12,264. RUDIMENTS, pt. 861

RUDIMENTS, pt. 861

(that common man touch)

I always wanted to work in

a gas station, though I never

did. I came close once, but the

guy didn't like my looks  -

long hair and all apparently

got to him. His own personal

compulsion was that, as he

did, everyone ought to look

like a repressed, perverted

Marine. OK. Fine. He was

almost offended at the

off-handed way I thought to

just stroll into his high-class

refueling establishment and

ask for a job. Heck, I didn't

even have the PhD in Advanced

Motorology his station required.

Another friend of mine, John,

he said that he thought I was

crazy  -  'You know it's soon

going to be cold out, you'll be

out in it all, no mercy, cold, 

sleet, rain, and snow bounding

down on you. What d'ya want

that for? Lousy job.' John had

recently returned from his

military service in Germany,

a few years of it, and he was

just then easing back into (a sort

of) real life. So, we jumped into

his car and took off to Farcher's

Grove, (a German saloon) in

Union, where he taught me the

only thing, he said, he'd learned

in Germany. How to drink Weiss

Beer. I learned pretty well!

-

Whoever cared about the rest of

anything? Not me? Farcher's Grove

was an old, German Beer Hall and

grove. Picnics, parties, dances, and

all that stuff, held outside whenever

feasible. All that grove stuff was

cool, but the inside was great.  

Hard to explain, a long center bar,

horseshoe shaped, so that the 

bartender(s) inside it could tend

and reach to all sides. Behind that,

sort of, ran a string of tables and

the internal offices, and then, off

to the other side, was a large 

meeting room. There was also a

food-service section, with all those

krauts and brauts and knockwursts

and sausages and all that German

stuff. You could just hang there

for hours  -  lots of old guys, a few

strange ones; and the table-service

people  -  no young girls or anything  -

were just like semi-miserable, often

cranky, German wives, I guess, of the

lodge guys who mostly just sat 

around there drinking. Even so, lots

of innuendo and sex-jokes about

the ladies bending over as they

cleaned tables, and the sausages

and all that weird adult stuff. As

it turned out (there will be a few of

those 'As it turned out' things here),

in a year or two we began using

this very place, Farcher's Grove,

for the occasional motorcycle run,

rally, end-site, party, swap-meet, etc.

Always well-attended, flush with

good times, music, bands, and

the rest. As it turned out, the one

problem with this was the Biker

clubs, the real ones, 1% er's, 

outlaw clubs. The local boys,

Pagan's, (that odd, mis-used

apostrophe is theirs, on their

colors and insignias), they 

sort of claimed the space for 

their use too. One time we

went to an event there, a

Pagan's event, and when we 

got there, amazingly and I

kid you not, the adjoining and

across-the-street warehouse and

factory rooftops were cluttered

with lawmen. Motorcycle Task

Force coppers, from the rooftops,

armed and with tripod mounted

cameras and huge, long-lenses,

filming everything they saw, 

for at least three of the prime

hours. And that was only the 

ones we saw, for all I know 

they were also hidden in

treetops, disguised as locals

inside the bar, or even probably

acing as Bikers. Probably, as

well, there were NASA people with

deep-space satellites watching.

They filmed it all; who came in,

who left, the parking lots entries,

and the exits. It was some crazy

stuff  -  oddly enough , I figured

nearly everyone would get pulled

over out by the highway a mile or

so off, checked for drunkeness,

or firepower, or knives, or tattoos.

The kind of crap that happened

all the time. But, nothing came of

that, that I knew of.  As it turned

out, and this was the crazy part,

these federales were gunning for

Bikers, while Farcher's Grove itself

was a den of Nazi sympathizers,

1990's style anyway. I can vouch

for this, as can a few others. Those

cops guys didn't seem to care about

that shit one bit. They'd rather write

Biker parking tickets?

-

We had a planning meeting there

one night  -  about 5 of us, biker

guys, and the Farcher's Grove

staff guys  - probably 55 or 60

year old German guys. We all

got to drinking (free, on them),

and one of the wives brought

some food around; they started

getting really loose and chatty,

lots of guffaw and har-har stuff,

German words, etc. Then it began.

The history of Farcher's Grove, 

the youthful days there, when their

own parents were active, what it

was like, the Nazi Bund Club

meetings, the sympathizers, salutes, 

tales, stories, speeches, meetings.

This was all as vital and vivid to

them as if it happened just the

day previous. They were proud

of everything  -  brought out

displays of memorabilia, medals

and badges, guns and knives, and,

at one point, some very sacred

to them, object, woven of human 

hair. Let me just say that, among

us anyway, the room want deadly

silent. I fully expected at any 

moment to have to look at a 

human-flesh lampshade. The 

entire night was beyond 

incredulous; magnificent

in its beaming evil.

-
Their talk just went on, and
it got to seeming like it was all
another era entirely. Like 1930
or 1940  -  what a mindset! There's
always been  -  though it's mostly
gone now  -  a slight thread of the
old in these lodges and clubs and
fraternal organizations. They keep
the light on for their own peculiar
versions of the past; outside of
categories. These people were
living as if the Nazi era was still new
and had NO past or end-results
to live down and answer for : 
like six million dead, Jews,
Gyspies, Queers and otherwise
non-conforming people. It was
a deadly, brutal whitewash of
all things historical and
American too.
-
There were no cops, no task force

team, no cameras, and none of us

were ticketed. Nor did we pay for

a thing. Nor had I ever before seen

such romantic-respect for things

of the 'old days' presented by men

and women of another era and

another mindset. Farcher's Grove is

all gone now, the entire site. They've

made warehouses and truck lots of

of it. But I can take you right there,

right now, and show where this was,

and that was, and all the rest. And I

even have a friend here who was a

welder on the new projects as they

went up. I don't know what you'd

call any of that  -  Bavarian overkill;

Black Forest density; Weiss Beer

power-force. Or just, like that

gas station job I never got,

the common-man touch.