pt. 88 - high school, emery konick

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 88)

I'd reckon it right to say I had enough friends

for one lifetime  -  back when I was young; and

mothers, and fathers too. It seemed like everyone

was on the lookout for everyone else  - mothers

watching other kids visiting, feeding them, making

sure they were Ok and got off to home on time.

Fathers would come home and see others; kids visiting

or staying over. Say hi, mingle, fool around some.

There were a couple of signals and whistles in

town, noises that ran over and sort of acted like the

old tolling bell in a town square  - of course these

bells and whistles were all different and all-factory.

Lunchtimes and breaks and shift changes for workers.

It was always pretty weird  -  the big 3pm steam pop

at Philadelphia Quartz, that was always a grand noise.

It was just some great outrush of superheated air that

hit the afternoon with a great sizzling, rushing sound

and left a ballooning white cloud. Always very

impressive. If it wasn't exactly three o'clock, it was

maybe 3:10. I forget. My history and homeroom

teacher later on at the end of Woodbridge High

School, Emery Konick, his father worked in there

for his entire working life. Emery Konick was a local

sportswriter. He wrote a column called 'Konick's

Korner' in a couple of state newspapers. Covered the

local sporting scenes  -  football and baseball mostly.

Nothing real special, just a bunch of local booster stuff

about teams and guys you'd maybe run across on their

way up to 'the Bigs' or something - that's what they called

the major leagues, back in those days when it still meant

something  -  before all the drugs and sex and booze messed

it all up. Most all of it was still white too, need I say. A

disguised racism that ran pretty late into even the 60's,

until at least everyone as one started getting blown to

smithereens in Vietnam  -  didn't matter there what color

you were  -  all the blood there, I'm told, ran red.

-

In high school, homeroom and all, I hated Emery Konick,

and he hated me. Well maybe just 'detested' is the better word.

He was a gung-ho, super-straight military type, and I was

an addled annoyance of long hair, sandals, old, dirty clothes

and in general the kind of youthful attitude that most of the

rest of the world hadn't yet caught up to, my friends included.

Oh, sure enough, they all would, but by then I was long gone.

I got to be known, in some circles, as the original Avenel freak,

the first hippie, and all that, but it wasn't really true. I still

get it from people, at gatherings and reunions and such. I just

was where my 'was' took me. I didn't much go thinking about

labels and names and adjectives. Because of that, funny thing

too, everyone I ever meet immediately assumes I am and was

a compendium of every catalogue drug and trip that there ever

was. But that's not true at all. I steered way clear, sure to want

to keep my head above me, not so much up my ass, which is

where  -  it seemed to me  -  all the drug people I ever saw

(and I lived with bunches of them) ended up having it. It's

funny  -  sometimes I just deny. Other times I just go along.

I can out-story any real drug-addict bean-pole anytime.

Anyway, it's all dirty business; always was. I hate drugs, and

I hate smoking weed too; 'ceptin as now it's just about the

most free and easy thing you can do now. I still have never 
done it. Too much baggage with that crap. You can probably

even find a cop or a councilman to smoke it with you. Things

everywhere sure have changed. This country sure has gone to

Hell, and it's funny how people now are just so proud of that.

-

When I was 8 years old, hearing those bells and whistles (there

was a great 7pm war hoop of a town whistle that went off each

evening from the firehouse. That whistle mostly ended and 

set-down our days for us), none of them made much sense.

I couldn't get the significance of the importance of the time

they signified. 7pm? So what, why do they tell you? It's always

7pm when that thing blows off. Why do you need it then to blow

off to know it's 7pm. It was an odd, kid's, circular reasoning, and

it, no matter, made more sense to me than the damned whistle

ever did  -  all these crazy adults, always having to be told things.

Emery Konick's father, I later figured, must have that stupid 3pm

steam whistle every day for 50 years. Like he worked at the

River Rouge Ford plant or something, in Michigan. Thousands 

of soggy workers, limping off to the time-clock. Tough burden.

-

Emery Konick used to throw me out of school nearly at least

once a week  -  to go get a haircut, go get proper shoes, better

clothing. I even got sent home a few times for 'too much clothing.'

