RUDIMENTS, pt.1,252
(how cinnamon & sugar kids grew up)
Time can't ever have gone
slower than when I was
growing up in Avenel.
It seemed like one big
afternoon. The way the
house was situated - all
those, in fact, on my side
of the street - was that
the morning sun was in
the rear yard and by noon,
overhead. After that, the
front yard and the stoop,
were in full, afternoon,
sunlight. We often baked.
It was almost mathematical,
to a young brain, how the
perfect split between two
halves of every day occurred.
-
The way it is in other cultures,
and sometimes here in the USA
now, (Feng Shui and all that),
the positioning of the house
gets a lot of attention, and often
is sold in these later days, with
the claim 'East facing house'
being made - that confused me
at first, as I figured it had some
Muslim connection or some
other Eastern religion perhaps;
but I was corrected by someone
who told me it's a selling point,
in real estate, for better warmth,
and less heat-use. Beats me, yes,
and it always just sounded fussy.
-
The houses on Inman Ave, as I
saw them, were built with no heed
to that sort of thing. Probably, in
some uncontested engineering plan,
the 160 homes or whatever amount
there was, were laid out for optimal
number and sales potential. Feng
Shui be damned. I'm sure the land's
developer wanted the best potential
of house-erections on the allotted
acreage. Jammed in like Papa
Bach's organ, shall we say?
-
That afternoon Summer sun would
come rolling over the tops of the
houses and our games of flipping
cards or of reading comic books
took another direction quickly. In
my most graphically remembered
memories are stints of us running
into the woods, or biking off the
Avenel Park, or anywhere, to get
out of the damned porch heat of
afternoon.
-
That never meant we were safe,
mind you, There are numerous
instances I can relate which would
give the tenor and complexion of
what we were actually up to; those
involved matches, setting fires, girls,
purloined cigarettes, nearly destroying
any new homes we'd see being built :
weekend return trips to the idle sites
to break countless windows, smash
doorknobs with heavy rocks, and using
spare lumber left-about the open homes
to make bicycle ramps and approaches
and jumps into and out of what later
would be living rooms and hallways.
Hello Doreen Drive!!
-
It was amazing how, in 1959 or '60,
or whatever it was, they'd have no
security guys hanging around, no
means of locking the site; leaving
it - and the houses too - to all
sorts of mischief. One time, at the
rounded cul de sac which was the
rear end of the new development,
I fell through an opening in the
floor, right down to the newly
installed oil tank in the basement,
and smacked my knee pretty good
on one of the ends of it - five
stitches above my right knee
later, I got to thinking how lucky
I was I hadn't just cracked my
skull. One of my friends there,
whose father worked nights, was
good enough to take us to Perth
Amboy General Hospital, when
it was just that (home of my train
wreck recoveries too) where the
doctor wanted to know what had
occurred. We just said bicycle
racing, and that we'd run into each
other and a pedal got me.
-
Can you imagine today's lawyerly
version of this? Lawsuit, untended
construction site, no safeguards,
no security, leaving works and
tool unattended, houses open. No
word about the rascally kids who
screwed up, I suppose. Another
time, they'd left a mound of dirt,
a real pile about 15 feet high. It
sat there for probably a month,
right in the center of the cul de sac
turn. We easily made that into one
of the slickest and most radical
bicycle jumps you could imagine,
with like 1000 yards of flat road
to get up to speed for it too, from
the Woodbridge Ave. end and
at a slight decline too. Massively
cool.
-
The rutted dirt road from Inman
at that point led back to the trailer
court and the beginnings of the
junkyard. Second home to us there
also. The mythical junkyard dogs
never appeared. The few people
I know within the trailer court
remained curiously oblivious to
any of this - they seemed never
to have interest, curiosity, nor
even bicycles. Go figure.
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