12,807. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,053

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,053

(new blood and little else)

I was a small kid when I

lived there, but the Kill Van

Kull, at the Bayonne Bridge,

still in so many ways remains 

more of a mental home to me

that does the piss-attitudes

of Woodbridge and Avenel.

I wish I had my life to live

over  -  I'd never leave that

oily waterway, and my dog

would never die. Go figure.

I'd see  across the waterway,

which wasn't really so wide,

and which  -  back in those

days  -  was dark and, yes,

oily, and busy and stern. Those

each are mostly qualities long

gone now. Any 'waterway'

place now  -  Perth Amboy or

Sewaren, locally, are filled with

stuffed-shirt jokes of people,

lights, paving-brick walkways,

and anything old or interested

has been torn down and taken

away. Right across, what I would

see, were some operations, mostly

still there, that combined tugboat

yards, maintenance, storage and

burial too  -  dead tugs, decaying

while they floated in place. The

single lightbulbs in each one 

seemed always to be one, like a

theatre stage ghost light. (In a

theater, Broadway anyway, a

ghost light goes on as soon as

the house clears out after a

performance. Every theater, it

is said, is inhabited by a ghost.

The light keeps the ghost company,

or acts as an offering to keep away

curses, or illuminates the stage

as a spectral performer plays all

night.)  -  if any of those effete

theater geeks can believe that

crap think what I had in mind

about old, dead tugboats. Ghosts

indeed, and the watery kind. Deep,

dark, brooding. There always has

been a world of difference between

theater and real work. This just

proves the difference. 

-

The edge of the water there at

Bayonne is a simple challenge.

A real-world endeavor to witness

the work of what used to pass for

necessary work, but which now,

just as often, floats boats in filled

with Walmart crap and plastic toys

from China. Seen it all. I stand there

in these times and can only think

back to being 4. I told you I don't 

exist here anymore. I can't; this

modern day to me is unreal.

I live backwards, poorly.

-

My first few years were spent

in apartment projects right there. At

the very face of the waterway. War

guys, just recently home again

and trying to get started with wives

and families; they were all still

squirmy with their own memories

and eyewitness nightmares of

Europe and the South Pacific - the

kind of junk they started making

movies about, but which to these

guys were still daggers stuck in

a gut. Romance and frolic? 

Excluded.

-

The water was a crisp king of

night-black, like show-polish and

varnish. It moved in slight surges,

not waves, thought it looked like a

wide, uniform, wave of movement

beneath a dark, starry sky. And the

Bayonne Bridge, right above it all,

hummed with its strange car-traffic

of hump-backed beasts or funny

rectangles on wheels. In 1949,

I'm told, some people still drove

old Flivvers around; before cars

began taking on style and shape.

The sounds were different, as were

the lights. And the people. There

was an amusement park promenade

all along that area back then  -  it's

ALL gone now, with nary a trace  - 

and people walked it, all night, it

seemed. A disjointed nervousness,

courtship, hand-holding and kissing.

Sweet nothings. People were still

learning, trying to set the new limits

for themselves in the new-limits

aftermath of WWII. There was a lot

at stake; for these guys and women.

Picking up pieces and starting new

lives  -  Did I want this person, for

all the rest of my days? Am I ready?

-

For myself, many of my aunts and

uncles lived right near-around too. 

Everyone was 'Bayonne' people,

back then, before they all got

scattered to other Jersey towns. 

It was like a small, foreign land, in
its way, butted up against others: 

Jersey City, Kearney, and, at the 

water, New York, and Staten

Island. It was funny, when I later 

learned how, way back when, the

1700's, late, or whenever, a sailboat 

race around and along that very

Kill Van Kull was what determined

Staten Island's fate. New Jersey 

lost the race, and New York got 

Staten Island. Right where I lived, 

in fact, the land there had once 

been a grand resort, with ferries, 

steamboats, and other watercraft 

bringing day-trippers over from 

lower Manhattan for their grand 

days out in the fine New Jersey

freshness. Back then it was known 
far and wide as 'La Tourette's Hotel
and Mansion.' Games, sailboats,

swimming, play. Later, the chemical

family, the Duponts, bought it. It was

a fine estate for many years, before

or after. I really forget. I think it all

eventually 'burned.' Which really just

meant 'other' interests wanted the

property for 'other' things. During

WWII, also, just up the street, the

Maidenform or Playtex, one of them,

factory was taken over and used for

housing interned German prisoners.

I guess prisoners of war? Though there

was not really any ground action here;

so maybe just suspected Nazi spies 

and sympathizers. No one ever told 

me from that angle, and all my 

information-kin from those days 

now are dead. I much later learned
about something called 'Tourette's
Syndrome.' Without the 'La.' It's when
a person is uncontrollably foul, cursing
and shouting oat oaths and profanities.
I chuckle when I think about what
could be done with that now.

-

So anyway, what else does a person

take from early life? Well, probably

everything or nothing, and what  was

weird about mine was how it all

got interrupted and re-started by my

getting trounced by a train and along

stretch of out-of-this-world coma time.

I still held onto my previous ideas,

I guess, or I sure wouldn't be writing

about Bayonne, but they all were

re-set, or started over, and were each

re-packed with 'other' information.

my trailing lineage was new blood,

and little else. When I get back
there now  -  however  -  I can't
see a thing of what I 'remember.'