RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,044
(do we today?)
There never were any rules for
survival; never any given to me
anyway. Maybe that was all
different from others. It kind
of always seemed to me that
more you went up into the
incomes brackets of how other
people lived, there were more
and more rules for survival
given. Like a legacy entry
into some big-deal university.
I never had any of that and,
in fact, it was never in question.
Didn't run in my family. Had
no backstory at all. My father
was one of those kinds of guys
who, seriously, ate his salad
after the meal.
-
I did used to get lots of info
about what things were not,
certainly, cool. Like 4-cylinder
cars. Boy did my father hate
them. The world depended on
powerful V-8's and any of those
miserable scullery maids who
thought they could drive around
on America's highways in little
4-cylinder cars was an annoying
pest. I knew this guy, over at the
church too, after Charlie Price
was gone, he took over. Bill
Leahy was the name; cool guy.
I'd catch him a lot in the early
mornings, like 7am mass or
whatever, when I was a server
there. It was nice because,
well, in the nice weathers
anyway, the sacristy windows
would be open, maybe even the
door propped open, and all that
wonderful 6:30am air and
light would be all around us.
He'd talk about things, and
the 4-cylinder car idea was
one of his beefs too. But his
concern, way different than
my father's, was about the
little, lightweight cars being
not right for America, getting
blown off bridges and things
in high winds. To my father,
he'd just as much have thrown
them off, but this Leahy guy
kept a smidgeon of concern
and respect about it, like he
really cared and worried for
the people in those little cars.
It was a weird time; the whole
little-car thing hadn't happened
yet, but what you'd occasionally
see was, of course, a Volkswagen,
and a few other oddball things too -
Opel Kadetts, and, back then, the
first Toyotas were labelled as
Toyoda. I think it was the guy's
name, but when they got big-time
they changed it to Toyota. Don't
know why. And back then, at first,
Nissan was Datsun. Then later then
had the B-210 or something, and
it sold like wildflowers. There
was also something called a
'Daisy' (car name) and a DAF.
And something called a Rekord.
I forget; this is all from memory,
but these little cars got under
the skin of all these WWII guys,
and other adults. I never cared
much about it, figuring their
opinions and attitudes were just
part of all that advertising and
Detroit America brainwashing.
For the big and the powerful cars
they were making. You gave to
admit, some of that stuff, design
wise, was crazy and horrible.
Disgusting even - fins and bullet
lights and about 82 feet long and
weighing 47,000 pounds. Who
could expect anything else?
America was massive; it had
the bomb, and the bombs begat
cars that acted as bombs. Forget
geting blown off the bridge; these
land-anchors would take the
bridge down. Which was worse?
-
In my own youth there was so
much symbolic and 'disguised'
material always coming my way.
It took a long time for me to
realize that I was on the receiving
end of a conduit filled with source
material always on its way to me.
I had to learn to listen, and to
decipher what as there. Like
the Vietnam soldier guys, I was
always yelling, 'Incoming!'
-
Much of it was a symbolic realism,
out of which were sourced so much
of what else I was stuck with. Like
the autos, just mentioned. in American
terms, the dead, heavyweight and
megalith cars were almost religiously
an affirmation of American thrust,
somehow translated into copy-cat
fins and rocket-ship lights. Everything
wanted to look fighter-jet-airborne.
What better was, really was there to
embody the assumed air of the
'American' nonchalance about is
own century; bombs and disaster
notwithstanding. The assumed
conflict, here, between the 'large'
and the 'little' of cars was still
in its way a representation of the
same conflict that World War II
had supposedly ended. but it
didn't, of course. It merely
switched enemies around on
the playboard while other things
took the forefronts of attention
and concern. 'Darn that stubborn
old Europe with its dumb ways
and stupid little cars.'
-
That was a strange way, I thought,
to wage peace - a strange wat
to wage anything actually. It was
premised on the assumption that
the entire earth was yours for the
taken and despoliation. Destruction,
more than not. No one cared then
about any of that stuff, except maybe
people like Aldo Leopold, on of the
early and great conservationst
ecologists. They had all that too,
back in the 1920's and all, with
john Muir, but that was nothing
more, essentially, than Edison
and Ford 'using' others, in the
guise of earth-awareness, so they
could advance their own, soon to
be, amazingly destructive tendencies
on the rest of the earth. No one
back then knew yet the difference.
Do we today?
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