RUDIMENTS, pt 734
(smudge pots)
Sometimes a person has an
implacable foe; other times
merely a foe. There's a true
difference there, not just a
similarity. The implacable
foe is never going to be
beaten. It wins, hands down.
It most often ends up being
one's own self! You never
know that - only until after
it's all too late, when it
dawns on you....'You know
what? I did all that to myself!'
-
That's the small firestorm at
the center of everything. It's
what gives us our dreams and
aspirations. In the mid 1990's
I had a car-guy friend. He was
wild-crazy about 1933 Plymouths
and finally got one to restore.
He didn't just 'restore' it - he
literally, first, dismantled it -
wood slats and all (some of
the interior sections had wood,
in board-strip form, behind
panels and things), cleaned
or replaced, right to specs.,
every last little detail. 'Why a
'33 Plymouth?', I'd ask. And
he'd go on, rote and rhythm
of everything - what it meant
and why, stuff I'd never given
thought to - as if in some
long, old, lineage of cars'
progressions in design, form
and performance, this held
special place. You see, it was
his own, personal, vision, and
it drove him past most any
other obstacles. There, deep
in his driveway on Demarest
Avenue, through all sorts of
sweat and toil, he'd spend his
days and hours on that car.
It was fine to see, and baffling
too. Yet, I simply realized, it
was like that for everyone;
we each have one of those
special, unique, views and
outlooks and drives that keep
us crazy-going. Nothing too
easily explainable to others,
and sometimes even unclear
to us, as ourselves.
-
When I was a young kid, like
4, 5 years old, the only cars
my father ever had, back then,
were Plymouths. Late 1940's
ones, a quick succession of
maybe three that I recall. 1947,
maybe a '48, and then an early
1950 one. This was about 1954,
so they were a few years old,and
used when he got them. I can
remember each one very well;
the interiors, with that sort of
felt fabric for the seats, the
humps in the middle of the floor,
for the driveshaft beneath, and,
draped at the rear of the front
seats, that long, arc'd rope
hold, for the rear passengers.
Like a velvet rope in Hollywood,
or outside some fancy club.
There were others things too,
all very memorable. My father,
a sea-faring, sailor-dreamer
type to the end, used to buy
Plymouths. Strictly; and do
you know why? Can you figure
what that driving force (no pun)
was for my father? He was
honest and loyal to Plymouths
because.....of the boat on their
hood. The hood ornament. Take
a look some day.
-
Many a time I tried staying
jovial, about everything; but
it was too difficult and I found
that wasn't the way to go - even
though I still have a clown-act
that I perform now and then
fairly well. Being stern and
miserable doesn't really get
you much.
-
In NYC when I'd go to that
jazz loft I'd written about,
there'd be all sorts of crazy
be-bop kinds of jazz people
milling. Even in the late 1960's
they were outliers and just
plain different. Jazz of that sort
had its own language, its way
of being smart, staying aloof,
the masterful hipness of the
very cool. It's nothing you can
'learn,' and if you do get caught
out trying to mimic it or pick
it up on the sly, you get called
out and smudged like snot on
a tablecloth. It's inherent, and
one has it or one doesn't. I've
written of this way earlier (I
guess that what early chapter
are for - sequencing and then
searching out, but, yeah, it's
all there), and it kept coming
back to me. Especially when I
got mixed up into that movie
thing I've just written of in the
last three chapters. It all came
back to me like a kid's drawing:
when you're little and you draw
eagles and birds in the sky with
big feet, larger than the chimneys
on the houses you also draw.
None of it fits, but they're all
there together and you do
believe it all.
-
Back when I was a kid, they used
to have these things they called
smudge pots. They were at every
place where there was road work
or construction or digging. Over
these many years they've been
replaced by battery lamps, lights
and light-signs, caution blinkers
and all that junk. But back in the
1950's they'd have these smudge
pots everywhere. They were small,
round black things, looking like
bombs or something, with little
chimney tops out of which an
oily, orange-red, open flame
was always burning. I guess
they were filled with kerosene
or some other oily, diesel-like
fuel, and they burned slowly,
through a wick system or
something. They were all
over the place, and, no, we
never messed with them. That's
the difference between that world
and today's. If they had them today,
first-off some safety-freak would
have a go at them for open-flame,
fumes, toxic smoke, dangerous
obstacles - any of that panoply
of overly-dead caution that runs
things now - and, second and
more, they'd probably be used to
torture someone, or set cars
afire, and stolen or doused or
whatever. I used to love those
things, and the little twirly
finger of black smoke that rose
from them too. They were like
vigil lamps, like the Kennedy
eternal flame thing they put at
the President's grave. Probably
just a glorified and sanctified
smudge-pot anyway. (The
thing, not the President).
-
Writer's note to reader: Now it
is that I've introduced too many
concepts here, in this chapter.
It wasn't meant to be that way.
I was going to write about 'Time'
as a concept, and that movie again,
the way time is created, for scenes
to overlap and for the spaces in
between the scenes. And about
my ride home that cold night and
how weirdly 'off' the whole episode
had thrown me. I was not in any
Time that I could sense. I had
just come out of a manufactured
movie time, which was all false
and made of scenes, in this case
scene-after-scene, over and over,
maddeningly. All to fit their made
up and falsified construction of
time and sequence to fit a movie
pattern, and the spaces between it
when, in reality, a million other
things transpired, everywhere, but
to which the fake move-scene time
acceded NOT. There was, somehow,
no room for 'Reality' in their reality.
We were all supposed to buy into
the gimmick. And all the frozen
motorcycle way home, freezing my
junk on a faux-leather seat, I was
traveling INTO time, but a whole
other kind of time....and how this
all baffled me, and held me hostage
and made me unsure. Unsure enough
to...I didn't know what. Go fast,
find ice, slide and die? Crash into
the bridge abutment? Hard and fast?
Once? I was done. I was confused.
Cold and lonely and used.
But it was all good.
-
Anyway, I never got to half of what
I wanted to go on about, so, next
chapter, I'll start again about the
smudge pots and what I remember
about my own reality from them.
So, stick around.
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