RUDIMENTS, pt. 988
('had to learn manners')
Call me stupid but no matter
what, I liked that whole scene.
What other 12-year old kid,
closing on 13, is going to
have those sorts of vivid and
comparative memories of
those years? My whole life
has been made up of mix-ups
anyway, so whatever came out
me from this peculiar direction
was, most certainly a new direction
to be utilized. I watched, always,
for signs and scenes, the sorts of
things that tell a kid about his or
her (I guess) own destiny - the
scribbled lines set down on a
hazy horizon as your nearing
it, step by step closer. I didn't
know Mike Bartholomew from
Dudley Do-Right. I knew nothing
of his family, his upbringing his
place and station - nor anything
of that nature. Everyone was a
mystery. Fact is, I think he had
a sister, but I'm not sure. Many
times, on visit-days or whatever,
people would come, families, in
their cars and all with all their
manners and clothing-styles and
kin, and I'd often watch around,
just interested in seeing who was
with whom, what other guy's
families looked like. Some days,
occasionally, mine came too - all
that little sisters and brothers I
didn't even know. They were very
young, and seeing them was a
surprise watch time, as well
as my other sister, closer in age
to myself. That was all life on
the periphery : I was living
nowhere. At the most peculiar
time of age and growth a kid
goes through. It was like being
weightless; not even knowing
my own family.
-
Whatever Mike had for me, as
intellectual input - and he did -
was in complete but quiet
opposition to what broader
subservience was being taught.
I could never figure out anyway
how some of these guys had
gotten there, until I much later
found out, that for the wealthier
families (we had numerous
guys whose fathers were big
in Jersey and Trenton Statehouse
politics) this seminary, in spite
of its veneer of religious-mission
and upbringing, was also a safe
haven, private school to which
they sent their sons, guaranteed
of perfection, education, and
none of that nasty, growing-up
delinquency stuff, nor any of its
temptations. The last thing any
of these public officials wanted
was a wild kid whose antics
would hit the newspapers. Be
any of that as it may, as I said,
I really knew nothing about Mike.
As an 'upperclassman' (yes, the
school used all those ritual and
ranking names, like anywhere
else), he represented the ideal
to me of a French beret. A new
form of doubt and philosophy:
like existential cafe life. Black
coffee. Scarves, the Winter
kind, not the fou-fou stuff.
At the same time, what the
heck is any of that to mean to
a 13 year old American kid?
It was unknown territory to me,
and I sensed I needed to tread
carefully because I had no real
clue what was going on. I'd
never seen anyone before
even use the Art Room, which
was out of the way, down behind
gym and the vending machines,
in an outlying business, but
there'd be Mike, paintbrush in
hand, with some weird and
crazy jagged color bits arranged
an white canvas; or slinking
plaster onto a sculptural frame
of his own making. Wooden
slats, chicken-wire forms. He'd
do all these things on his own,
small hammer, small nails -
and I'd never witnessed
anything of that nature before
either. My father was an upholsterer,
and he used to fill his mouth with
upholstery tacks and use a narrow,
magnetic tipped upholstery hammer
to swiftly, as he put it to his lips,
get one tack after the other for the
furniture he was putting fabric
on. It wasn't art, though I realized
each of them, in their way, were
pretty much doing the same thing:
A personal drive, thrusting a work
forward. It was too much to take
in, and drawing these kinds of
conclusions, about everything,
not just this, was slowly driving
me crazy. My shoes weren't
fitting. My hats were too tight.
-
Sometimes if felt as if being stuck
out in the middle of the Jersey
Pinelands, alone and with a bunch
of crazy, other, kids, was the worst
thing in the world, and the last place
I'd wish to be. Yet, there I was, and,
for the time being, (the 'time' being'
my life), I was stuck there. There
were moments, out on those sandy
roads and paths, myself - alone
or with someone else, mostly a cool
guy from Maine named Leo Benjamin,
when we'd just take long walks to]
nowhere, jabbering away about
some or another topics of your own
liking. Like Mike, Leo was completely
different. He was my own age, we
went through things together, classes
and times, etc., unlike Mike who,
as I said was older, and part of a
different school class/group. Leo
was pretty whacky, straight from
Maine. 'Bangah,' as he pronounced it.
That's, of course, Bangor, Maine. it
life-stories and tales were all different
from mine. It was of a sort I could
only out together in my imagination
based on the word pictures of scenes
conjured up from what he said. I'm
not sure, in 1962, how far behind
NJ the things in Maine were, but
it seemed like to be from another
era, maybe the 1940's. His people
acted differently, in these stories,
and did things all unique to me. By
comparison, too, he was way more
marooned and faraway from home.
I never did see him get a visitor. And
then, poof, the next year he was gone.
I don't know whatever happened to
him. There were other kids too, all
of a different nature and economy
to me. We had a bunch of ritzier guys,
from the high-toned Jersey shore area,
(those Trenton dads and thing I made
mention of, working in Government).
There are a string of Jersey shore
communities (funny, there's also a
Pennsylvania town called Jersey Shore,
PA, in which BOTH words gets caps),
that harbor large estates, NYC money
people with getaway homes, and lots
of sticks and bonds type Wall Street
people with big bucks (thus, so many
of the dead from the 9/11 thing were
from, like, Middletown, NJ). That
was a whole other societal level.
We got 'em. I had to learn manners.
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