RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,127
(broadly happy, and smiling inward)
Along the far west end of
Manhattan, down towards
the end of Jane Street, there
are converted horse stables
that have been turned, over
the years, into living quarters.
Many of them. The people
these days living within
those conversions are mostly
unaffected by, if not unaware
of, the conditions which once
were prevalent and which
pre-dated their time there. The
very idea of 'horse,' by 1967,
was almost unimaginable to
any regular denizen of NYC's
'modernized, car-finned and
glamor environment. All of
America, and its cultural ethos,
had been changed - and much
of it by the influences of the
influencers right there, in
Manhattan. One 'lived' amidst
the same change that one's
environment was creating!
Yet, most people, most of the
residents, wouldn't have
known nor cared.
-
The lower westside areas of
NYC, in that era if '67, still
bore, with some investigating,
the presences of horse, wagon,
and drayage, once so prevalent.
There were, in fact, still a few
blacksmiths, to shoe and maintain
horses, and there were yet stables,
oats and hay to be found. The
cobbled streets of that area often
held horse droppings, oat-spillages,
and fallen hay. The clop-clop of
returning horses could be heard,
pulling their wagons, chestnut or
food carts. I stood ground there,
many an afternoon and night,
earning 7 or 8 dollars for not
much more than busywork but
taking in all of that wonderful
atmosphere and the old guys,
talking the sort of nowhere small
talk that went with feeding the
cats and the dog too. It's all hard
to explain; but some people go
immediately to Harvard in the
same way I went to the streets.
Sort of a Junior Year Abroad,
but forever.
-
In East Germany they had peat
bogs, I had read, that burned on
and on forever. In NYC, most of
the fires were in barrels, or in the
myriad of journals and intellectual
claptrap publications that went on
and on with writers' personality,
the cross-currents of opinion and
attitude, and the rest of the, mostly,
to be frank, Jewish protocol of
ancient and stupid intellectual
argument. Christians too took it
up, with all that 'how many angels
can fit on the head of a pin' claptrap.
People actually argues and debated
that stuff. Before the atom bomb.
Before TV.
-
'Jane Street is in an area of docks
and warehouses, a few tenements,
a few big apartment buildings, and
a lot of nineteenth century houses.
Some Irish still lived there [1960],
it was the old Eighth ward, and
even though it had started to 'come
up,' as real estate agents would say.
It was far from the subways. It was
so close to the meat market (where
turn a corner and you were apt to
run smack into a carcass dangling
from a chain), that many people
regarded moving there as the same
as moving to hell and gone.' And
I knew exactly the terms of all
that - knew the smalls and the
angles and the buildings and the
people. Characters of renown,
smashed thought they be. The
long-afternoon dangling men
at the White Horse, one damned
drink after the other, all long day
- the light trailing down, the late
Winter effusiveness trying so
bravely to replace the dull, dead,
gray. I don't know if you've ever
noted, but there's a day, each year,
about January 26th or thereabouts,
when the days change and the light
changes and everything begins
lingering a little more and shadows
change their angles, etc., and, within
each of us - the old, grizzled, human
animal - is sensed the universal
change of time and light towards
Spring and renewal. it can't be
denied. I used to talk away, on
those days, broadly happy and
smiling inward, to myself, no
matter what else grungy or
horrid may have been going
on. My life got settled.
-
I made an acquaintance there,
an old black guy called Artie.
I never got his real name - he
had started out, he claimed, in
'old' Atlanta, which apparently
meant something quite different
from the 'urban' Atlanta that was
building up in the 1970's he held
that grudge dearly; an offensive
betrayal, apparently, of some old
world, old school, gentility that
perhaps that 'old' south had once
possessed. I never got to know his
role in it - slave days? Perhaps
some older, engrained slave foreman
mentality still in his 1960's blood.
They say - some do - that such
things take genetic root and get
DNA'd into a family's lineage.
He never spoke much. past that.
His deal was tending horse carts,
feeding horses the oats, swabbing
down, brushing, and, even, washing
the horse blankets or whatever they
were that got draped over the horses'
backs in cool weather. I liked all
that, especially the smells. He was
always right to it, down, hard at
work. He had an odor too; maybe
just old Atlanta. You know how,
in New York, people say - about
the homes and provincial places
they fled - 'The small town gets
the back of my hand.' I figured,
referencing Atlanta, his voice,
whatever it was, was trying to
say something different, but
like that as well.
-
Over by 83 Jane Street, another
of those made-over stables, there
was (is) a house built in 1856.
Back then, all along the west side
thereabouts, the shoreline used to
be much closer in, the Hudson
River - as NY's construction
continued apace through the early
and mid 1800's, was filled in a
lot with the landfill and rubble
and dirt from all that - so that
now there are some maybe 5 or 6
blocks worth of 'new' land that
wasn't there 200 years ago. Look
at old maps and you can see how
the shape changed. Anyway, at
#83, in the basement there, an
enormous mahogany bar was
left in place, and over that bar
was inscribed, "On this site
overlooking the majestic
Hudson, stood the William
Bayard Mansion, where
Alexander Hamilton, the
first treasurer of the United
States, died July 12, 1804,
after his famous duel with
Aaron Burr." Because of the
curious conjunction of streets
right there, the block always
seemed cut off, isolated.
I felt a great affinity for that.
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