RUDIMENTS, PT. 1,288
('introibo ad altare dei...')
I always figured my first
language was silence, and
I was pretty good at it. I
never really said a sensible
thing until a number of
years in. It seemed as if
each time I began to talk,
a thought got in the way,
and since no one ever really
wanted to hear anything but
the most glib pleasantries
and fluff, I always tucked
away any serious words. I
just figured it was all better
left unsaid. If I began, even
at like age 11, to start to say
something heavier or more
ponderous than 'good morning'
or 'nice car,' I'd get flamed
down and called off.
-
Hard to believe, in those years,
I was an 'altar boy' too - in the
local Avenel church, St. Andrew's.
Over time, that dumb church got
all entangled in my life and doings,
and I still to this day understand
neither what happened nor if I ,
should have been thankful for it.
Probably a little of both, if that
means anything sensible. The
mark of my life has mostly been
if infractions or over-steps; I was
never one of those rule-following
kids who stayed in line. For all
it ended up getting me, I probably
should have been one of them;
the rest of me just became a
squandered mess.
-
Suburban, 1950's living wasn't
all it's been cracked up to be. Sure,
big deal, we had toasters and paved
driveways; transistor radios and
music to listen to 'outside'. The
telephones, at one point, in my
house anyway, got to have like
30 feet cords, so a person on the
phone could 'roam' inside the
small house. Some days my
Mother would be yapping two
rooms away - nothing real or
special, just neighbor-lady
prattle - and it took some
gymnastics getting past or
around that stretched chord.
She'd be cooking and taking,
or ironing and talking (while
Dick Clark blazed away on the
black and white TV - some
proto-music music and dance
teen-type show, broadcast from
Philadelphia, mid-day daily.
Goofy kids would dance to
acts like Dion and the Belmonts,
who'd lip-sync their own
prattle to a three-chord dizzy
to which teeny-bopper virginals
danced and pretended. It was
all too much for me, and too
soon too. I wanted to swat that
Dick Clark guy - slick and
smooth and false and shiny too.
That's how we measured out time
and days in the good old 'USA!'
-
So, back to this old church thing:
Difficult to maybe believe, but at
age 11 my two biggest interests,
outside of the tiny little shoulder-pad
of a library we had in Avenel, where
Mrs. Muccilli would put aside books
for me, things she though I'd like,
no question asked. Cool things,
like those odd-sized poetry books
that used to come out about 1960;
Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, Frank
O'Hara, Berryman, Ferlinghetti. It
was a long list. I studied those crazy
books and all their tracked trails
of words. None of this was the
sort of stuff an 11-year old would
be expected to be reading, but I
did it. Mrs. Muccilli had two sons,
and one of them, Philip, followed
me closely through most of my
elementary grades; then I think
they moved away. There was a
younger son too. That family, as
well, was involved in the same
church stuff. Funny how all that
goes - you pass like ships, dissolve,
and fade away. I now often wonder
what she'd have been thinking;
maybe she could even have gotten
in trouble for sequestering books
like that - sort of the opposite of
a censorious outlook; but I liked
her the more for doing that.
-
She was a Goddess compared to
that baked weasel of a nun they
used to send our way. For weekly
Catechism. 'Sister Josephus,' she
called herself. I found out once that
her real, pre-nun name had been
Madeline Furie. That seemed fitting.
She was obscene, and a total freak.
Totalitarian in every aspect, a real
Nazi-toter, spouting venom at every
turn. She'd holler, click her little
click to get kids in line, and then
furiously stab and prod and twist
ears on anyone for whom he could
frame an infraction. She was the
most deviously engaged with Jesus
person I'd ever seen, and it was
all a repressed and perverted
claptrap. She was real tramp of
a nun and I was glad when I got
out of that one too.
-
My best moments used to come
at 6:30 in the morning, whichever
Summer that was; I guess 1960,
maybe '61. I got hooked up that
entire Summer 'serving' at the
7am morning mass. The guy who
did th Mass was the Pastor, Father
John J. Egan; a crazy Irish kind
of priest fellow. He was like on
speed; rattling through the Latin
words of the Mass ('Introibo ad
altare Dei....') in about 16 minutes
flat. Everyday, fastest path to
Salvation ever - The fleet-footed
redemption Mass,' I called.
Every weekday morning, and
Saturdays too; usually the same
7 or 8 elderly ladies, and an old
man or two. It always struck me
as a little sad, as a kid, to see those
poor, beleaguered folk, probably
facing the ends of their lives and
taking a refuge in a daily church
mass and appearance, just in case.
Like having an insurance policy
against bad fortune. Inevitable,
but bad. Boy, now, looking back,
don't I wish. The entire back story
of 'old' Avenel, all the names and
occurrences and changes that 'we'
as newcomers did with all the
new houses and schools (and
churches too), could be read in
the faces of these older folk. But,
no matter what, we held the floor,
they didn't. The physical church
may have changed (this was a
new one, around the corner
from the old Avenel Street
St. Andrew's church, which was
then eventually demolished. The
new one, pretentiously, was on
'Madison' Avenue; part of the
same gunrack of 100 lookalike
homes in rows that my own
'new' house was part of. No
one ever sped through a mass
for that - 'I go up to the
altar of God...'
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