POST-OPS SEVEN
I got to my 'Aerie' on the eighth floor, and loved it. I even loved calling it that. (An 'aerie' is an elevated eagle's nest. The national Government protects them, and the great comeback of eagles is the result). I grant you, it was a hospital room, and if I close my eyes I mostly can recreate everything about it. I'd absorbed everything about it, and I'm just going to ramble on, abstractedly, about where I was, about Scranton and my personal history, and about the 50 years which have intervened since Kathy and I and our infant son Jay first passed by here. In 1971, our first passage here, actually mine, alone, was in scouting around in Bradford County, some 70 miles yet west of Scranton. I weas alone in a 1962 VW Beetle. It was to be my scouting car for these missions, and I'd bought it from some genial fellow in Rahway, NJ, and his girlfriend, for 800 bucks. That was a ton of money for me and this car, therefore, was considered by me posh and magnificent. Yes, you may laugh. American car people never did get the VW idea - air cooled, horizontally opposed 4 cyl., easy-access for repairs and removal, and even for replacing engines. They were plentiful, seemingly everywhere. The stopping power of the brakes, and the spindly and cheesy feel of the pedals did not build confidence. The accelerator quickly went to the floor and could bring you to 70mph+ in a useful enough time. The heat sucked (I found out only later). But, anyway, I loved it. It was Winter when I set out. No ideas of moving yet, just scouting missions for somewhere to hideout. I used to take old Route Six, straight across PA, from Milford. Back then Route 6 was simple, plain, and direct, as much of it still is although now there are bypasses and larger roadways flipping and flopping over, and past, things. Along the way were farmlands, barns, farm animal, and tractors. It's a lot the same now, yes, but the incessant creep of American business had taken its toll - gasoline and convenience stores, liquor stores, eateries all now dot the places where
before there was little of that. Along the way to Scranton, one passed Hawley, Honesdale, Carbondale, and oddball places like Jermyn, and Archbald. There were road markers too, for weird things - the first
'First Aid' operation and organization, silk mills, factories, and even baseball fields where those later famous played (Christy Mathewson). Lots of things abounded, and danger too - a car breakdown could cause great hardship - in the days before cellphones and relays for AAA and all that rather 'adult' motoring stuff. Approaching Scranton and area, one weird thing I noticed, very scary t night too, weas how all the roadways had weird names. I never got to the bottom of his, but it's all still the same. Of course, Rt. 6 was know as Grand Army Of the Republic Highway - in honor of the Union victory, and for Lincoln too. Every roadway had a weird secondary naming, and they all sounded distant and far away, and I couldn't figure any of it out : Oregon Turnpike; Texas-Palmyra Highway; Wyoming County; and Wyoming County Conservation District, and other things. See all that stuff zooming by, in weak headlights at11pm on the far-way to somewhere else, was disconcerting. Where the hell was I? I was running solo, remember, with no rider, no reference, and no helper if things got bad. They always did, but somehow I managed always to find help - a fried battery, a brake fluid reservoir leak, etc. I was in a small, cash, universe, and all I could do was represent myself to others in goodwill and faith, for their help. Car-shops, gas stations, and auto parts stores were always OK, after some first ridicule about 'what the hell was I driving!' stuff. For some reason too, out in those wilds, people called it a 'punch buggy' - not a Volkswagen, nor a VW. I skipped a lot of eateries and meals, just to not have to be asked a hundred inane country-questions about my 'Ve-Hic-el'. It was all as strange to them as it was for me to be in Pennsylvania and see signs for Wyoming, Texas, or Palmyra (some early Mormon place out this way, I think?).
My hospital room, amazingly, and some 50 years on, had a floor to ceiling, massive window, which opened out for in the vistas of all these things I somehow remembered. Both night, and day. If you can picture, perhaps, what I'm describing, from eight floors up, it's a strange sight to be looking out from a tall building into a distance which is, once you get past the straight-down aspects of city and urban, nothing but the raw land and cuts and fissures of a rural landscape. Scranton is essentially, for miles in all directions, a huge bowl in the ground, as if the hold from a massive meteor hit or some weird cosmic or astronomical event. Its early American factors were the massive and useful coal-seams, and the iron-ore opportunities for foundries and the like. This led to railroads, and cartage, over and around all these hills and valleys. It's a staid and very old place, with a lot of its own mysteries and plenty of weird graces too. There are homes and settlements, small towns with the odd names I've mentioned (more than I've mentioned, for sure). One of the things that's been done now, which was NOT there in my old days, was that they've built a bypass, named after some Congressman, Bob McDade Expressway, or some crap, that will allow you to freely pass, at 80mph if you choose, right around Scranton, zooming by all that old glory as if you'd not a care in the world. Which is foolish, unless you're truly in a hurry to get to my hospital (just off this roadway, at Moosic), or catch Rt. 81, or get up to Binghamton, or Rt. 380/ n-s. Plenty of choices abound, but the cool thing about it is that the off-ramp exists to avoid all this expressway-speedball carp and still take old Rt. 6 - which I remember well - and see all the old buildings and fearsome relics from those older days. It's a true pleasure if one has the time. Carbondale, and the entire row of small places that bring you to smaller highways and lower-grade neighborhoods and small towns.
As I gazed out at all this daily, it all came flooding back to me like a glorious sunlit dream - both of the suddenly restorative idea that I'd perhaps survived this horrible operation, and maybe had some life left in me, and the idea that 'where' I was held some special meaning for me, from way back when. It was both significant and eerie, as if I'd crawled up from a dark hole, and was finally reaching out! There are anthracite museums, coal-mining museums, railroad stuff, and Steamtown and the old Iron Furnaces and their holes in the ground - up and down the lines here, from Scranton to Pittstown to Wilkes barre itself. How cosmic or magical is all this? An ancient and still present Being of time and place. I've always loved ruins and old things, broken structures and the haphazard runarounds of America's past; this here is like a history sandwich, packed with meat and vitals. Most people are hungry, and they don't even know it.
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