RUDIMENTS, pt. 703
(both infamy and renown)
I'd guess to say we had all the
usual - breadman, milkman,
vegetable truck guy, scissors
and saw sharpeners, who also
made keys. There was an entire
assortment of trucks - the kind
of arrivals and service you could
set your watch by. Two, or even
three, different sorts of ice cream
and ices trucks. The bread man
and the milk man ended up each
knowing most everybody; the
others were just passing vendors.
There was also an insurance guy
who - it seemed - once a month
managed to walk the block, with
his odd, little, black leather-bound
accounts book, (I know this only
because we were one of the usual
stops). His name was 'I. Mike
Cohen,'and I truly used to think
that was a fantastic name, in the
way it sort of introduced itself.
I never knew the ins and outs
of insurance, but he'd collect his
3 bucks or so (it was a paltry sum)
monthly, for what and for how
many decades, I never found out.
He was a small, sour, dour, Jewish
guy - might as well have been
selling caskets or funerals for any
of the joy it seemed to bring him.
He even had a black 1955 Ford,
which was pretty new then, but
he only parked remotely, way
down by the school, and walked
his route through the houses. As
I think back now, I don't know
how I knew this, but I guess if I
wasn't in school it must have
been Summer - yet, again, I
too remember him in a heavy,
black, cloth coat. Mystery?
-
I guess those sorts of jobs were
mercifully helpful to a lot of
these guys - basically unskilled.
Buy a truck, have it equipped,
and drive slowly around all day,
hoping people enough need your
services to get you your services
as needed. It was also kind of
bizarre how cheap things were.
A loaf of bread for like 18 cents,
gas at 19 cents (with that extra
9 thrown it to make it actually
more like 20. Whoever cared
about '19.99 cents a gallon'?
My father used to blow into to
gas stations and say 'Give me a
buck's worth, Chief.' He called
most every stranger in his service
Chief, or Bud. That was always
funny to me. We'd go fishing, to
rent a boat and stuff, and it was
always 'Cap'n Al's' boat rentals
or whatever, but he never said
Captain. It was still Bud. Or
Chief. Some things were
always bizarre.
-
I think sometimes when you're
a kid you just let the 'bizarre' go,
because you can't really yet tell
the difference or understand the
twisty little sidebars that make it
so. It's only later, older, when you
can finally gumption-up to say,
'What the heck is that?' It's a
reasonable assumption, I'd think,
that if you can drive, fight in
a war, or undertake basic sexual
maturity, you should also then
have the right to call things out.
Or, as my friend Aleck used to
humorously say, 'Call a spade
a spade, except in Harlem.'
(Goodness yes, a person used to
be able to josh around like that,
poke fun at fools, make inanities
that had some actual sense too,
without starting riots or strikes
by college-level kinderbrats).
-
We never had a bookmobile, not on
Inman Avenue anyway. I always thought
that, like both the ice cream guy, and
the bread guy, it would have been
cool to have a book truck come by.
Not the Bookmobile library stuff,
but I mean one you could buy from.
Cheaply. Like an Amazon book-truck.
Elmira, later on, had a Bookmobile
that trolled around the city. It was
weird, because they also had a really
respectable library, and the College
too was right off downtown, a simple
walk and always part of the town's
business and flavor. The Bookmobile,
quite bizarre actually, was dark green
and basically looked like a huge
torpedo, (have I not already said
'United States of Dildo' in a
previous chapter? Why, yes, of
course I did)... Lets just say this
weinermobile was filled with books
and had flexi-shelves that flipped
out on the sides, and they got
loaded with books to at the stops.
A library on wheels; but for what
I never really knew. Anyway,
the Avenel I knew never had that.
-
There was, at first, a screwy little
stone hut next to school 4 that was
the Library. Officially. Not much
larger than two closets stitched
together, it was in any case, quite
attractive, homey, and welcoming.
That was three structures ago on
the same spot. They just kept
re-building to larger and crummier
facilities each time. The last one
was so bad, in its resemblance to
any small-sized piece of junk
school building that it was soon
superseded by the 'Main' Library,
which system by then had taken
over all these little operations
that acted as satellite little libraries.
Now they're all part of the one
system, all the same, and, goodness,
all tacky enough in their ways.
Sewaren has a standout, singular,
lone library, pretty much nearly
exactly resembling the structure
that Avenel had. Except it's very
seldom open. Through the 1960's
actually it was a Christian Science
Reading Room. How it ever ended
up as an independent library now
is beyond me.
-
I have a friend, or acquaintance
anyway, who lives across from
it now it what remnants are left
of a huge, old rambling, yellow
mansion that has been in his family
for many years - farm to nothing.
His uncle was a very famous
movie actor, who, visiting from
California when he would come
to NYC to do voiceovers and
commercials and plays and
things, would stay there. This
friend of mine, Bruce, used to
as a late-teen, be his uncle''s
'driver' during these visits
(mid/late 1960's), and he said
he'd get to NYC on those work
trips, meeting lots of the famed
and the renowned. (I always tell
him to watch out, because often
the 'renowned' later become the
'renounced'). No matter. He
remembers surprisingly little of
Sewaren days, but he remembers
the Reading Room, and tells me
too that it was his grandfather and
then father who granted what was
then the library some free space
for their operation in one of their
streetside farm buildings (still
there but unused and derelict).
Bruce also tells me about the
only thing he remembers is some
half-super-famous late 60's rock
band that lived in another large
house a few over. I forget the
name of the band, and the name
that house to have in those loud,
druggy, noisy, sloppy, rock and
roll days of infamy. This was all
news to me, hearing of it from
only years later. Jeez, the
things we miss.
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