RUDIMENTS, pt. 870
(in a science guy's instant)
I played the part of the
bugler in a long silent film -
not really allowed to do
anything except stand there.
And that's how it felt to me:
An assigned part in an open
call for casting. It was just
a mob scene, everywhere
I went. The beginnings of
my life, as I thought about
them, as best a 3 or 4 year
old can, were probably the
best: for locale and atmosphere
anyway - Bayonne, the scrawny
but busy old 1940's waterfront,
and that strange old bridge high
up above. Something there was,
for me, about the glittering lights,
on the black waters of the
harbor and all those tugs each
rolling by, fog or not, with
heir bellowing horns and the
slaps of their wakes on the
shoreline. Right above was
the Bayonne Bridge, and just
across the water were the Staten
Island shipyards and maritime
repair berths and yards, with
all sorts of gangly ships, and
the occasional battered boat.
It was far enough to be near,
yes, that other shore, and near
enough to be far. I never swore
I could hear guy talking and
shouting, but I think I could.
I was just a kid, right out of
infanthood, but I think all
that was better than anything
I later fell into. More interesting
for sure. By age 4, end of, I
had been unceremoniously
dunked into the black hole of
nowhere called Avenel. It
must have been a rumor that
spread, or some means of a
communication, that got to all
these veterans and ex-soldier
guys that if they plunked down
800 bucks in the lethal, mosquito
heavy swamps of east Jersey
they'd be getting some deal in a
lifetime downdraft double-play
for wife, kids, and family, replete
with a zillion all-alike probably
made by Monsanto, homes in
a row, school and church facilities
right nearby, a grocer, a butcher
and probably a candle-stick
maker too. No one ever made
mention of the loss at the other
end of the scale, but these weren't
the sorts of guys who cared.
-
Now, I've got nothing against
bum places, never have had. If
that's what makes any herd of
elephants happy, I say happy
away. It just never appealed to
me; mostly since, from day one,
I saw it as a 'lack' of place with
no real defining characteristics
except whatever of the then
present and sure mediocre day
was being put into it by a
forced infusion, which was
really noting more than real
estate interests doing the work
of the Defense Department of
the day (called 'War Dept back
then). All of which, already by
age 7, I saw as about the worse
thing in the world. We had
been dropped, (meaning all
those peers, kids, I knew and
went through (got processed
through) school with) loosely
into row after row of basic
tepee-houses with little pitched
roofs and left to our own
devises, which turned out to
be those of our parents, which
turned out to be ready acceptance
of any status-quo TV advantages
that were then being peddled -
Lassie to Gravy-Train to Alpha-Bits.
Face it, friend, I was stuck. They
say the greater psyche oversees
and controls all the things in one's
personal life, and if that's so then
my psychic urgings of 'get me outta
here before the next rainbow falls'
got me one, ordered-up perfectly,
train wreck. Changes everything
for me. Prayers really do get
answered.
-
Without a 'place' and without
any sense of location or history,
we were nowhere. Oh Avenel.
The way things were going, up
through the 1930's and '40's, and
in places as meek and far-flung,
but yet by, the near highways,
was a central focus not on people
or the possible use of land for
the people, but instead industry.
Industry that would feed off
the railways (which by then
had been ingloriously and
conveniently dumped right
through the centers of the
places, disrupting what little
nascent place and village feel
there maybe had been' It
was killed in its cradle
however by raw power,
profit and force. In a place
such as this, oftentimes the
'factory' base takes center
stage. Everything else then
becomes sort of subordinate
to it. In Avenel, for instance,
if you think back the early
1960's say, there were lines
of cars, men and workers,
along Avenel Street, leaving
or coming to the shift-change.
They had their own local
police-presence, operating
right there on Avenel Street,
directing traffic flow, into or
out of 'General Dynamics,' and,
before that, 'Security Steel. The
town cops directing the flow of
traffic, etc. (Now, of course, we
have no factories or workmen,
but, instead, now the cop cars
are at the three levels of schools,
elementary, middle, and high
schools. There's a switch). There
was Mike's Sub Shop, and their
booming lunch-sandwich trade,
as well as, around, one or two
barber shops, and convenience
stores. Built by earlier generations,
the water company and the utility
arms, took first presence, serving
the factory's needs, and then the
community's. An afterthought.
It was not only art and religion
that were treated offhandedly,
for the utilitarian business-mind
sees all that as mere embellishment.
It was a far greater ethos of deep
corruption, basically, that took
over. The more you were in, the
more you were willingly a part
of it. It was so normal after a while,
it was no longer even seen as
corrupt. A place like 'Avenel' as
a for-instance, had no cemetery;
no churchyard of any valued
legacy - that's probably the
most evidence of a place with
no value. No matter how
long-winded the jibes,
those calling it a wonderful,
small-town, homey, place,
were to be liars by that
factor alone. There are
no dead folk here?
-
Factories, in such scenes,
usually claimed the best
sites; near the waterway or
a waterfall, as the rivers and
canals provided the cheapest
and most convenient of
dumping grounds for the
most soluble forms of waste.
The transformation of the
waterways into open sewers
was a characteristic feat of
the new system. Poisoning
of aquatic life. Destruction
of food. Fouling of waters.
Anything useful around here
was soon enough deadened,
and stayed that way.
-
I can't get stuck on this. Suffice
it to say, that's to where I was
brought and presented with a
life to life and grow into. I
always professed it to be a
lousy deal and certainly no
bargain. Every so often I still
see or read people bragging
about Avenel, the old town,
the glory years of the 1950's
hereabouts, how great it was
to grown up in such a nice
place, what was here and what
was there, who remembers this,
who remembers that....ad infinitum.
The base fact is, it was always a
shit-hole after the first 50 families
had set their own ways into it.
Maybe for that, short, period of
30 years - homesteaders, large
country homes, small trailways
of roads - it was nice, but a
soon as money sniffed its butt,
it went to down-and-out status
in a science-guy's instant.
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