12,485. RUDIMENTS, pt. 937

RUDIMENTS, pt. 937

(needing something to read?)

In the exact same manner

as any Christian Irish drunk

at a St. Patrick's Day tavern

will tell you St. Patrick drove

the snakes and serpents out of

Ireland, so to open it for the

Christian lord, any average

Joe will say all the other tales

you've heard are fabricated

myths. They believe 'A,' but

never 'B.' it seems. It's called

an alternative to reason. The

sky landings, celestial creatures,

spacecraft coming down in Peru,

Mexico, Egypt, the Near East,

Mesopotamia, India, etc., to teach

the lowly creatures the use of

tools and agriculture, preparations

of foods, metallurgy, health and

science, until they return in force

again. All of that is scoffed at,

and the resultant forms of religion

and credos which reflect these

ancient events take root instead.
Serpents and snakes, out of
Ireland, that's OK.

-

I can give you long lists, items

to check out, but why would I

bother? There's no intent or interest,

other than in primitive belief. Go

checkout  your ghettos and crime

labs, and then we can talk. A little.

And, oh, how we can do that (talk?

Language?) that's another story for

those same far-fetched beings.

-

Anyhow, no sense my braying, I'm

here for now, but I ain't staying.
Too late in the game for me.

-

When Newark was first settled,

as previously mentioned, there were

a few customary practices that were

eventually overturned. Which I thought

were pretty cool. I'll try and explain,

as I did to myself too, in light of the

modern day  -  all those streets and

shops of New York City, and Newark,

now fading. In the beginning, what

one DID, one did at home. The baker

baked, and the guy who forged nails,

forged. At home. Maybe out back, in

a shed near the fire pit. That was it.

When the household needed, say,

clothing, or some special need of

wear, the itinerant clothier was hired,

AND, you, as the customer, were

expected to put that person up, in

your house, for the duration of the

job. Perhaps the household need

9 dresses, fabric cut and made, or

the Father need two greatcoats for

his outside work. The craftsperson

was contracted and brought in  -

you fed, and bed, that person, until

the job was done. It was only after

time, after some growth and settlement

and expansion, that such a concept as

the 'commercial' street took hold, and
YOU began going to THEM, along, say,

Broad Street  -  soon lined with the

more permanent places of the clothiers,

dealers, bakers, smithys, and the like.

Very interesting concept to have then

developed. Separating work from home,

as it were  -  keeping the apples and the

peas in the fields at the house, but the

leathers and the stitches on the street

of small shops. I don't know....the idea

fascinated me anyway.

-

Throw your idea of 'suburbia' and tract

housing and all that crap, right out the

window, and take a long at any old, now

dumpy burg  -  or one of those creepy

historic towns with guides and docents,

and caps and old clothes. You can see it  -

the shops, a cluster of churches then, the

central water-spot, the wells, the privies

maybe. And then, of course, the clerks

and the record-keepers, and all those

dweebs with their check-in books and

clip-boards later. The miserable drones

(old usage) with their lists. All of this,

usually, hugging a riverway or a harbor.
And then railroads came through and,
once again, all of that began changing. 

In studying the ancient cunieforms

and early languages, one can find, at

first, mostly only uses for inventory

listings, contractual details, catalogues

and journals of transactions. It wasn't

until much later that any 'creative' use of

language by Humankind was put into

place. All the good stuff, like sense

and enlightenment, had to wait. The

coarse matter always came first.

Bar-rooms and brothels, let's not

forget them.

-

That's a lot of cake to eat. That's

a lot of love to make. That's a ton

of nails and bricks to use for other

things. It's funny how the great

world went.

-

By contrast (my life has always

been about contrasts, and the most

stark too), the bricks and steel and

glass of New York City, balanced

against raw, distant, empty and wooded

lands of Pennsylvania, where I dwelt,

always made me wonder too : what

WERE people talking about ever,

when they went on about crowding,

bad conditions, too many people.

etc. I realized they'd simply never

lifted their eyes to see anything else.

Out along those old roads and

highways that coursed alone

Pennsylvania  -  even just from

the area of the Water Gap, out

along Rts. 611, and 6, 380, and

the rest, miles of open space from

there to Scranton and beyond. Not

that I wanted any of them there,

don't get me wrong; I hoped they

stayed in their bunghole-rotter

hovels and kept complaining,

in whatever language they chose.

But there was sure plenty of space.

And at each space, I knew, there

was a story - of settlement, of a

pioneer (we never think of that on

the east coast of things), small

groups hacking down things to

make a small community. The

Natives watched from the woods.

It turned out there were never any

'deals' made, just slaughter. But,

that's for History now, and America

hides all that. One good example,

besides the Sullivan debacle I

always mention, is the Walking

Purchase. More theft, cheating, and

murder too. There's a small Indian

Museum in Easton, PA, on  a side

street. If you stop in there, when

it's open, there are usually one or

two tribes-people, I guess from

leftover families, who are more

than willing to talk. The Walking

Purchase is one of early, early

America's worst deeds. Or go to

Bethlehem, PA; there's a bookstore

there somewhere with a section

devoted to all that, though the

prissy books are all too polite,

and more touristy than anything.

-

For the moment here, I'll end

this, just by saying, or pointing

out, how distressing a lot of this

has always been to me.  I used to 

have a small-peanuts, evening, job,

during the last year of high school,

with a kid I knew, after we worked a

while anyway, name Jimmy Melton,

sadly dead now many years. We 

had some driver who would pick us

up 4 or 5 afternoons a week, after 

school. We'd wait, about 4pm, at the 

bench that used to be out at the old

Avenel Fire House, when that round, 

iron, fire-clang thing used to be positioned 

farther down the street and out at the curb  -  

not at all where it is now. The guy would 

pick us up, and later drop us off, in a 

ratty VW, and drive us to either Perth 

Amboy or mostly, Elizabeth, where  -  

for four or so hours  -  after he let us 

off separately, we'd go door to door 

trying to sell magazine subscription 

packages. There used to be lots of 

magazines, for every taste, and we'd 

get people, if we could, to subscribe, 

for like 8 or 10 bucks, to packages 

of 2 or 3 magazines. It was called 

the 'PPSB'  -  which is what we had

to say we were representing while 

'earning some money for college.'

It was all so lame and bogus, and 

it stood for 'Periodical Publishers 

Service Bureau,' or was supposed to 

anyway. I saw, in my day, a lot of the 

poor and back sides of those two 

towns  -  poor people, lonely people, 

coming to the door of their small 

apartments and homes, cooking 

smells at that hour always in the 

air of each, heavy. Spanish folk, 

mostly.  More on that next chapter; 

but it brought me to centralized

thinking about people and their 

stations in life. More on that 

in a bit!