12,728. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,023

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,023

(covering up the old rugged past)

One time I brought my son and

his friend to Chinatown. It was

hot out, I guess late June. They

wanted to buy fireworks, which,

at that time, mid 1980's I guess,

were sold by hawkers along the

streets of Chinatown. Or so I

told them, only because I'd seen

it a hundred times. So, we get

there, they're all hyped up, we're

walking around a bit, getting

some stuff to eat, walking some

more, and they make their choice.

A vendor guy along Doyers Street,

whom we'd seen earlier. They each

had like 20-25 bucks maybe. I

stayed back, figuring to let the

14-year olds earn their own

street cred. They talk to the guy

and he says (they told me all

this later) he has what they want,

price etc. 'Follow me.' And so

they do, down a ramp, around a

building, and into some sunken

alley, up against a wall. The guy

turns, another fellow comes out,

pushes them up against a wall,

flips out a knife and says 'Give

us all you have.' They turn over

the money. No fireworks. The

two Chinese guys take off. the

two kids come back out, all

chastised and humbled. They

couldn't believe what just had

occurred. Neither could I, actually,

and stupid on my part too. Anyway,

I said, 'Welcome to Chinatown.'

-

That was a long time ago. Doyers

Street, in the history of Chinatown,

was known as Bloody Angle, or

the Deadliest Street in Chinatown,

or Murder Row. You can take your

pick. It's always been a strange, 

moist, lowland street of abject

poverty and concomitant crime.

Beneath it, it was said, run tunnels

and underground passages eastward

to the river, from which people

were kidnapped, dragged away,

or killed or maimed. Five Points,

the old crime-infested inveterate

slum of Jacob Riis fame, was right

there. Baxter, Pell, Doyers streets,

and old Mulberry Lane, and 

other streets, like Orange Street,

too no longer in existence. To

eventually stop the den of iniquity,

and enforce some civic order, the

city took over many of these

place  -  municipal buildings, The

Tombs prison, state and federal

courts buildings, plaza, and many

other things now stand on those

old grounds. Chinatown and, in this

instance, Doyers Street, were left

alone. Until the last two decades 

of gentrified redevelopment and

general fancying up, you could

pretty much still think you were

in 1885, except for the electricity

and roadways and traffic. How

do you tell all that to 14 year 

old kids?

-

All life is centered differently now,

and rotates around all sorts of

different things. There's not even

any guarantee now that these old

tales and stories would get through 

to a modern head. Language itself

has changed, the ways of story-telling

and relating experiences are vastly

different too. You can cross any

border now to Pennsylvania and the

cheap smokes and fireworks shops

are in your face immediately. They

even come here now to 'you,' in

old KMart and other stores' parking

lots, tables set up for July 4th

fireworks vendors. Pennsylvania

guys too, weirdly enough, here!

Talk to your local municipal guy

here about that someday  -  see

what monies are turned over, and

to whom it goes, to get this rolling. In

a random universe, the randomness

of bullshit has taken over.

-

My cloistered, seminary years would

have never included what we have now

as possible conditions of a future world.

I'd have never been able to fathom that.

I really do look back on all that and now

it's in black and white; that's also how

entirely old and distant that once-world

looks from this vantage point. No colors

and certainly no neon points. That

world seemed solid and steady, even

fixed, in its ways and even as I grew

into realizing that many of those old

ways were warped and evil, it still

pales to today. Playing one-on-one,

the old world's gonna' lose every

game. As an oldster now, I realize

how little of any of it I've ever

understood. Not the rules. Not

the practice.

-

It's the same, in many ways as

me trying to relate, I suppose, old

Doyers Streets to those firecracker 

kids. It was better they saw the

knife and got the threat, and the

theft, to their own present realities,

then. Things like that they'll probably

remember forever. Had I tried telling

them of the immediacy of any of

that, it would have been in one ear

and right out the other. And, yet,

right there in Chinatown, in

those 1980's still, there thrived

wars, factions, crime, beating,

secret cellars and alleys. The

silly 'Government' tried concealing,

they even built a 1967-style 'moderne'

post office building at one end of

Doyers  -  it now looks like a

bad tooth, rotten and dirty and

blackened, at a windy, dank corner

of a street that no longer cares

for even its own brightness and light.

The modern world just cannot translate

in to that, at all. The best (or worst) of

any 'Civic Intentions' notwithstanding,

or in spite of them even. I really

doubt if there's ever been any room

for lies and doubt and concealment

 to take root, no matter how much

Government subterfuge tries to

cover the old, rugged past over.
When you think about it you really
have yo ask yourself what sort
of crazy Stalinist-type mind would
accept the idea that if you merely
hide something no one will see
it and therefore it never exists, or
existed  -  as in ths case, the most
tawdry aspects of old New York
City, covered over by civic buildings
and post offices, police stations,
and jails? Up against that wall,
kids; give me all you've got on you.
This knife's for real.