RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,070
(no escapees here)
Going back is, often enough,
futile. Yet, through feelings
and emotions, it's often enough
attempted. After all, what else
is the greeting card industry, or
even old calendars? I have lots
of a past to horde, though it
doesn't really travel well. I can
remember walking around the
seminary grounds, as a newly
arrived 'kid' (we all were), and
wondering how little was behind
me and how much was ahead:
but the obstacles were already
showing. I could sense, immediately,
that there were 'favorites' among
the people there - and of course
I wondered why. 'Boyhood' is a
curious time, especially in the
12-13 year-old age bracket. We
were corralled and ruled there
by 'men.' Authority figures loomed.
That in itself was difficult, but
the small groups of the connected
were already apparent and I wished
to know how that had happened.
There were walks through the
sandy woods; a long, outdoor
circle, a path really, with stations
of the cross interspersed every
30 or 40 feet. Apparently these
grounds were to be meditatively
walked while reflecting and reciting
the rosary. That was too weird for
me, some small-town nowhere
kid who'd never been exposed to
that before. Maybe the favorite
kids did this? I sure didn't, and in
point of fact.I thought it was a waste
of time and a misdirected way of
viewing the pastoral walkways
and grounds around us. This 'God'
deemed it fit only to keep us
preoccupied with His thoughts,
while yet amidst His nature, which
we were only to give a sidelong
glance? What sort of racket was
that? Everything already seemed
like a gimmick to me.
-
In later years I used to think about
those days. The streets of NYC were
certainly of a different cloth than
any of that - bold, audacious, lewd
and dangerous too. What sort of
'bucolic' was that? The God remained
silent, though all of my questions and
plaints were sent out. I remained in
some sort of isolation - which suited
me - mentally if not physically,
yet the unanswered too was all
around me. I'd never, perhaps,
realized how many different sorts
of people there were. Characters
of different designations: All along
the westside docks, in 1967 still
vibrant and busy, mostly Irish
chieftains and thug types ruled:
Hell's Kitchen skullduggery.
The extremes were undeniable:
A mere few years before, I had
seminary compatriots, Irish sorts
like Peter Flaherty, who were
filled with the piety and the
pre-innocence (naivete) of
Irish sentimental religion (see
James Joyce, 'Portrait of the
Artist As a Young Man'), and
now in NYC those same sorts
had become vile operatives,
often thieves and head-bashers,
ruling fiercely and with an iron,
neighborhood, hand. Rites of
Passage, indeed. Heck, Stations
Of the Cross, indeed! I soon
realized I didn't need THAT
path to follow. I had my own.
-
The Greenwich Village girls were
mostly Italian. Natives to there,
I mean. The influxes going on,
of, first, gays and beats, and later
hippies, caused a steady consternation
among those Village locals, Italian,
and Irish too, who would occasionally
set off to clash with such newcomers.
Bats and axe handles, and sometimes
more, were held by Sullivan Street
Boys, to somehow stop the newer
encroachment. Losing MacDougal
and Bleecker Street to a succession
of sandal and candle shops was one
thing, but stopping it before it bled
to Sullivan Street was another. The
old line butchers and shoe guys and
small grocers they were all under
assault by the new influx, and the
locals meant business. Numerous
times there street brawls and ambushes
in which newcomers were bloodied.
One had to be on guard or, for sure,
have already made the right alliances.
-
Funny how a 'dalliance' is not always
an 'alliance.' I guess.
-
This was all before the real proliferation
of 'malls' in other areas of the metro area.
Their prevalence later became obvious,
but at the same time Bleecker and
MacDougal had in their ways become
forms of outdoor malls. Perhaps it was
something about seeking out the different
and the unpredictable, but hordes of
people walking, strolling, trying on
hats and peasant blouses, and all the
rest, acted as a forerunner, on those
two streets, of much of the outdoor
entertainment that many locales now
thrive on in their central plazas and
towns centers. It was, perhaps, too
genteel, really, and too inquisitive
to be of any value, but it became
the glimmer or glimpse that many
outside suburbanites, slumming
through the Village streets, based
their ideas of 'bohemia' and urban
living, upon. For better or worse,
it all took hold.
-
Twenty or thirty blocks uptown,
however, along that same westside,
the Italian slowly changed to Irish,
and one would be hard-pressed to
undertake that same sort of leisurely
strolling along. One was more apt to
find trouble, than a trinket. It was a
more harsh and heavy, dockside and
infested, crime scene, basically.
Hoodlums and thieves and wolfhounds
on the run haunted those tenements
and local streets - grog-houses and
chilleries. (Yes, I made up 'chilleries,'
meaning a low-down dagger of a
bar or tavern where one went to
'chill' while hoping no one caught up
to you for the crime just committed).
It was all of a type, and a legendary
one to boot. No escapees from this
colony.
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