RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,119
(and that was all it took)
I never wanted to say this
stuff, but I will; how much,
really, can I do to 'retell'
things of the past? Flopzing
around Vermont; stories of
old Avenel; tales of valor
and glory in olde NYC?
Isn't it funny how humans
always 'validify' the present
by dwelling on the past? As
if the difference between the
two, which they are making
note of, is NOT a degradation
but merely a whimsical nostalgia
by which the 'grand' present can
see that past. It never made any
sense to me, and those two patterns
of being really cannot and do not
ever co-exist. Nothing is worse
than sentimental look-backs.
-
Before the lightbulb, there were
gas-lamps, kerosene light fixtures,
candles and torches even. Isn't
that quaint. Now, when I pull out
an old railroad lamp, people begin
instantly to go on about the great
value that must have; yes, but the
value they refer to is monetary;
how much this old piece of the past
is worth. What a disappointment,
but that's the sort of world we have
now - when even the most mundane
of household instruments from 1845
can fetch, sometimes, hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
-
I've never been a believer in childish
or storybook things, or endings. In
fact, I've always detested the rank
stupidity of kid's books and moral
lessons. Operatic bullshit just left
me cold and annoyed. The old
morality plays of the early Middle
Ages were nothing more than
flagellants and maniacal religion
types walking from Black Death
town to Black Death town - and
spreading the disease too, everywhere,
along their route - so that they could
perform their death and doom morality
plays in front of the hundreds soon
to die. Beating themselves with reeds
and rushes to prove their worth to
the great Lord above.
-
It was always funny to me how I
understood all that but still thought
it useless. Now all that's been turned
into what we now call Theater, Song,
and the rest - Entertainment. Oblivious
to anything else around us. Just wait
a year or two when the Covid films
begin coming out - actors in masks?
Muffled bleatings of the doomed?
-
Paradaisical as it all was, the rest,
my time spent in those farther
outposts of the most rural were
times better spent. I started really
hating the rural types who put on
'urban' airs based on their having
a small knowledge of what's considered
the 'finer' points of the rich, the wealthy
uptown apartment dweller or deep
denizen of the big, bad city. I'd see it
lots - and having just escaped from
terror and turmoil myself, it really
used to grate to see someone go
pretending, based on their maybe
tiny bit of experience or info, from
some two-but mini-college, a year
here or there. There used to be
things called 'Junior College' usually
based on the town they were in, like
Baltimore - they were the rough
equivalent of the same inflated
baloney that Community Colleges
parade with today; a stupid-ass
two-year 'degree' in some malicious
craft like Business Management.
Now it's done for Security Guards,
and the Govt. pays, no less! I always
felt that if one was to live in Ruritania,
dad-gummit, one oughtn't not put
on citified airs!
-
Funny stuff abounded. Guns and ammo.
The Pennsylvania people were more
slipshod about that - there were guns
everywhere; back-window pickup-truck
racks, gun-closets in the living room filled
with live armaments, long rifles in the
barns. Guys would kill each other over
some beefed-up infraction - the stupidest
stuff about property lines, boundaries,
pasture rights, etc.; let alone over each
other's wives. There was a good deal
of that stuff going around too. My father
used to come visit and tell me 'don't
touch' this or that guy's daughter. He
was serious, like I walked around
throbbing - I could'a cared less. Girls
were girls, not my present concern.
It was just a good show. I think all
that was more on his mind than
it was on mine. He figured somehow
I'd ended up getting shot up in the
hayloft with Sallie-Mae. Maybe so.
I should'a been so lucky.
-
Anyway, guns got traded like currency,
in those rural Pennsylvania highlands
I lived. I traded for a car. I traded for
some power tools. Things went back
and forth, and a person could very well
end up, two years later, with that same
pistol traded away previously, back
again for the set of tires and a fireplace
poker you'd just traded for. It was real
funny stuff. Guy stuff, I suppose, because
I never saw any ladies trading away
things. Except maybe 'favors.' Ha. One
time this lady I knew, a last name of
Guthrie (her husband was the guy who
fixed my ailing car, first January night
I got up there to Columbia Crossroads).
The wife was a real pistol, and I knew
it the very first night. She was at some
ladies social or something, with all these
ridiculous, pious local-lady types, and a
tray of pastries came out. (I was told all
this later, by Warren Gustin - who's
wife it was that had taken the most
offense. Those two ladies never spoke
to each other again). He said that when
the pastries came out, there was a tray
of cruellers, and this Guthrie lady, in
reaching for the largest one, amidst
those ladies, said 'Mmm, I'll take this
one; long and hard, just like I like it!'
And that was all it took.
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