RUDIMENTS, pt. 597
(lighting up the dark)
It seems so very weird now,
but there was a time in my
life when having a flashlight,
and a pair of sunglasses, was
a big deal. I found a flashlight
to be a real necessity. I'd had
one or two as a kid - the dark
green Boy Scout kind, with
the right-angle light lens. I
always liked them, a lot -
in the days before plastic,
they were metal and sturdy
and felt good in the hand. Up in
the high-country Pennsylvania,
however, I didn't have them,
not even one - never knowing
what had happened to them.
For the sort of living I was
doing there, many things
were after dark, down in
dark places, involving walks
out to the barn, around things,
carefully; wary of fences and
wires and all. Basement work
too. A flashlight just became
a needed thing. Back then, a
good one could be had for
maybe 7 or 8 dollars, but
believe it or not that was
a large outlay for me. I did
finally get one - as I recall,
I sent away to a tool company,
for a few wrenches and screw
drivers, and in the deal was a
decent flashlight for like $1.25,
thrown in. It arrived one day,
and I was set (once I had the
batteries). The same thing
went with sunglasses, which
sometimes I really wished for.
Sitting in the hot sun, riding
a tractor for hours, doing any
of the assorted tractor tasks,
some days the glare would
get really annoying. It wasn't
about style or anything; but
sunglasses, again, 'back then'
had not yet become an everyday
item to be found for sale, and
cheap, as they are now. Those
cheap, prickly Chinese-made
things weren't around either.
Sunglasses were a serious
product, made serious and
kept that way. I never did
get a pair, until much later
- in their post-retirement
comfort and travel, and
economic ease, my in-laws
began having things like
that (sunglasses and flashlights
too) in easy multiples and
always threw some one or
the other my way. Heck,
one year, in an October,
they came up to Elmira
to visit for a number of
days, and it was World
Series time - my wife's
father decided it was
mind-boggling that there'd
be no TV for him to watch
the World Series on, whatever
few games there were, and
he went out, with me, and
we bought a COLOR ! TV,
a 'Quasar, by Motorola' no
less, in fact. That was big
time. I hardly knew how
to take, or accept, stuff like
that. The problem was that
I'd never wanted one; I'd
gone up there to get away
from crap like that, but now
the inevitable, and foolish,
compromises of normal
family life had caused me
to fold. It was miserable.
Kid-junk, Sesame Street,
Zoom, and all the rest of
that materialistic propaganda
youth-prattle flooded my
walls. My 'good will' was
quite maddening.
-
In Pennsylvania back then,
there was no set arrangement
of state or county offices for
the various necessary things -
licenses, permits, address changes,
etc. Everything seemed to come
through the 'Justice Of the Peace.'
A 'JP' as it was known, was just
someone who, with the requisite
training and approval, hung a
shingle at some side door of
his house, put in a desk and a
chair or two, a few pictures
of deer, or some country-barn
scene painting, and went to
work. For most everything,
from license plate to wedding
permits, or officiating, a few
bucks to him would get
whatever was needed, done.
I used them for lots of things
at first - being newly arrived
and all. Usually I had a local
person with me, to break the
ice. Sometimes the same house
with the JP in it would also be
the barber-shop. I had that too,
since mostly people around
there kept really short, farmer,
hair and assumed I would too.
So I did. A lot of things up
there were 'guys only' kinds
of things; like the barbering.
2 bucks maybe, a couple of
guys sitting on a porch, with
a beer or soda, one cutting,
one waiting, one in the barber
chair, and one or two others
just there - you had to hear
all kinds of garbage talk, names
and gossip, jokes and prattle,
work/farm stories, girls and
women too. Some guys really
knew how to talk; some guys
knew how to get at others too,
and some guys would face off,
get all incensed about something.
I never saw fights or things,
but I did hear lots of shit -
internal quarrels within a
society that at first seemed
all harmonic and unified.
That was just the barber-shop
aspect. Getting new plates or
a license or school-bus driver's
endorsement, say, that could
take hours. When I finally
went for my road test, for
truck and school bus driving,
(this was one of the few things,
it seemed, they ever got 'official'
about) I had to go to Towanda,
about 30 miles east on Route 6,
for some county-officiating road
test, in a school bus they supplied,
there, for the test. I drove my
friend Warren's (neighboring
farmer) red '66 Ford Galaxie.
That was pretty cool. The
schoolbus test - I passed -
was a shocker though; for
some reason it was given on
a road that had such an incline
that you'd think twice before
even taking a snow-sled to
in the snow. It surely was the
acid test for any school-bus
driving clutch and accelerator
operation. Way tougher than
I'd expected, but I got through.
-
There were lots of good times
too. And some fun. But it was
all new and fresh to me. I had
to get used to a lot of things
I'd never thought about before,
especially how my last point
of embarkation had been New
York City, to which nothing
here was translatable, and
vice-versa. I never even talked
about any of it - to these people
it was as if I stated, 'Oh, and
yeah, I used to live on Mars.'
-
A few years later, when I did
get to Elmira, and the college
environs as well, it was all OK
to have been a New York person;
accepted, cool, and considered
wise and privileged. (Yeah, sure).
That's how different these two
local environments were, in
proximity and even adjacent to
each other but little mixing and
separated too by a simple idea of
'border' : one was Pennsylvania
and the other was New York.
My own, and my wife's, various
inclinations and preferences for
one or the other of these two
conditions would slither around
and change a lot. I guess our
pivotal year came when we
realized our interests found the
most satisfaction when we went
to Ithaca - it put these other
two places into a sort of shame,
intellectually anyway. Cosmopolitan
Cornell was leagues ahead of any
of this - learning, philosophers,
studies, conjecture, awarenesses,
styles and fashions too. A much
more 'Hell with the rest of
the world' place.
-
In much the same way that a
coin has two distinct sides
and faces, I myself had
somehow 'chunneled'
through a self-inflicted
passage, exiting from one
and - finally - into another.
Certainty and light, as it
were, which better suited
me, were all around me. The
artist-in-residence that year,
or at least until he died, was
a pretty famed New York guy,
from the old artworld of the
1940's and 50's. His name was
Gandy Brodie - weird name,
way too light and airy sounding,
but I never used it against him.
We got on well, and spent some
time together - art stuff, talking
the old days, rounding off the
people we'd both come across,
Studio School, galleries and
all that. He was like a story-guy,
someone you read about, come
to life. In Emira, no less!
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