RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,106
(Hudson News, be damned)
I began getting funny over
names pretty early on. It
was always like that : I've
told here of my stories with
halcyon vs. halycon, etc. And
they're all probably things of
absolutely no interest to anyone
but me. But I don't care and
that never stopped me before.
I write all this as I do because
it's a continual voice in my
head, a hobby-caller that just
keeps ringing on. Like when
I was still young and the guy
who later became my father-
in-law once started going on
telling me about a drink from
his days back in the1930's,
called Moxie - well, I thought
that was pretty cool and had
to find it and look it up and all.
It was in a way the Pepsi against
Coke like thing we have today,
but this was against Moxie.
Another drink. Moxie had a
kind of medicinal herb in it,
folk-remedy stuff, and was
initially sold as a patent medicine,
about 1880, and then it got to
be popularized as a soft drink.
Actually, that was no big deal
because all sorts of things called
'patent medicines' were sold from
wagons and all in early America.
Guys had regular routes they took,
like encyclopedia salesmen later.
No one knew much of anything
anyway, out in the hinterlands, and
once the veneer, thin though it was,
of settled 'civilization' was gone,
there was no telling what stuff could
be peddled to the unwitting. That
was, like I said, long ago, before
the FDA and all that government
and lobbying stuff got involved
with rules and regulations and
buying people off about making
laws and more restrictions. God
only knows what they used to do or
take not to, say, have babies every
12 minutes or keep an infant alive or
a wife from the 'augue' or whatever
that old misery was called. Even
Coke, as I recall, started out as
some cocaine concoction, in
Atlanta, dropped into sugar water
and spices. Who ever knew why
Uncle Harold was always crazy-
jumpy and laughing at everything.
-
By the time our time as kids came
around all that had been settled.
In fact, by then Moxie was just a
word people used about someone
with a lot of nerve. 'Boy, that
Bob Johnson, he has some Moxie!'
And you ended up only drinking
like the crap they let you drink.
Yoo-Hoo? Mountain Dew?
Who's crazy now? I can remember
the old Mountain Dew ads - you
could never get away with that
cracker-stuff now, some old,
seedy, mountain white varmint
guy from Appalachia or something,
taunting around with his old
flintlock or rifle or something;
you just knew the backstory
was he was out hunting runaway
slaves or something. No way
any of that would fly today, and
neither would Yoo Hoo, with
that border-line mentality Yogi
Berra declaiming a simple
'Me-Hee for Yoo-Hoo.' And
damn, how worlds have changed.
-
Now don't get me wrong, I have
nothing against Yogi Berra, except
maybe one or two too many clonks
on the head as a catcher. Maybe.
Let's just say, 'thank goodness
a baseball is round, otherwise
he wouldn't have known the right
side up from the wrong side over.'
In West Orange, you can go
visit Thomas Edison's house,
and see the gravesite, right there
in the yard of both him and his
wife Mina. (I think that was her
name, as I recall). In Montclair,
on the other hand, at one of
New Jersey's supposed finest
asshole colleges, you can go to
see the Yogi Berra Museum.
Huh? When you come to a
dilemma in the road, take it...
-
So, anyway, the thing about words
used to always freak me out. Up
Elmira way was the place called
'Chemung' - town, river, county.
And then, in New Jersey, was a
place called 'Shamong.' Too much
for me, and how's anyone supposed
to handle and tolerate that stuff if
they have any sort of inkling about
what's really going on? It's no
wonder most people walk around
in a mind-daze over the external
world presented to them. It's all
just to much to handle, and anyway
the inmates are running the asylum.
You want to say Apathy? (Which
then isn't the same as antipathy...)?
Now THAT'S a weird distinction,
apathy being like the quality of 'I
don't care,' and antipathy being like
complete opposite of that - a real
hatred or dislike of something.
-
I remember, over in Grand Central
Station, one of those corner stores in
the main promenade, was a Hudson
News. Hudson News is like a half
bookstore and half magazine and
trinket store, for travelers and people
waiting for trains and buses and all.
There was a time when I went to them
and had an interest, etc., but all my
years working bookstores and the
rest just sort of burned it all out of
me and besides anything I want
now, from books to Viagra (ha!)
I just order online. I long ago got
tired, in stores, of being taken for
a vagrant or a thief and being
followed around or sneered at for
my looks. Screw all that; they can
all rot in hell. Like I want any of
the shitty crap they all peddle.
Damned merchants, always sucking
for a nickel or a dime. If this whole
pandemic thing really takes hold,
I'll be glad when stores are done
away with and all their greedy little
persnickety proprietors too.
-
The Hudson News places now
anyway have lost all semblance -
as has most everything else - of
being run by old-line white
Americans. It's mostly South
Asians, or whatever who run those
places now, and they're most annoying.
Their tastes are just incorrect and
have all the wrong references. For
them, maybe the references are right,
but this here isn't Delhi or Dacca
or Islamabad. That's how it all
breaks down. All they really care
about selling are breath mints and
candy; screw the books. I lose track
of how many times all this stuff
has made me angry; and it just
gets worse!
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