RUDIMENTS, pt. 449
(oak tree road)
By this time of another
day, of course, all that
was gone. That horse
auction and Roosevelt
Stables disappeared as
quickly as the words
themselves were spoken.
The fields are apartments
now, and, overall, Iselin
itself in one of the Kingdom
Capitols of east-coast
Indo-Pak culture. One time,
about 1997, in some sort of
fury over some slight, a Biker
friend of mine, from the old
version of Iselin, and reacting
to some slight and offense to
him, of which he took a true
and venomous, last-straw,
offense, came into the Pioneer
Tavern (biker bar then, now
long gone) and gave a furied
speech of outcry and rounded
up the Bikers, and we all rode,
en masse, back up Oak Tree
Road, to these Roosevelt Stables
replacement apartments,
probably filled with 2,000
frightened and confused
South Asians who stared
out and massed as themselves.
This guy, with perhaps 30
steaming motorcycles (and
half-plastered bar-bikers)
held court addressing, nay
shouting, at this crowd about
predilections for their being
offensive, bad drivers, smelly,
overly prodigious in the
reproduction department...
and the rest. No responses,
no one else spoke up; he'd
shouted his piece, appeared
to have some American muscle
behind him, and turned and left.
We all got back to the bar as one.
I'm not to be saying here what
was wrong and what was not
wrong - it was the mid-90's,
our local towns were changing,
things were going on, and -
in this case - someone was
aggrieved enough to make a
scene. Good for that, I say;
why be endlessly mute in the
face of danger? As it turned
out anyway, at right about
that same Oak Tree Road spot,
and those same people, one of
our Biker lads was killed by
an errant, stupid auto (driver)
a number of years later.
Just goes to show.
-
You, (any person), says what
they don't wish to say by saying
what is said. Everything is
telltale. It's funny how people
bait, and then wait for their
trap, their snare, to be snapped.
The parleyphone (parlophone,
actually), factor of ingenious
distraction, I called it. But I'll
never know what really it was.
Or is.
-
The town I live in now is
apparently run by mouthpieces
of the two leading families, let's
call them the Inanes, and the
Flatulents. Back in the mid-
nineties, we were run by the
pretty much same version
of things, but before the
onslaught of everyone having
a local social-site voice. It's
all much different now, and I
wonder what the social-warfare,
back then, as Iselin was being
diced and decimated, would
have been like. A brother-in-law
of mine then was of an Iselin
Hardware family - a very
successful, local, hardware
and service empire, for Iselin.
(Sweeney was the family name).
He used to talk of the impending
doom - the roadway widening
that was about to happen, the
influx of the Indians and Pakistanis
whom he had trouble dealing with
because they did not wish to be
buying from Americans, and -
most tellingly and most true and
important, the arrivals of Home
Depot stores around the area;
which he was sure would kill
his business (and it did) and
find a way as well to have the
Indi and Pakistani folks begin
buying from them. Within 8
years, at most, it was all
over for that Iselin Hardware
store. The location is now
just another of the almost
endless, brightly designed,
strip emporiums which
dot these streets. Believe
me, there are at least 10.
Filled with the requisite
Indians and Pakistanis,
and the rest. Their own
commerce works grandly
- saris, a hundred sorts
of cuisine, gold and jewelry,
Travel-to-India agencies,
flight agents, money transfer
and agents, and the rest. Oddly
enough, not just one of anything,
but usually 8 or 10 doing the
same thing. And somehow
they all keep going. And
the local streets stay packed
-
So, as can be seen, accommodating
to real life does occur; silently and
smoothly too. A few bumps along
the way, but the most you get
is a few people shrugging. The
Inanes and the Flatulents always
get their way. When my brother
in law used to talk of all this,
everyone just looked at him as
if he was crazy - mouths open,
yawning, they'd say 'what's the
matter with him, I wonder...?
Yes, no one cared. Turned out
he was right as rain. I used
to wonder abut those cowpokes,
the horses and stuff, at the stables
and the auction nights. Whatever
sort of world did they carry in
their heads?Near that corner, for
the turn, there used to be, once,
a bowling alley, and something
else which I forget but which
turned into a Cittone Institute -
like a computer skills and tech
school, at about the same time.
They'd have to pass it all on
their ways in to the horse
auction grounds. I wondered
did they notice, or sense, that
something was up, that in the air
there was something 'new' afoot?
Would they get it? Understand
its makings? Or never even notice?
I'm sure all those old cadgers are
dead now, and I'd like even 25%
of the cool stuff and timed thinking
they took with them; for it's all
gone now.
-
Bad-side Iselin - the town I knew,
not this new one here now - had
three mainstays for the old crowd,
the real, flavorful, hearty, punch-'em
dead drinking white-guys crowd :
Hank's, the Pioneer, and Flip's.
They were simple bars. Nasty and
outrageous too. Fights in the parking
lot ('Hey! I know! Let's go looking
for teeth!), girls galore, beer and
froth, booze and anger, and plenty
of happy too. Everything of them,
and all they represented, is gone
now. The old town is aglow and
resplendent, though not in anything
I'd recognize. Brooklyn has Atlantic
Avenue. We have Oak Tree Road.
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