maneuvered or went about your
own business accordingly. It's
the same way now, as adults,
except new you can better tell
them by their stench.
-
Once we moved here I noticed
another one of those oddball
divides between families. A
real simple one, but interesting.
In 1956, thereabouts, the
surrounding towns and places
were still pretty vibrant -
Elizabeth had a manufacturing
base that still worked, and so
did Perth Amboy, and Newark
still had meaning and presence.
That little north-south divide
became important. My family
was always a Perth Amboy
family - when we needed
something, clothes, food,
etc., we went south usually,
to the busy store-streets of
old Perth Amboy - still busy
with white merchants, Jewish
leftovers, housing enclaves of
Poles and Hungarians and Slavs.
It presented a distinct, locus,
and in a way better refined -
by its separate spaces and
definitions - than did any
version of space, place, or
time, in Woodbridge, or
Avenel, etc. None of them
were really'places' per se,
more just growths and
agglomerations - like those
knarled, round bumps
you'd sometimes see on
the trunks and barks of
big trees. They're visible,
you can see them, but they
show no value and have no
'reason' behind them, except
as tumors or parasites. And
so they are. Other families -
to get back to the subject -
would gravitate instead back
northward, doing their tasks
and shopping in Elizabeth.
That was a big divide. I
then decided to delineate
differences by that separation.
I knew that my father's
propensity for water drove
him to the Amboy side of
things - the 5-cent ferry to
Staten Island, with car, the
Arthur Kill, right there, and
all that water, and Staten
Island itself, weirdly fronting,
as it did, on the other side of
the peninsula, with its back,
Bayonne. Right there, Bayonne
too, where we used to live.
It was his way, like a homing
pigeon, of fluffing his feathers
for the trip home.
-
Probably the same for the
Elizabeth and Newark people
too. We had them all, on Inman
Ave - the Oranges, Irvington,
Clifton, Bloomfield; all sorts
of other places I'd hear of.
Lowly, run-down towns. I'd
never hear of anyone replanting
themselves here, in Avenel, from
say Nutley, or even Montclair.
Those sorts of places were
established, with their own
money and finance tiers set
in place. No one needed the
lowly creature swamps out
beyond Carteret.
-
We'd go to Perth Amboy;
Friday nights anyway -
groceries, socks, whatever
crap was needed. There
were a few places to eat, or
we'd hit Stanley's Diner
on the Rt. One way out -
with their fish-shaped kiddie
menu and Friday specials.
Perth Amboy was just there,
a place we went because we
knew it, though, really, no
one ever 'asked,' but just
took us instead. My father
worked in Newark then, so I
guess it was a needed change
of pace for him too. But by
about 1958, all that stopped
too; its heydey, for us, having
been those new years from
1954 to 1958; Avenel. Then
the supermarkets and plazas
and malls, started hitting. I
remember well when Menlo
Park Mall, a really big deal,
and a sign of the times, opened.
It was roofless - wasn't enclosed
until a few years later - and
more resembled in that way
an open-air agora, of Greece
or Rome, which factor I
actually really loved. Open
like that, to the sky, it seemed
really old and ancient, as
something 'new.' Weird. I
always felt as if my greater
oversoul was having flashbacks,
or revisiting fluid time. But,
anyway, in the original Menlo,
there was a supermarket at either
end. Foodtown and A&P, I
think. That killed it for the
trips of Perth Amboy. So what
are you gonna' do except go
with the flow. Like Mark Twain
and all that gilded Age stuff,
you just shrug it off and make
fun of the bastards instead of
taking their crap seriously.
-
I'll leave to you to decide, if
you care to. Virginia Woolf
dated Modernity thusly : 'On
or about December 1910
human character changed.'
Probably each one of us,
well, not everyone, I mean
those among us who can
think, would have our own
date of something for that.
The year of the big war's end.
1957. 1969. The year the
Berlin Wall came down. The
year of the WTC bombing.
Even maybe, just yesterday
for someone - the day Aretha
died (?), or Elvis, or Philip
Roth. Who cares, and what
matters. It's all above my pay
grade. Which is zero. Not
zero-hour, nine a.m. Just zero.
Too starved an argument.
For. My. Sword.
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