RUDIMENTS, pt. 389
(a story of nyc to avenel, pt.2)
Sometimes there are better
things than just better times;
if you sit around waiting for
them to come they never show
up anyway. It's as if, say, you're
a major-league pitcher, a fireballer
or a short-relief guy. The situations
are set up; you need to come in,
be precise, and just keep heaving
the stuff, letting them know you
always have more where that
came from. I don't know, is that
intimidation? Is that how one
should operate? I never knew,
but then again one should always
be mindful of firepower greater
than your own. It's out there.
-
I never much 'liked' Bayonne, times
I'd go back. It never seemed set up
correctly. I'd return, in later years,
trying to make some sense; I'd
visit an uncle there who'd had a
dry cleaning business for years.
He knew all the spots, and we'd
drive around in his Crown Vic and
he'd go from here to here, just rattling
off what everything had been, not
so much what it was now. He knew
all that too, but that wasn't class.
That was 'business.' He didn't much
want to be talking about the same
people whose clothes he'd be
pressing or cleaning. I could
understand that - a man needs a
pride or dignity to keep to himself,
as much as any loudmouth needs
an audience. It works out.
-
I guess my parents blew out of
Bayonne on their last-chance of
a whim. My father had left Bayonne
High School, at 16, to join the
wartime Navy. They didn't ask
any questions, I guess. Bayonne
was a real big Navy town - there
were the marine terminals, and the
Navy Yard itself. I don't know how
things were during the war, but I
guess it was humming - except in
joining the Navy you just get
shipped out, not put there, so it
couldn't have much mattered. It
wasn't as if he'd be staying. He
took a train to a troop ship or
something, out to San Francisco
and then the South Pacific. His ship
was amidst all the action there,
Solomon Islands, Okinawa, all
that, but he was on a supply ship,
in all the action but not 'of' it.
He was a gunnery captain, of
the 6 or 8 double-gun rigs they
had, when they had to fire back.
His other job was sewing up the
dead bodies into canvas burial
bags for burial at sea. For this
task he used large, curved and
heavy-duty sewing needles. It was
at that time that the 16-year old
high school dropout deigned to
later become an upholsterer.
Thus, a life.
-
To me, a lot of this constant
storm-cloud stuff imparted one
central message about living :
Never let up. Keep punching,
keep throwing hard, all you've
got. That's one necessity to get
through troubles. When my father
got to Avenel, I think he was still
in the grip of all that. A really
stern animosity had disciplined
him, honed as he was to the very
low-points of experience; never
the finer points, which he detested
anyway. Whatever you are, or
have become, it's that which you
drag around with you, no matter
where you go or end up. Somewhat
akin to the obvious and tedious
message of the film 'Citizen Kane,'
with its embroilment of 'Rosebud'
and the 'sled' as guiding motif;
and a second cousin to the
'Madeleine' of Proust. All of
that eventually engulfs, and you
become known then by your
composite qualities. Frugal.
Mean. Always angry. Generous.
Faultless. You can't be all those
things, and they can't really
conflict either. So, pick one
and run. When I was a little
kid, the strongest person in the
world to me was my father.
His upper arms were as thick
as trees - no weights or
regimen, so I'm not sure how
it happened, but it did and maybe
lifting and hauling furniture all
day did it. He dug out our basement
entryway doors by hand. I can
remember it well, about 1955 -
a 10-foot square, down and
to the corners, into which he
then laid cinder-blocks and a
steel cellar entrance and doorway,
bolted and secured in place. All
by himself, over the nights' and
weekends' course of a Summer.
It was freaking amazing, and
all I did, almost for the rest of
my days (still running, I hope)
was reflect on that crazy feat
of driven manhood. I viewed it
as bizarre. To him it was living.
Maybe that's how the furies came
out for him, all that seething and
anger - sort of like writing, for
me. Life's got too many corridors;
man, I can't walk them all.
-
My father found Avenel to be
congenial enough for all his
quirky madnesses. In the early
years he stayed busy with what
were then called basic 'home
improvements,' which back
then basically meant doing by
hand and gumption what you'd
never even think of hiring a
'contractor' to do. He probably
did it better anyway - a finished,
5 room and a bath upstairs, a
cedar closet, fully lined (I never
understood that one. It preserved
clothes from moths and bugs.
What clothes were ever that
precious, in that house, is beyond
me). The topper was the project
he undertook to square the entire
front area of the yard with a
hand-made, and I mean completely
hand-made, wooden picket fence :
Walkway gate, double-driveway gate,
posts and multi-level caps in each
post, full array of pickets, all with
exact and proper spacing, plus the
digging of all the post-holes and the
concrete-setting of each one. That
fence could withstand Auntie Em's
Oz-bound cyclone five times over,
and good-bye Dorothy too. The guy
never stopped - he had vices, routers,
saws (Henry Diston only - who, by
the way, []Mr. Diston, is buried in a
pretty grand Philadelphia mausoleum
you really ought to see), chains, drills
and everything needed to erect Fort
Knox probably too. How he ever
landed in Avenel still baffles me. He
could have, really, been a gift to the
needy but the needy didn't realize they
needed a gift. The whole world in
that town was happy - not in
knowing what they had, but just
for the having of it. The nuclear
promised-land in one fell swoop.
(Or as my old buddy Pete Melton
used to say, 'one swell foop').
-
Really, I never ever have met another
man in my life who'd care which
brand of a saw he used. Cutting is
utility, so just cut - but not for
Dad; it was a big issue with him.
Another one of my life's usual
imponderables. I managed...but
nothing ever came easy. Painting
that damned fence was a chore - and
one I was never sure if he'd foreseen;
the most annoying thing in the world.
Ten thousand pickets, all sides and
bevels, posts, caps and gates, over
and over with damned white paint.
By the time we'd get done the whole
other end, after but a few months of
respite, needed freshening again.
I figure now that's how white, plastic
fencing got started and aluminum and
then plastic siding too. People just
got sick of maintenance. You can
tell too, by the way those items always
start, soon enough, dulling with the
green mold and crap that develops.
Mostly left alone.
-
My father was dead by 1999, and he
never got to see the techno-world in
any way - so I don't really know what
he'd have made of it. He hated small
things, fussy things - so I'm sure the
whole idea of those little phones and
keys and the way people constantly
pester themselves over that, as well
as laptops and all the rest of hand-helds
and computers, would have angered him.
Everything did, except for those things
he could control.
-
I've found that when you start going
around thinking you can control things,
you end up in situations where you're
always busy trying to 'establish'
controls, and people start hating
you for it. By the end of his life, I
think that's the boxed little corner
he'd backed himself into. Wasn't
sly or crafty enough, either, to
both realize that AND determine
a way out, or a means of a way out.
Too. I started with a baseball
metaphor here, so I'll finish with
one : Losing popularity, as it is,
baseball wanes because it's thought
of now as plodding, slow, and
mechanical. Filled with, as it is,
'controls.' But still, no matter, the
actual ends can never be determined,
because something, whatever it is,
always breaks out, for surprise
endings, or wins, or triple plays
or home runs or diving catches or
bobbled balls. Just can't tell.
