RUDIMENTS, pt. 902
(don't assume?)
One of the things that always
bugged me, back about 1965,
was a song or movie or something
called 'Cat Ballou.' I never even
got the bottom of what it or who it
was supposing to be, but I think
it was some female movie role
played by some of another of the
many dim-witted, appropriately
breasted, starlets of that era. It
hardly now matters because I
still probably care even less.
There was also some jerky
pre-vert singer type whose
signature version of the song
seemed to be everywhere. I
don't really remember the year,
if it was Summer, or whatever.
I just remember the distinctly
precise and predictable stupidity
of the guy's face - Scottish or
Welsh, I think, who sang it
always with some weird grin.
The melody and the tonal
quality was gross, and the way
the 'let's all sing and grin this
happy-together' kept flying
around the nation really made
me sick of things. Guys were
coming home, remember too,
stiff, and in boxes. Tan Son
Nhut Air Base - kinda'
catchy too!
-
I don't know how this country
ever did come to such a pass as
that, but it sure stuck; had the
clinking capacity of some
real expensive fly-paper, I'd
say. Guys walked out their
front doors, and just never
came back - believing they
were fighting for some vague
yet noble cause that their Papas
would surely understand and
their girlfriends surely never
would. I can remember three
or four such cases, people
of my own acquaintances,
where fathers and mothers
and/or left bihind young
wives or intendeds, wound
up selling dead Billy's
Camaro or Chevelle or
Charger from off the blocks
it still rested on in the garage
that no one could bear to
enter anymore. Thank you,
Tom Jones, and than you
Cat Ballou.
-
It's always sorta' like things
go bad and just stay that way.
Memories turn sour as they
age, and what one thinks
occurred many times didn't
actually occur at all - or if
it did it was in some other,
quite different, way. I've had
a lot of dross to drag through
in my days, and - for others -
I in turn have presented to them
the same sort of junk eight
back. Perhaps it's all evened
out now, perhaps not - but
there no eay of knowing and
nothing I can do. Making\
amends is merely a style,
and it's not mine
-
Wordsworth said that it was
early memories that mattered
most, because they come from
a period when one is most alive
or awake, and because they
concern individuals who had
not yet been pressed into shape
by the forces of modern life.'
That's works pretty well, yes.
I'd sometimes rather have said
the 'forceps of modern life,'
but that was just my joking
ill-profound wit. As I thought
of it - all those uncles and
'young deads' I once knew - it
was true that most of them, as
I was 9, they were themselves
barely into their late-20's.
Unfinished, I'd say, yes, and
raw, and powerful and bold
and naive too. They all walked
head-first into their assumptions
as mistakes, and any number
of them were walking shrapnel
scars of war-wounds. But, I also
felt, for all that, there wasn't any
opened to them, except perhaps
to their own, shared, age-level,
peers, like their own jury, of
each other. As a kid, maybe
I just saw it all differently.
But, but, but...yet - there
was never anything crazy or
wild about any of them. They
were somewhat just 'settled'
and pliant, ready to find that
job, work at it, and stay at it. I
never saw any of that 42nd-street
penny-arcade jungle about any
of them - of the sort I'd see
later in New York City; those
wild-strange, the over-the-cliff
types always ready on the next
bizarre dare. They were NOT
literary, in any way - and that's
what I thought was missing, and
profoundly so. No wit, no weird
glint of humor about the scene.
Rattlings of pinballs, shootings
of arcade guns? Side-show freaks
on the edge? Not them. That was
all missing. They were the fallen,
not the fighting. Inman Avenues
a thousand times everywhere
held these in droves, all over
the nation - America was a
rapacious foul ball, and it had
already consumed them, a sideways
foul-pop off the line, and they'd
all gone chasing it; hoping to
make the catch, I guess. But the
magical glove was always to
remain empty: There was
nothing to catch. Sooner or
later, they'd crash into the fence,
and shatter - and the cheers they'd
hear weren't for the catch, or the
try, or their effort. It was for
the crashing to witness. There
was nothing in America that
you couldn't sell, or be sold.
Nothing too weird to bring to
market and found a fortune on.
I guess everyone just assumed
it all could work.
-
As a youngster, I spent a lot
of time with my father - in his
endless station wagons, schlepping
furniture around, back and forth,
to his upholstery customers, or on
any of those endless fishing and
boating trips to the Jersey shore.
Just along for the rides, company,
to help. Whenever we got up Bayonne
way, almost without fail, he'd take
me through for one of three things,
or all three - to drive past Bayonne
High School, so he could show me
school he 'quit from' to join the
war-Navy, lying about his age;
The house he grew up in, and,
once it was torn down, the sad
empty hole where it had been;
and thirdly, and with the most
pride, the church he and my
mother were married in.
'Assumption' Church.
He never caught on.
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