How they knew that was beyond me. I pioneered the layered-look,

way before it was hip  -  mainly because January and February are

damned cold months and walking three miles or so each way to

school meant wearing some serious clothing. (Those pussy-jacked

teachers couldn't take it. One year they walked out on a 72-day

teacher's strike that got them right through the coldest commute

days). I'd have liked to have seen them walking their jerk asses to

school. Years later, when I was at St. George Press and Emery

Konick was a big-wig in the NJ Sportswriters' Association, he

and I would work closely on all the event booklets and awards

and installation programs they ran. We'd kissed and made up by

then, never much talked about which one of us was a bigger

asshole back then. Times, and things, change, I guess. Just a

truce though  -  neither one of us ever really surrendered. As

Bob Dylan later put it (on one of his luckier days) - 'I'm right

from my side, and you're right from yours.'

-

I never much cared -  one time he called me out in front of 

everyone, pointing at me and saying, using me as an example,

that 'long hair is, basically, for girls.' I felt like standing up and 

saying back to him a few choice accolades too, but my pose that
year was 'passive resistance,' following Martin Luther King and
Ghandi too. (I was a rude, nasty 'sum'bitch' when I chose to be

to be, or could be anyway). War was often run by words. That's 

how infernal high-school wars were run, back in '66. Who needed

Vietnam, for God'sake. Or God and Country's sake, or whatever

they were peddling back then. Country Joe and the Fish, it was,

'Country Joe MacDonald' puttin' it : 'One Two Three, what are

fighting for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn; next stop is

Vietnam. So it's five, six, seven, open up them pearly gates...

be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in 

a box.' Rough times everywhere, let alone the halls of some

seedy high school where no one wanted to be anyway, 

speaking of bells and whistles.
-
I guess what I was sensing, or saying, was that it was
all over, it was coming to a swift and decisive end. All
my youthful days were a'gettin' done, and done quickly.
The Science-Fiction writer, if you have to call it that, Arthur
C. Clarke, he wrote a book called 'Childhood's End.' It
came out in 1953, before my reading time, for sure. But when
I caught up to it, by Jesus, I caught up to it. I believe in all sorts 
mysteries -  the mysteries of place and being, echo and presence,
intention and desire. I know we're not alone. I know I hold my
God in the palm of my hand each time I reach for my heart, and not
my mind. I believe in lots of things. I believe I'm in every other
person's One Spirit just as much as I believe they're in mine.
And I believe in nothing much at all. And that book, let alone 
the geeks and fakers of a society  back then represented to
me by Emery Konick, was the start of my new time on Earth.
So you might say, I guess, high school was good for 
something after all.

pt. 87 - acceptance of the real

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 87)

The old heave-ho of metaphor can always

be brought back from the dead, speaking of

which, Avenel has no cemetery? In and of

itself, that has to tell you a lot about the sort

of place it is, and always has been. This is

the kind of opposite of exclusivity  -  you can

for sure get in here, easily, and, when you're

done, in fact, you can't stay. There are

plentitudes of cemeteries around and nearby;

but when you begin to hear of that little,

secluded, designation of 'place' and quality

by which people say - 'Avenel' was always

wonderful to me, like a small town of old.'

Just stand up and say back : 'Shut up, you

fool. You've got it all wrong.' A good portion

of Inman Avenue is, in fact, buried cheek by

jowl in St. Gertrude's in Colonia. Neighbors

in life are, there, also neighbors in death.

Right near to where my parents are buried

I can do a very small, sideways shuffle-walk

and run into five or six immediate neighbors

who are also buried there. But that's not Avenel.

Remember that. The identity of 'Avenel' stops

with your very last breath. So, breath deep.

In fact, in Avenel, as a dead car you've got an

excellent chance of remaining in town.

Certainly more than as a dead person.

Good joke there, somewhere.

-

Father Genecki used to tell me his line  -  he'd

go on about how his 'early morning walks' along

Avenel Street made him feel an essential part of a

small, almost New England like, village. I knew

even then it was a crock  - but I never said anything

back. I did look long and hard for, oh, say, a central

town square, a bandstand, a magistrate's office  -

anything. There wasn't. Time was when there wasn't

even a bank. You couldn't send a telegram. Well,

maybe. What I'm saying is how all the usual overblown

rhetoric that gets fed into our heads, we accept it all

when it's made up of things we simply can't prove or

disprove -  like a religion or an ideology, or something.

But as soon as it comes down to a tangible form, like

all the rest of that gibberish, we can disprove it readily,

just by looking around. So, that makes it pretty tough

for lies. I also remember, about 1964 or 64, banners

across Avenel Street, two or three anyway, proclaiming

(Woodbridge had been awarded the designation that year)

'Woodbridge, NJ - All American City.' They flew those

banners with pride, though I never knew why. It was

all part of some hocus-pocus from Lady Bird Johnson,

the President's wife, about 'beautification', as she labelled

it. No highway billboards, no unsightly slag heaps (or

junkyards) along the highway. Probably no trailer

parks and hot-sheet motels either. Oops, forget those

last two.  How in the world Woodbridge, NJ, and then

by extension and by banners, Avenel, NJ, became holders

of an 'All American City' title is beyond me. More rubbish.

