RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,177
(it's like this)
Let me take a walk with
you : It's like this, with the
lamplighter I used to know
probably dead now 50 years.
He was a small guy, named
or called Chantrel but I think
his name was Jake. I never
got it straight but Chantrel
was probably his last name.
He'd been a boxer once too,
and a nose and ear to show
for it. But, in 1967, it was
all over and he'd gotten some
sort of job over by McDougal
Alley, where some of the old
places still had gas lamps -
along Greenwich Mews too -
that needed daily tending, to
light, and to extinguish. These
places were the last vestiges of
a carry-over of the old Village
when it really was a cool place.
By 1967 everything like that
was sort of self-conscious about
itself and all the rich people
thereabouts knew what they
had and had gotten all smug
about it. There's a place like
that in Philadelphia too, called
'Elfreth's Alley.' Quaint old
places, yes, and all made over
into these posh living quarters;
wealthy, fussy people, with
expensive cars on the cobblestone
street in each place, where they
can hardly fit. Wondrous, old
brick and masonry stuff, little
chimneys and stonework that
curls and ornamental ironwork
too. Rippled and curved glass
sometimes, in the windows, and
the really old glass now slightly
blurry and yellowed, and with
small bubbles or air in it too.
Really pretty amazing, and one
of the most fascinating things
I ever saw was how, after say
two hundred years or so, an old
piece of glass (silica, made of
sand, and all the rest), actually
begins to sag-in-place, as if it
was slowly turning back to a
form of viscous 'glass' that
slowly sinks, broadening at the
bottom and thinning at the top.
It's a wonder how any of these
panes had survived that long
anyway, especially in a place
like the NY and Philadelphia
urban areas. I admit, though,
to it all being so picturesque.
-
The (typically) funny thing was
how all these old places - now
revered as sacred precincts of
a city-space that was inhabited
by the wealthy and folks with
plenty of resources, were, in
reality, from their origins, once
nothing more than back-alley
service quarters and/or stables
for livery and slave. In Elfreth
Alley they were also built as
cheap, small, working-class
quarters for the immigrant
laborers who were, essentially,
stuck there and without recourse.
Now the snob effect of money's
rectitude has turned everything
completely around. It can be, or
would be, funny, if someone told
all this effectively.
-
So, anyway, Jake Chantrel here
was kept leisurely busy (is there
such a thing? I wondered, since
he got paid or had some sort of
sinecure for doing these duties,
but it was certainly not 'work'
other than as work can be thought
of a time-consuming detail or
something that 'must' be done.
In that sense and that sense
alone, it was 'work,' or a job.
But he was never under any
gun or burden. I often envied
was a saw as his great career
path.
-
In my run of piano musics I
often come across grand old
songs from much earlier eras;
tunes and lyrics that capture
often the essence of the old
days. There's one, in particular,
that this episode I related has
brought up, to my mind. It's
called 'The Old Lamplighter.'
Each time I run across it, I
remember Jake and all that
'older' NYC stuff, which
wasn't really old at all, in
terms of this song which
was more, really, about the
Victorian age re-imagined.
1967 New York City, no
matter how I may say it or
how, convincingly or not, I
may portray it, doesn't hold
a 'candle' to this.
-
"He made the night a little brighter,
Wherever he would go; the old
lamplighter of long, long ago.
His snowy hair was so much whiter
whiter beneath the candle glow, the
old lamplighter of long, long ago.
You'd hear the patter of his feet
as he came toddling down the street.
His smile had a lonely heart you see.
If there were sweethearts in the park
he'd pass a lamp and leave it dark,
remembering the days that used to be.
For he recalls when things were new
he loved someone who loved him too;
who walks with him alone in memories.
He made the night a little brighter,
Wherever he would go. The old
lamplighter of long, long ago.
Now if you look up in the sky
you'll understand the reason why
the little stars at night are all aglow:
He turns them on when night is here,
he turns them off when dawn is near,
.he little man we left of long ago.
He made the night a little brighter
Wherever he would go, that
old lamplighter of long, long ago."
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