RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,103
(reading at the Lionel Tavern)
We sometimes have brains
enough to be smart, but are
not smart enough to be brains.
There used to be a place in
New Brunswick, called Tumulty's.
In fact, I think there still is but
it's not the same place at all.
Legacy, tradition, and 'oldness'
are fairly easy things to fake,
and the current manifestation
of the operation under that
name has nothing on the
previous, though they do try
to fake it and act at carrying
on all the old connections. The
actual old Tumulty's, along
about 1980 maybe, was shut
down and demolished when
Johnson & Johnson Company
redid the town center, pretty much
after taking it over. One of those
dirty municipal deals where a
hundred different people made
a hundred thousand different
dollars each just by being in on
the deal. It's called stealing, but
no matter where you go you'll
never find a place called Stealing
University, though it sure seems
always that all these guys must
have graduated from it. This 'old'
Tumulty's hugged the railroad
tracks to what is now a high berm
and a rise to the lawn of one of
those ridiculous white J&J
Buildings that desecrate that
part of the town - from the
train station, headed north to
Highland Park. You'd never know
any of it now, but that was once
a stretch of stores, eateries, junk
shops, a hardware, and a bookstore
too, with a sidewalk and a regular
town, walking feel to it.They just
came and swept it all away; one
day just like that, it all began. My
friend used to live on the top floor
of 199 New Street, back then. The
entire town was different. Before
the J&J people came in and leveled
most of it for their stupid-looking
white buildings, all 1970's style
and weirdly windowed and spaced,
New Brunswick had that feel of
an old 1940's industrial town that
had lost its place and meaning. All
things were just kind of leftover
and destitute. Appliance stores
had used stuff all out front. I
guess they brought it in and out
each day but, from the way some
of it looked, maybe not. Most of
the proprietors, all along those
storefronts, were old-line Jewish
merchants; like storybook people,
they were so perfectly fictional, with
the hats and the gruff manners and
the precise counting they did of
every penny and percentage and
discount and rate. There was
this jumble shop of junk - stuff
and antiques - that was really
fascinating. They were sincere too,
not yet aware of themselves or all
caught up in that 'this is valuable'
ethos like antique stores and those
kinds of shops have today. I would
get lost in there, easy, for an hour,
every aisle and section was loaded
with things; nothing concealed,
all marked. I can see it perfectly
now as I write of it. The walkways,
the front section, the little alcoves
and the upstairs balcony areas still
filled further with things. A person
could just sit anywhere, on any of
the chairs or benches, and just sit
there thinking about the old - lamps,
those old dressmaker mannequins,
feather dusters, shoe-blocks, tools
and all the rest, from stuffed birds to
twisty screwdrivers and carpenters'
tools of old. And no one ever said
a word. It was like a church, silent,
and with the light coming in at the
front, facing the tracks, elevated
up above, through the large pane
windows. It's all gone now, for years,
like a good dream you never wanted
to wake from. Boy, the modern
world sure sucks.
-
I remember, back when Amtrak
first got started, with the trains and
all, the bridge there, for years, had
it mislabeled, as 'Amtrack.' A real
formal bridge sign too. No one
ever changed it, and I used to scoff
at drunk Rutgers, in a college town,
right up the street, putting up with
such a dumb mistake, and no one
ever seeing it. It's gone now too,
though the old stone bridge remains.
-
My friend's place, at 199, upstairs,
3 or 4 flights, I forget, was on a
street that was boxed in with the
stone wall, old, of the railroad.
Right across from his front door,
of his apartment, (it was an old,
tall, white house from about 1900
probably that, over the years had
gotten boxed into a rooming house
of 4 or 5 units), was a dairy - not
the farm kind, with the cows and all,
but a regular milkman dairy, with the
little milkman trucks for daily home
delivery. They'd be working and
lit up all night, bottling and filling
the trucks for the 5am milk routes.
The milk would come in in those
large milk-cans you always used to
see. I don't know where the farms
were from where they got the milk,
but there used to be farms around,
not like now. Suydam's Farm.
Aetoff Farm. A lot of old Jewish
names there too - it was funny
to me how Jewish guys, involved
as they are sometimes, with all
those non-dairy restrictions and
the kosher rules and all, would be
the ones with the milk-peddling
places. Another one of those
mysterious things. My life was
full of that stuff. Not too much
ever got answered, but much was
noticed, and a lot of questions
just always hing in the air.
-
Anyway, this old Tumulty's place,
it was a Rutger's college booze bar
more than anything else, though
they also had steaks and a regular
restaurant clientele. They also had,
kind of ingeniously, model railway
trains, Lionel, that were always
running, all up along the ceiling,
into the walls and through too the
next room, dining area, section of
bar. They went everywhere, maybe
3 or 4 different rains, all criss-crossing
and swooping around past each other
and all. It was cool, and it all went
on, constantly, up high up, to the
near ceiling height, and a person
hardly even knew it, unless you
looked around or got interested.
Pretty cool. That's why we call
it the Lionel Bar. There were
books around, and some club
chairs and things to read too.
Thus the 'Reading at the Lionel
Tavern' title gimmick I used.
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