RUDIMENTS, pt. 473
professor mute and mr. silence
I have found, a few times,
myself being up against
real problem cases. It's
always easy to recognize,
mostly by their vehemence
against your opposing them
and their anger at your not
accepting their scenario.
In order for a lie to work,
in actuality it has to be
perfect. Seldom ever are.
The more that person piles
it on, the worse it gets, as
they begin to lose count
of the number of items
they've begun contradicting.
Because it was all fiction.
That's when trouble starts,
and I've found it best to just
walk away. Like a stage
costume that I know just
isn't going to fit, I don't
even go to the fitting.
Dr. Mute, meet Mr. Silence.
-
One time we were out in
a place called Sheds, NY. It
was really late, we couldn't
find a motel or anything in
which to stay : middle
of nowhere, no lights along
the road, one lane in each
direction, and just a bad and
unfriendly feeling in the air.
The absolutes only thing we
saw open, really, was a tavern.
A roadside bar, with maybe
10 cars in the lot. We thought
of pulling in, telling of our
plight, seeing if there was a
place to stay, but we thought
better of it. I'd been all through
that scene before, Troy Hotel
and more, and wasn't at all up
to the 'stranger and his blond
lady, tired, lost, and stuck in
town' routine. We just kept
a'movin. You get road-wise
after a while. As I remember
we just kept on driving -
down through DeReuter,
Thruxton, and Cortland,
and then to Ithaca by
daybreak.
-
Back in those days, a lot
of the communes and things
were still breaking up, so
there'd be pack-remnants here
and there, out through the hills
from Ithaca, of strangely dazed,
and often dazzling too, people
on the move. Most of the
communes broke up through
major human disagreements,
lover's quarrels (all that group
sex and switching non-partners
and rotating child-cares and
food and clean-up details) :
after a while that tended to
just drive everyone mad -
hippie commune or not -
and there was always some
megalomaniac type at the
helm who wanted it all,
and thought it was all his.
The weirdest guys were the
ones with the spirit names,
or otherwise self-conscious
new titles. Girls too. Robert
Nairobi; Lady-Spirit Flower
Heart; Peter Coyote. There
were shamans and guides and
spirit creatures galore, moon
babies and dead saviors (yes,
hippies died); Any one of
those kinds waltzing into
Sheds, NY, especially a bar
in the wee hours, was most
likely a dead man before
the door latched.
-
I had two friends in Cortland,
except now I can't remember
their names. The Cortlandt
Apple came from there, that
particular breed or form of
apple, whatever it is - I found
out later that apple types
diminish over time and drop
off, and apple scientists are
constantly replacing them.
A new apple species can be
created genetically - and
prosper. That's why there
are, in the last 20 years,
any number of new apple
types, on the produce shelves,
that you may not have
traditionally heard of.
Japanese names too -
active apple geneticists.
-
Cortlandt wasn't ever much
of a place, though it had its
own center and warmth. Out
that way nothing much is
anything, or wasn't, anyway,
unless it was Ithaca, south,
or Syracuse, north. Of course,
Cooperstown and Albany,
wherever they were in relation
to anything. I always figured,
if it was Europe, all those
places would each be in
different countries - like
Belgium and Switzerland
and Holland (Netherlands).
Spread out all across New
York State, it was just a
big mash of could-be
trouble.
-
That was all like a hundred
years ago now, and my own,
local, places, like Woodbridge
and Avenel, New Brunswick,
Amboy, and all the rest, they
shared none of those like
characteristics, jammed down
each other's throats as they
were, and getting filled with
all disparate types of people.
Up there it was mostly white
landowners, blacks who had
already lived 150 years in
a type of genetic subjugation
to those whites, and were
happy to get places of their
own, like Kingston and the
back parts of Albany, to
live as blacks in their own
isolated ghettos. That was
all to change in the next
twenty years, for the worse
or better I'll not say. But,
eventually the whole country
flamed out and now we've
got what we've got. Period.
Every so often, up and out
there, you'd run into an
almost blacks-only town,
or enclave, or section, and
you knew it right-off. No
Chinese, no Mexicans, no
Indians. The lowest on the
rung, in 1972, was probably
the Italians - remnants of
old Hudson River apple-
picker migrants, and the
Erie Canal laborers and
all that. Scots and Irish,
they mostly were the river
and boat people.
-
It was pretty cool, in a
lawless way, traipsing all
over the countryside like
that. My friend, Mary Kay,
of whom I've written before,
(the towel girl), she finally
had met up with some
fireman guy, in Syracuse,
and went to live there for a
while. He was about 40,
two or three sons, in his
custody. She tried it for a
while, but nothing worked
out. She wasn't much of the
Mom type and I think she
realized right off that the
kids had made her personal
scene a disaster. So she
came stumbling back to
Elmira, (Corning, actually).
And hooked right back up
with that Kiki girlfriend
person of hers, as roommate.
Having only recently moved
her 'up' there, to Syracuse,
we now moved her back.
But it was all good.
-
People on the move are a
funny tribe. They hold
different codes and values.
Especially these late-floundering
hippie types; they'd all seem
to end up in University settings,
the messy little parts of the
towns just adjacent to the
campuses. They could brood.
They could hang on. And I
guess the selling of drugs
and mushrooms and stuff
to a close and ready audience
had a lot to do with it. There
was no real 'Law' to speak
of, anyway none that was
acting on things that I ever
saw. Ithaca was anarchic,
as all 'idealistic' places are,
and what, after all, is an
ivy league university if
not idealistic, with all that
romping and faculty cocktail
party sex stuff, talking high
and mighty and then getting
just drunk enough to squeeze
Professor Feldstrom's wife
Nancy's tits just once in the
kitchen. The kids parodied
all this stuff nicely - as did
playwrights, skits, lampoons,
and songs. It was all like
hippie-commune stuff in
reverse. Professor Mute
meets Mrs. Silence.
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