RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,125
(I'll drink to that) pt.2
A person heading up Route
One there saw many things.
Previously to the national
highway system of numbering,
it had been Route 24, I think
it was...maybe 25. I never
knew what all that meant but
on the cloverleaf overpass
nearby at Woodbridge, the
little plaque built into the
bridge marker like a cemetery
marker still bore the old
number. No one much ever
seemed to question it, but
the local sorts who lived
there were usually of the
type that most likely never
even noticed it, let alone
talk about it. When the old
beatniks said 'Dullsville,'
that area was for sure what
they meant.
-
But, anyhow...that's heading
south. I'm going north with
this. Once we got past the
small Linden Airport mentioned
in the previous chapter, and
approached Newark Airport,
the road had already taken on
different characteristics. For
one thing, there was a stretch
when the traffic lights ended,
after North Ave., and that
resultant straightaway and
curve was a driver's delight.
I can recall once, in his 1960
Chevy, my father was doing
a clear 80 I'm sure and there
was a Newark traffic cop
along the way - out of his
car; BUT, the situation was
so hopeless that, instead of
pulling drivers over for the
issuance of citations (my father
included), all he was doing was
(to my father included) motioning
from roadside with both arms,
palms downward, to 'slow it
down.' Problem was, no one
much paid him any mind (my
father included). A simply
form of - on the one hand -
attempting traffic control
and - on the other - ignoring
it. Life's dualities have always
been magnificent.
-
Across from the, in those days,
much-smaller airport was the
Anheuser-Busch plant. It's
still there, whatever corporate
name (InBev?) it goes by with
it great, illuminated, moving-
image eagle logo atop the
building. It was always
fascinating to me - that
very eagle, through the many,
early years of the 20th century,
had for a long while graced
Times Square. The power and
punch of lights and moving
image was all a part of what
made Times Square the great
white way of legend and light.
Anyway, in the 1950's and now,
it shone, instead, atop the brewery.
Of further interest, both within
its irony and ironic sanctity too,
behind the brewery there are
snaky roads leading to very old
Jewish cemeteries; from Newark's
old, industrial, days of grandeur.
Those graves are very close upon
upon another, cramped and crowded.
They are open yet to anyone willing
to take the chance of the isolation
and distance and just walk around.
We've done it plenty of times. Part
and parcel of old Newark's bad
reputation is the crime and muggery
its reputation bears; but nothing
has ever occurred to us. Curiously
it's the gravesite of the poet Allen
Ginsberg, his family and siblings,
Mother and Father, aunts and uncles
too. (His Father was equally
renowned in his own way, in
those pre-crazy-media days, as
a writer, of sorts. He was also a
high school History teacher, in
Paterson NJ). The Ginsberg graves
are nothing unusual, just the usual,
marble rectangle slabs, though
his has a uniquely nice inscription.
Also in that graveyard is buried
Al Aronowitz - onetime 1960's
famed rock music journalist, and
the man who introduced the Beatles
to Bob Dylan, in NYC - the famed
meeting when the Beatles, supposedly,
were first introduced to marijuana.
You can look all that up; it's otherwise
fairly boring, and too cute by far.
-
No matter for any of this and, of
course, when I was a kid I didn't
know anything about the cemeteries
and, in fact, both of those guys were
alive anyway. I would never have
known about Al Aronowitz except
that I got to know the girl who had
nursed and cared for him some as
he was ailing and died; and she had
told me about the burial site, Ginsberg's
I did know of because I had read of
it as an odd poetic irony, his being
implanted like that in Jewish-American
ground in the shadows of the Budweiser
plant. I'd drink to that, I guess.
-
So, the great speed of one life leads
a person past many milestones. Some
get checked off, others missed. I was,
early on, determined not to miss much;
not to lie or make things up, and to only
properly reflect and retell real matter
about what occurred at my watch and,
for myself, on my watch. I'd drink to
that as well, and still can - with friends
and veterans who went through all
this crap with me, often. Not alone,
by a solitary hunched over and draped
inmate, in a padded cell; no, that
would simply be too easy.
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