RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,222
(Jennings/the poverty quotient)
Back about this time there
was Peter Jennings, I think
a news broadcaster somewhere,
and there was Jim Jensen, same
deal. I always had him as a
Jennings, by mistake, and no
matter. They were nothing to
me, and I was no longer living
that life. There's be 10pm
newscasts, from NYC, with
one of those guys and they
had this nightly bullshit thing
where the announcer would say,
"It's 10pm; do you know where
your children are?" I never did
understand what sort of negative
cultural-fucking abyss they came
from, but the daily announcement
of that stuff came across to me as
so ghetto, so captive, so locked
in a bubble, that these people all
might as well have been dead.
Living like that seemed pathetic,
and having a media schlub tell
you that seemed imperialistic.
How did people tolerate any
of that stuff?
-
Up on the hill I mentioned last
chapter, where the real 'Jennings'
lived, with his kids and his crazy
pajama'd wife, things were most
certainly different and I know he'd
have shot any media type who came
around to profile them as representative
of 'poor, needy, rural, America' - the
kind of neglected kids, rundown and
isolated home, and uncooperative
societal parents that they used to like
to do. He'd have shot the guy and
ripped his balls off and nailed them
to that tree I used to have to drive
around - and then they'd come over
to my house in the badly-needy '61
Plymouth they all packing into and
laugh at it all, with us, while we ate
and drank : moonshine, apple-jack,
hard cider, whatever. The farmers
around me made it all, and in vats
large enough to baptise babies in.
-
I can't remember his first name now,
believe that. But he had a simple life,
a life most often called derogatory.
One small piece of land, his own
rules, no fences, no limits - except
those he made for himself. There
was a time when that was the
American way, but it too was gone
by 1971. Everything once given
as 'free' had already been turned
back in : taxes, rules, authorities,
courts and laws and sheriffs. Kids
forced into Government schools.
People to whom one had to answer
for most every part of this or that.
It had all been, by then, dissolved
away and no one cared. The Veteran
fathers, with their WWII nightmares,
willingly turned over that same
trap to their Vietnam era sons -
do your duty and go and fight to
then represent this lie for us. Abroad.
Thank God that too withered. Fell.
Self-destructed. My Jennings pal
was my outpost of one, and he'd
already been declared outlaw.
Non-cooperative. Wouldn't have
his kids dragged away to school
for their daily indoctrination.
Someone long before had
determined (wisely? Mr.
Dewey?) that the best way
to float this raft of lies was
by indoctrinating, nay,
brainwashing, the kids, as
captives, young, swiftly, and
early. No one even blinked.
It all went smoothly.
-
Up in the hills where we lived,
my friend Jennings was but one
example, albeit a shining one,
of staking out a notch for the
limb to stick - the real limb. The
limb of Freedom and Self-Reliance.
The only problem that comes into
this scenario? I noticed quickly
that neither he - nor any of the
others I'd meet - knew this. In
fact, they had no historical
awareness or consciousness
of what they were doing. They
put into their works and being
no part of what any of it was
about. That was odd - to be
possessed of an enlightened
pose, but with no awareness
of any of it being so. It reminded
me of the whole, previously
mentioned, bias I have about
'organized' and coerced education.
Innate abilities are ignored,
and intuitions and the natural
inclinations of interest and
investigations are stifled. What
good is a useless kid? I often
thought that past the point of the
actual learning of how to read
and how write, the rest could
all be worked out in some
other way. And then I'd think,
'What is the role of a 'Government'
anyway - that question was
omni-present up there, seeing
poverty and need, reasons for
assistance and family supports,
and children (and parents) in
need of some sort of learning?
It never seemed to fit, and just
always remained a question.
I didn't even know for sure if
Jennings could read? Write?
Yes, it was that wild.
-
Another friend, living in dire
poverty in a crumble of house
trailers and sheds and junk,
had a collection of some 6
kids, was on poverty assistance,
an obese wife who hardly ever
left the trailer, and who took,
when he could, day-work for
pay doing the most meager of
tasks. I knew he had kids, and
a daughter named April, from
the schoolbus route. He was a
jaunty fellow, with no teeth.
In the center of his trailer he'd
cut a hole - it emptied straight
down into some contraption
he'd rigged for catching the
bathroom waste. Which he
claimed to clean out every
third or fourth day. April was
a nice girl about 14, who
hardly ever spoke, and always
seemed shell-shocked. Happy
to say, after some months,
and after repeated small-talk
and conversation along the
end of the schoolbus route,
she'd come along fairly well,
and had learned to smile some,
open up, and talk with others,
though she still, really had
no friends. It was sad.
-
Claude's family trailer, all Winter
long, through the snows and cold
weather, was always one of the
must-stops for the local church's
snowmobile rescue and relief
food-delivery services. The
well-beaten snow-path to his
woodsy trailer setting was
always in use - unlike the
hill up to the Jennings place,
which was often without either
tracks or path for cold, snowy
days on end.
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