11,787. RUDIMENTS, pt. 698

RUDIMENTS, pt. 698

(possibilities are never endless)

Weatherstripping, insulation,

storm windows, fencing, curbs,

edging, hedges, a cellar entrance,

lawn-mowing, dogwood trees, more

hedges (rear), a huge clothes-pole,

a wooden shed, scrap lumber,

bicycles, a dog house, a black

hairy dog named Rinny (from

Rin-Tin-Tin), a small treehouse,

a swing-set from Dooley's, a

water spigot installed outside

on the back wall, for the long

green hose to reach the large

rear yard with spray water,

and  -  lastly for now  -  a

hand-made-by-Dad, (oversized)

picnic table with attached seats,

and redwood stain. Craziest!

-

Those are some of the enumerated

things I can recall from my first

year in Avenel, or at least in that

'new' house. The change of the

complete environment, and my

being 5, made everything new

anyway, but so many things

stand out. The road was still

rubble, and not macadamed

until 1963, maybe, Until then

it was loose pebble type stones

on a bed of tar that had been

sprayed down. The pebbles sort

of stayed in place; until they

didn't. Then they'd all begin a

slow shift over to the gutters on

each side, and eventually there'd

be town workers with a new

layer of tar, and a re-spreading

of new and older pebbles. It was

noisy, as a road surface too,

because each time a car sped

over it (and they did; nothing 
cooler than seeing a '54 DeSoto 
burning pebbles on a huff run up
to Rt. One) the pebbles would get

all kicked up and spread about as

you'd hear them hitting metal,

and the rest of the underbodies.

A kid's flying football-tackle type

leap onto them, as well, could

really scrape up the bloodied

knees, and tear pants too. That

never stopped anyone  -  none of

my friends were ballet dancers.

-

Of course, there were the mosquito

spray trucks. They came all Summer

long, little jeeps with spray-cannons

at the rear pushing out a huge, heavy,

oily white cloud of, I guess, some

sort of DDT (back then). It was

pungent and probably deadly or

poisonous, though none of us

died nor became asthmatic from

wadding through it, riding behind

the jeep, slamming into the moist

cloud of white, and deep-breathing

our bicycle breaths with the dense

toxin of mosquito-kill. Rachel

Carson to the rescue! (She wrote

'Silent Spring,' an expose of this

death-to-Nature movement the

municipalities and governments

were underway with). [Years later

it dawned on me that we should,

by rights call them 'Covertments'

and not 'Governments' because

they DON'T govern, just secretly

control, and by covert means, never

tell us a thing, nor the truth]. As

it was, these deep-breathing

exercises ended up as great fun,

with the woods down at the end

of the block - on both sides then  -

which led to the junkyards and the

trailer camp. I still have dreams

of that with the most reality ever,

way before it was paved. The

pebble street that I was just

writing about simply stopped

at the last house (Mulligan's

in one side, and Wolchansky's

on the other). After that, and

out to Rt. One, it was just a

muddied up dreckhole, potted

and jagged, with puddles and

deep gouges. The surprise for 
cars and drivers  was that you 
needed to slow down almost 
immediately once the pebbly 
surface ended, or  face then the 
the bumpy consequences on the
car's suspension. In my dreams,

everything is perfectly true to

life as it was then; I can place

and recall the large puddle spots,

and the visualization of cars

and people going slowly 'around'

those deeper pits still rings true.

In fact  -  and odd as any of this

may be  -  it one of those places

that consistently calls me back.

I want to be there. I want to

see again and sense and feel

every hole and rut, each out

of place rock and stone.

-

Possibilities like that are endless,

well, not really  -  more likely

endlessly impossible. I'll never

see that place again; ever.

-

It was Springtime, 1954, when 

I arrived to live at Avenel,

(I never liked that name, by

the way; something about the

juxtaposed 'V' and 'A' never

set right, and neither did I

like the 'e's or the last, ending, 

'l'). And as I think back on it all

now, lots of things from that

time remain in my mind. For

one thing, I can remember the

moving truck and the moving

crew guys, off-loading and

carrying things in. My parents

had ordered in, for them as a

lunch I guess, a large platter

of prepared deli-food, which

was delivered and laid out on

a countertop in the kitchen area.

It was impressive  -  sandwiches,

pickles, salads, drinks, etc., and

I can remember everything stopping

and everyone sitting around to eat.

What's a little kid know of what 

he's seeing? I can remember the

pickles. Impressive? I can also

remember with awe the mounds

and piles of dirt and rubble to the

rear of the houses  -  they'd not yet

been grated, re-soiled, leveled, or

even cleared and cleaned rightly.

It was borderline, somehow,

between a strange moonscape

(unknown actually, then) and a

bomb-site still wrecked. And

then, even a bigger surprise, in

fact a surprise two-deep, behind

all that were railroad tracks, and

with great, heaving engines that

at first billowed more clouds of

smoke, which we'd chase until

they dispersed, and the particulate

matter that came down too. Until

about 1958 or '9, there were

complaints and wails from parents

and adults  - claims that their car

finished were being ruined, pitted,

pockmarked and more, from whatever

was landing on them. It was true;

each passing train laid down a

great broil of smoke and cinder.

And the surprise behind even that

was  -  across the tracks  -  an actual,

working farm. The prison farm!

There were tractors, corn crops,

animals, paths, rows of crop walks

and plowing paths, harvesting sites,

and even a rail siding at which feed

and supply cars were uncoupled and

left. One Easter vacation week, I

well remember Jim Yacullo and 

myself breaking into a boxcar or

two (snapping the security tags),

and entering cars fill with 50 or

100 pound bags of flour, mash,

oats and rice. We managed, with

our pen-knives and some stealth,

to slit open a hundred or so sacks,

grain bags, and canvas, and just

watch them all pour out onto

the ground and box-car spaces.

Crime of the century, I guess,

but we never got caught.