RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,078
(authentic vibes)
The American Youth Hostel
used to be right next door to the
Studio School. That too was new
to me; in my little effort of living,
I'd never heard the idea of a place
for traveling transients. In this
case, Euro kids - mostly French
and German, it seemed, but really
a mix of everyone. On their travel
ways, or Summers off, or Junior
years of college, or whatever,
they'd take out to traipse across
the great America they'd heard
of. Sort of like visiting Heaven,
but not. It was an interesting
lot. A bunch of people of the
sort I'd not seen before. I used
to enjoy just seeing them - their
clothes and the fabrics were
always so different; interesting,
more coarse, and cut in different
ways from the usual American
clothing. Same with footware.
Some amazing stuff.
-
The only other times I'd noticed
this were the few times, up along
the areas of the Appalachian Trail,
(at Latham NJ, and at Bear Mountain
Bridge), where I'd see people come
out of the woods to make their
passages. The Latham NJ site did
actually have a Ranger Station, for
the hikers - showers, a lounge, some
tidbits of food, fresh water, etc. At
the Bear Mountain Bridge site, almost
as interesting, the walkway portion
of the bridge IS the Appalachian
Trail itself, needed in order to get
over and across the Hudson River.
It was interesting to see hikers as
they came out from the woods. In
the Ranger Station site, they'd lay
about some, resting sore spots,
changing things around, cleeaning
up, etc. I don't know what the
Bear Mtn. Bridge people did, as
I'd always just see them as they
hiked, or gazed out, across the
bridge, for the water view north
or south. It's really nice there,
and runs from like West Point,
in one direction, to south, Sleepy
Hollow, Washington Irving
country. Tarrytown and Rip
Van Winkle alike. Once you
see all that, those bends and coves
in the Hudson look and seem so
appealing. Nyack. All those
little places up along the west
side of the river, and then as
cross over o the right side, it
runs up towards Beacon, losing
a lot of its visual drama, but still
lovely.
-
The hikers I'd see were always well
appointed. A lot of Swiss or German
leather hiking stuff, good strong
footwear, walking sticks, backpacks,
and the like. At the Latham NJ
station, we'd get to talk to people
who started down in Georgia in
March and were determined to
get to the terminus in Maine
by late August. Or, in the
other direction, those headed
south would be talking about their
approaches into the hot weathers
of later Summer as they drew
down southward. They were always
pleasant to talk with, beautifully
accented English, and just nicely
engaging people. In another instance,
one time at a place called Boiling
Springs, PA, I was very surprrised
to find that the Appalachian Trail
crossed out there, and - reflecting
that - there's a Ranger Station,
supply and info shop, and other
things to do with the hiking,
and feeding, aspect of the trek.
It's very peaceful there, and I
could well imagine the idea of
it being welcome spot.
-
Anyhow, the hostelry at the Studio
School had nothing to do with
the Appalachian Trail. There, kids
were urban explorers, usually
headed, in fact, city-to-city, with
this being only their NYC leg,
between maybe Boston and
Philadelphia, or further points
west along the way, even to
California. Lots of other bus
and rail and air travel. Their time
in NYC, from what I'd see, was
real glory-time. They always
seemed smart, aware, and on
top of their own digressions and
interpretations of things; enjoying
it all. Remember, again, this was
high-hippie days, so all of that
happened too - very beautiful,
lithesome and wispy girls, sometimes
simply dressed like a fantasy. Very
few were ever alone; there seemed
always to be another, male, with
them. Whether these were liaisons
made along the travels or not, I
never knew. All of it, to my eyes,
was of paradise - they ways these
couples, and people, traveled, sang
and laughed, and approached things
all along heir way - funny little
guidebooks in their own, native
languages, fold-out maps always
being consulted, and quizzical
looks.
-
I guessed all of that was America,
to me anyway. Maybe I should add
'I guessed all of that was America
too.' I had no idea what these kids
traveling saw as America, or ended
seeing, America as. It got me thinking.
I'd never experienced so much as a
trip past five states, and I was
basically stuck in place then, August,
1967, with about $2.49 cents my
name, and little prospects; while
these kids probably spent $24.90
per day, easy, without even thinking
about it, or denting a travel budget.
It sure was strange. 60 years later,
or whatever it is now, I still think
about those people, wondering
what became of them. Radicals?
Or, had they survived, now just
the usual somewhat doting oldsters,
as myself, with a memory-past to
dwell within and a changed world
too, all around them. To be
truthful here, let me add this,
I never used to measure this way
but now I make such measures of
time in terms of dog-lives. Five
dogs ago, perhaps? That's the raw
spot in all of this, and there's
always a raw spot somewhere :
I get it all the time. You say one
thing to express a real feeling, to
at last drink from the well of the
authentic in the presence of others,
and the 'skeleton keys in the rain'
come out newly as daggers and get
you. I hope those people I've just
writtten of got past all that and are
not part of that now-prevailing
ethos of mass-thought and the
must-think that runs things today
and makes people see only one way.
and makes people see only one way.
-
In 1982, Richard Reeves wrote a book
called 'American Journey. I hold it
again, righ here, as I write this - in
the book the basic premise began as
a recreation of the trip by Alexis de
Tocqueville in search of 'Democracy
In America.' Tocqueville's journey,
in 1831, began at Newport, Rhode
Island, a much different place than it
is now. He did NYC, Philadelphia,
and Boston, and across the Great
Lakes, all the way out to Wisconsin,
then down the Ohio and Mississippi
Valleys to New Orleans, and back
north again to Washington DC.
Four notebooks of thoughts and
observations, all good. Two
hundred people spoken to and
interviewed along the way. The
book was a sensation and made him
famous, by 1835. One Hundred and
Fifty years later, Reeves' book came
up against an entire, other, scheme of
things. Here's him, writing, of his car,
"I turned on the radio....[and] was
instantaneously, miraculously, swept
into, engulfed in storms of facts, of
ideas, of information, of opinions,
of urgings, of preachments. I was
on the unpeopled streets of a corner
in America, in this torrent, amazed
and confused. I could freely change
my perspective and my environment,
again and again, back and forth, by
touching these buttons....Revolution
was being preached - political,
social, and religious - quite openly.
A convicted criminal was being
interviewed - quite respectfully -
about how he judged the performance
of the current President of the United
States...From Boston, WILD was
broadcasting the voices of black
Americans who telephoned the
station from their homes and were
put on the air - live, uncensored,
unedited - attacking the government,
the police, white Americans. Referring
to each other as 'Brother' and 'Sister,'
the callers I heard offered a consensus
opinion that the public policy of the
United States was deliberately designed
and and executed to subjugate 26 million
black Americans. The brothers and
sisters, who obviously had little
formal education, worked out, over
an hour, a fairly sophisticated analysis
of what they saw as a colonial policy...'
No comments:
Post a Comment