230. BLUE FOREVER
As a youngster, there are
many phrases heard that
perplex. I didn't always
know precisely what
people were speaking
of. One day, in the
hallway of School 5,
probably first grade
for me, when bending
over to get a drink of
water from the kid's
fountain, there was
very little water
pressure, The little
splurt of water hardly
cleared the spray nozzle
piece it flowed up from.
I said something
about it, and Mr.
Cigatura, the janitor
I've mentioned, just
chuckled, and said ,
'Oh, Blue Monday, I
guess.' I honestly had
no clue what he meant.
I asked, saying
perhaps, 'what?' -
or - 'I don't understand.'
He replied, in order to
clear it for me, something
of the nature that the
phrase 'Blue Monday'
(1956, anyway), meant
that, 'being Monday, the
water-pressure was low
everywhere because all
the housewives were at
home doing the laundry,
all at once, and it drew
down the water-pressure
everywhere; and it was
'Blue' because it was
considered a dreary
chore that no one
really wished to be
doing.' That was all
very odd to me. I took
it at face value, yes,
but it kind of hung in
my mind anyway. A
'blue' Monday, because
of doing the wash. A
chore. What a strange
world, and how odd
that people get themselves
all jumbled up into these
situations. It was also a
revelation of sorts, in
that as a kid who ever
wonders about where
the water comes from?
Who ever would have
figured that a bunch of
people, doing the same
things at the same time,
could affect water
pressure? How odd,
all that. By this I was
stumbled frontward
into another weird
world. Mothers, and
water, and laundry.
-
School 5 was new then,
probably three years in.
It was a long, single level,
job, as schools were then;
all looked the same. Now,
if they're still around,
they're usually outmoded,
or considered wasteful.
One or two, in fact,
I've seen 're-purposed'
and rebuilt, after being
closed and sold, into
seniors housing projects
and uses of that nature.
probably just as useless,
but with better water
pressure on Mondays.
Adjoining it was School 4,
which used to serve all - a
large, multi-floored, older,
1910-styled school. Still
standing too, and in use.
I guess one day Mr.
Cigatura had one school
building to take care of,
and the the next day, two.
I wondered how that
went down. It's funny,
but on that corner where
the new school was built,
and across from it too,
where there was a
newly-constructed
hardware and lumber
store, there seemed
no memory of the past.
I always figured school
was about the past -
all that history and
lessons and the learning
that came from things.
This must have all, until
recently, been scrap woods,
or some cruddy excess
weedy land, or whatever.
Yet, there was no one
ever around who
remembered a thing
of it. Everyone acted
as if it all had always
been that way. I knew it
hadn't, and I was just a
silly kid. Why wasn't there
anyone around who could
own up to any of this and
speak up for the past and for
all that gone away or been
taken away. I thought, especially
in a school situation, there
should always have been
someone kept on, someone
always around, who could
talk for the past - the real
past, like what's right outside
the window past. Not that
stupid King Arthur stuff, or
Mesopotamia or the crusades
or any of that crap. That was,
to me, just all illusion and
stage-set. The real world,
right over there, beckoned.
What had it all been? And
who had done all this to it?
And why? Those were kid
questions, of the sort I had.
But I never had anyone to
talk to, really. That's the stuff
kids want to know though,
that's the real world that
slaps you up. And that
ignorance is how the
same sorts of things
recur, continue to happen
under new and better
regimes, until the whole
place is messed up and
spoiled for everyone else.
While some shell-game
mongrels get to run off
to the bank with yet some
more filthy lucre, stolen
from the commonweal for
parking lots, buildings
and pavement and roads.
It never ends. Blue forever.
