13,079. RUDIMENTS, pt.1,053

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,053
(the man in the blue coat)

The guy with the blue coat said he 

was going to send me something 

but I always knew him to be a liar 

so I never expected much and 

he'd once told me he lived 'by 

the water with the blue spruce 

on the shoreline' and that 

sounded too pat for me to 

believe for I knew him to live 

adjacent to the canal where 

all the junk lumber had been 

dumped and where people 

dropped off washers and 

bicycles and other crap 

they didn't want and if he 

thought that was any sort 

of paradisaical existence for 

anyone he was surely nuts. 

In addition, I knew he drove

a bus for the MTA. That was

the sort of job people took for

the benefits. It made all the

abuse worthwhile - big salary,

medical coverage, benefits and

perks, union representation, 20

years and out, with some big

pension always rolling in. I 

saw right through a lot of the 

blowhard stuff that he said.

-

Gun Hill Road, (cool name) ran 

up to the Bronx, or along it, and

it took you past Woodlawn Cemetery

and a lot of municipal stuff too  - the

truck garages and snow plows and

storage sheds. Plus, a lot of it was

barren and open, or railroad sidings.

It got pretty grimy, and in the 1970's

was a good murder-depot too. Dumping

bodies, or heaving guys out from

the trunk of the car they been taken

there in all dazed and bloodied after

getting a severe beating. I used to get

a kick out of all that. Out in the rural

countryside people walk rock deposits

and country lanes to find or look for

the surprise of fossil-rocks or old tools

and implements and things. Up along

Gun Hill Road, most people were too

afraid to walk but those that did could

usually be surprised by finding a few

fingers or even an arm or leg. Let

alone a whole body. Live and let live

never worked there much.

-

The old tan-stucco boarding house 

was still standing but ready to fall in,

and it had been vacant except for him 

for at least thirty years. It once held 

the canal workers who hauled the 

cargo which passed through from 

Philadelphia to Manhattan or 

wherever that stuff ended up and 

it all went in either direction anyway.

All that was gone now  and the locals, 

if they knew anything, knew nothing

about the old canal. The few houses

huddled the shore, and lots of trees,

long ago grown in, covered the areas

where the tow-lines used to be. Those

areas once had to be bare and open,

so the barges could be pulled by

the horses or mules along the shore.

But, no more of that. Motors had

changed everything, long ago, and

people had just grown dumb.

-

This guy said he'd moved here about

12 or 15 years ago, and it was, though

dreary, an easy enough daily commute,

four days a week, along 287 and 440,

to Staten Island and then across to

wherever  he needed to be for the

bus depot. To me it all sounded like

a massive pain in the butt and a 

heck of a commute. A real heck.

Let alone being in another state

too (NJ). He said any number of

drivers did it, and once when I

mentioned Avenel, he told me of 

two other MTA drivers much like

him, who lived and commuted

from their little trailers in Hiram's

Trailer Court, just up the end

of the block I'd grown up on. It

was right on Rt. One, he said,

and all they pretty much had

to do was fall out of bed and 

run right up to the Holland 

Tunnel to get started. I said,

'Yeah, I'll confirm that. I grew

up right there.' Funny world,

we decided, filled with lots of

coincidences. Then we got to

chuckling over some Seinfield

episode where some woman

was arguing with Elaine about

coincidences. Elaine had called

something a 'big coincidence,'

and this haughty Russian lady

or somesuch, got all uppity

and angry over that, declaiming 

'There are no BIG coincidences! 

Something is just a coincidence

or not. There are no big coincidences 

or little coincidences.' She got

so mad that she told Elaine to

shut up or she'd put her cigarette

out in Elaine's face! (She was

some sort of East European writer

too, who had delivered to Elaine

her manuscript for proofing and

editing. As soon as she was out of 

sight and had exited the elevator,

Elaine dumped the whole thing

in the trash and fumed off). It

was all pretty funny.

-

He said no matter, he liked it 

there, living at the canal as he

did, and the only neighbors 

he had were the squirrels, rats,

or rodents that the ground

attracted. Not too far away there

was a graveyard too, where many

of the locals and old-timers had

been buried, a lot of them having

been diggers of the canal itself,

back in the 1830's era, and others 

were Gatemen or Lock Keepers,

employed by the Canal, and

given cottage housing too. Where

he was now. He said he'd learned

the these local, rural burials were

once a lot more complicated and

much different in mourning, and

more serious than what we do today  - 

which is pretty much a ritual, yeah,

but a sales ritual really, with the

'unceremonious' dumping of

bodies, all cleaned out and now

heavily embalmed, into expensive

and useless coffins, and then into

vaults of concrete first, underground.

All for the expense, since it too

had become a business. Then he

said that if you go over to these

old grave-sites, it was just bones

in a wood-box, the dried and old

remains of the deceased. No

real preservation going on at

all, just the dead. The way it

should be. He called it the 

'slimy' graveyard. I had a friend

once who always claimed that,

as we drove past the local cemetery

hereabouts (Colonia, 1980), he

could sense it by smell, that the

graves and the St. Gertrude's

Burial Grounds emitted their own

odor. I'd tell him he was full of it;

the bodies were so sealed and 

embalmed, cleaned and drained,

and sealed up too in two levels of

'security' that even if they were

decaying and rotting (I guessed 

they were?), no smells ever reached

the outside world. Of course, it was

always just a guess. Maybe he was

right, but I never smelled a thing.

I never knew though why this MTA

guy called it a 'slimy' graveyard,

the one by him, over at the canal.

I never smelled anything there, except

sometimes the murk of the water. 

There were some old and tottering

stones, weathers, and some now

bare and unreadable too, from the 

early 1800's, then the some of the 

latest ones the newest or the most 

recent anyway - cut from a different 

stone entirely and bereft of anything 

cool to say - all the etchings of the 

latest ones being nothing but boring 

dates and names and such while the 

old ones with their cherubs and willow 

trees and angels adorning names and 

dates often too were held in groups 

with interesting sayings and slogans 

and epitaphs that were fun to read.

But, "you're supposed to be sad in a 

graveyard not happy" was what he 

said to me when I mentioned this 

to him, and now there's nothing 

there anyway except for some stupid 

farmer who has hours on Saturdays 

from 10AM to 4PM when he sells 

'small dogs and puppies' whatever 

that exactly means - and I always 

wanted to get there and see for myself 

and maybe get a dog or a small dog 

at least or a puppy if they're not the 

same thing, but his sign was always 

confusing to me and it never 

mentioned price so I never went 

- dogs being quite plentiful it 

seemed anywhere else you could 

look, and I'd rather they were free 

anyway (that's a double meaning 

too FREE for me - as it were - 

and free for themselves, to 

wander, to roam, and to run 

around unfettered).  But the 

guy with the blue coat played 

the harmonica too and the 

dulcimer or zither or one 

of those old instruments 

that no one understands 

anymore and I'd see him 

sometimes a little farther 

off at the edge of the parkland 

by the water-bridge playing 

some soulful sad tune to himself 

- since no one else was ever around 

- and I'd figure right then that 

LIAR OR NOT he really was 

probably right about the graveyard.