RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,053
(the man in the blue coat)
The guy with the blue coat said he
was going to send me something
but I always knew him to be a liar
so I never expected much and
he'd once told me he lived 'by
the water with the blue spruce
on the shoreline' and that
sounded too pat for me to
believe for I knew him to live
adjacent to the canal where
all the junk lumber had been
dumped and where people
dropped off washers and
bicycles and other crap
they didn't want and if he
thought that was any sort
of paradisaical existence for
anyone he was surely nuts.
In addition, I knew he drove
a bus for the MTA. That was
the sort of job people took for
the benefits. It made all the
abuse worthwhile - big salary,
medical coverage, benefits and
perks, union representation, 20
years and out, with some big
pension always rolling in. I
saw right through a lot of the
blowhard stuff that he said.
-
Gun Hill Road, (cool name) ran
up to the Bronx, or along it, and
it took you past Woodlawn Cemetery
and a lot of municipal stuff too - the
truck garages and snow plows and
storage sheds. Plus, a lot of it was
barren and open, or railroad sidings.
It got pretty grimy, and in the 1970's
was a good murder-depot too. Dumping
bodies, or heaving guys out from
the trunk of the car they been taken
there in all dazed and bloodied after
getting a severe beating. I used to get
a kick out of all that. Out in the rural
countryside people walk rock deposits
and country lanes to find or look for
the surprise of fossil-rocks or old tools
and implements and things. Up along
Gun Hill Road, most people were too
afraid to walk but those that did could
usually be surprised by finding a few
fingers or even an arm or leg. Let
alone a whole body. Live and let live
never worked there much.
-
The old tan-stucco boarding house
was still standing but ready to fall in,
and it had been vacant except for him
for at least thirty years. It once held
the canal workers who hauled the
cargo which passed through from
Philadelphia to Manhattan or
wherever that stuff ended up and
it all went in either direction anyway.
All that was gone now and the locals,
if they knew anything, knew nothing
about the old canal. The few houses
huddled the shore, and lots of trees,
long ago grown in, covered the areas
where the tow-lines used to be. Those
areas once had to be bare and open,
so the barges could be pulled by
the horses or mules along the shore.
But, no more of that. Motors had
changed everything, long ago, and
people had just grown dumb.
-
This guy said he'd moved here about
12 or 15 years ago, and it was, though
dreary, an easy enough daily commute,
four days a week, along 287 and 440,
to Staten Island and then across to
wherever he needed to be for the
bus depot. To me it all sounded like
a massive pain in the butt and a
heck of a commute. A real heck.
Let alone being in another state
too (NJ). He said any number of
drivers did it, and once when I
mentioned Avenel, he told me of
two other MTA drivers much like
him, who lived and commuted
from their little trailers in Hiram's
Trailer Court, just up the end
of the block I'd grown up on. It
was right on Rt. One, he said,
and all they pretty much had
to do was fall out of bed and
run right up to the Holland
Tunnel to get started. I said,
'Yeah, I'll confirm that. I grew
up right there.' Funny world,
we decided, filled with lots of
coincidences. Then we got to
chuckling over some Seinfield
episode where some woman
was arguing with Elaine about
coincidences. Elaine had called
something a 'big coincidence,'
and this haughty Russian lady
or somesuch, got all uppity
and angry over that, declaiming
'There are no BIG coincidences!
Something is just a coincidence
or not. There are no big coincidences
or little coincidences.' She got
so mad that she told Elaine to
shut up or she'd put her cigarette
out in Elaine's face! (She was
some sort of East European writer
too, who had delivered to Elaine
her manuscript for proofing and
editing. As soon as she was out of
sight and had exited the elevator,
Elaine dumped the whole thing
in the trash and fumed off). It
was all pretty funny.
-
He said no matter, he liked it
there, living at the canal as he
did, and the only neighbors
he had were the squirrels, rats,
or rodents that the ground
attracted. Not too far away there
was a graveyard too, where many
of the locals and old-timers had
been buried, a lot of them having
been diggers of the canal itself,
back in the 1830's era, and others
were Gatemen or Lock Keepers,
employed by the Canal, and
given cottage housing too. Where
he was now. He said he'd learned
the these local, rural burials were
once a lot more complicated and
much different in mourning, and
more serious than what we do today -
which is pretty much a ritual, yeah,
but a sales ritual really, with the
'unceremonious' dumping of
bodies, all cleaned out and now
heavily embalmed, into expensive
and useless coffins, and then into
vaults of concrete first, underground.
All for the expense, since it too
had become a business. Then he
said that if you go over to these
old grave-sites, it was just bones
in a wood-box, the dried and old
remains of the deceased. No
real preservation going on at
all, just the dead. The way it
should be. He called it the
'slimy' graveyard. I had a friend
once who always claimed that,
as we drove past the local cemetery
hereabouts (Colonia, 1980), he
could sense it by smell, that the
graves and the St. Gertrude's
Burial Grounds emitted their own
odor. I'd tell him he was full of it;
the bodies were so sealed and
embalmed, cleaned and drained,
and sealed up too in two levels of
'security' that even if they were
decaying and rotting (I guessed
they were?), no smells ever reached
the outside world. Of course, it was
always just a guess. Maybe he was
right, but I never smelled a thing.
I never knew though why this MTA
guy called it a 'slimy' graveyard,
the one by him, over at the canal.
I never smelled anything there, except
sometimes the murk of the water.
There were some old and tottering
stones, weathers, and some now
bare and unreadable too, from the
early 1800's, then the some of the
latest ones the newest or the most
recent anyway - cut from a different
stone entirely and bereft of anything
cool to say - all the etchings of the
latest ones being nothing but boring
dates and names and such while the
old ones with their cherubs and willow
trees and angels adorning names and
dates often too were held in groups
with interesting sayings and slogans
and epitaphs that were fun to read.
But, "you're supposed to be sad in a
graveyard not happy" was what he
said to me when I mentioned this
to him, and now there's nothing
there anyway except for some stupid
farmer who has hours on Saturdays
from 10AM to 4PM when he sells
'small dogs and puppies' whatever
that exactly means - and I always
wanted to get there and see for myself
and maybe get a dog or a small dog
at least or a puppy if they're not the
same thing, but his sign was always
confusing to me and it never
mentioned price so I never went
- dogs being quite plentiful it
seemed anywhere else you could
look, and I'd rather they were free
anyway (that's a double meaning
too FREE for me - as it were -
and free for themselves, to
wander, to roam, and to run
around unfettered). But the
guy with the blue coat played
the harmonica too and the
dulcimer or zither or one
of those old instruments
that no one understands
anymore and I'd see him
sometimes a little farther
off at the edge of the parkland
by the water-bridge playing
some soulful sad tune to himself
- since no one else was ever around
- and I'd figure right then that
LIAR OR NOT he really was
probably right about the graveyard.