There was, first off, nothing 'city' about any of it. To the

opposite : you could never NOT find a parking place here.

There were never hordes and lines of people anywhere.

So, anyway, I never knew what was up, except that all

these people were bunko artists and flim-flam men. The

reason people came here, in fact, was their 'fleeing' the

cities of old and staring here a'fresh. If anyone really had

possessed any good sense, it could have been played up

in an opposite fashion  -  forget that belabored 'city' stuff,

just present it instead as the archetypal American story

line of someone 'breaking' away, going somewhere new,

to start all over, and succeed, or not, on their own merits.

-

Another interesting thing  -  you couldn't ever find a parking

meter in Avenel. There never was one. Until McDonald's,

and all the rest of that crud, began clogging up St. George

Avenue, you couldn't really get any declared 'fast food'.

When Dunkin' Donuts, in fact, re-seeded itself in the old

Ira Rhodes gas station on the corner of Avenel Street and

Rahway Avenue, I was pretty dumbfounded. The empire of

mass-marketed foodstuffs and the national advertising 

identity that goes with it all, how about that, had landed

in Avenel. Now we've got representatives of every chain-saw,

I mean, chain-store, eatery there is. The two main boulevards

of this grand Parisian endeavor, Rt. One and St, George Ave 

(Rt. 35) are so splendiforously arrayed with all that grand 

City of Light stuff, damn! And not to mention the peculiar 

gastronomic beauties of Avenel Street would be sinful!

-

After all, I ask you, what man can live in a desert? Who is 

there among us who does not need the prod and push of 

fellow humanity surging past him? Man is not made to 

life in soulless wastelands, after all. Yes. Give me the 

town square always,

-

When a grand man takes on grand proportions, it's OK.

Everything seems fitting. But when a small person begins

wearing 'grand' proportions, it never works, it goes wrong,

isn't done right, never fits. It's like a bum drinking Grand
Marnier instead of Night Train Express. Calling Avenel  

a small town with traditional mores and observances, 

that's like calling the Avenel Park gazebo a fitting place 

for a Michelangelo sculpture, for an outdoor display

of the Pieta. Go on, give me a break. Call things what 

they are, and just learn, instead, to be comfortable in your

own skin. Humility. Pleasure. Acceptance of the real.

pt. 86 - the railroad and the river

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 86)

I was always afraid to sit down IN Mike's and

eat there  -  he had a few tables, and people 

stayed about. It was too scary for me  -  these

were insiders, so to speak, regular people who

meant their Mike's business to be 'business.' 

Not for me. I always skedaddled, got that

stuff to go. It's still like that for me anyway.

When I go into any of those Avenel 

establishments  -  pizza, sandwich, coffee, 

candy  -  not that there's that much  -  I get

to urge to not be there. Don't know to say why,

just a feeling. People look at me, yeah, but that's

OK. I realize I don't exactly look normal anymore,

but there's something more than that too. It's like they

know I know them from the inside out. And that's not

always fun, or good. Self-consciousness rears up.

It's hard to explain my position  -  as a writer-always-

outside, as some effete artistic bullshit soul that no one

really understands about  -  I always KNOW I'm not

at full-present, and it seems people can read that.

Sometimes it's like a great satisfaction passes between

us, but it can't go past that. I'm their 'moment', and that's

all. It's the same feeling from 40 years ago at Mike's,

but now there's an adult satisfaction that comes from

sharing an essence with people, even in passing, 

even in an instant. It keeps me calm, satisifed too,

but nervoous as all get-out just the same.

-

If that don't sound like some windbag sack of fly-shit, 

I don't know what does; but it's meant to be true. And 

rugged too. It's not easy stuff. The easy stuff is 

preaching on Sunday, preaching at weddings and 

funerals, going to special events and saying what 

people expect you to say. That's just riding  the wave, 

that's all. That's the storybook school-teacher or

the old town parson. That's the big, fat, happy, 

cigar-chomping Mayor Old Boy routine. That's easy. 

This is, by contrast, a 'Stranger In a Strange Land' thing, 

that sort of Robert Heinlein routine. I don't know who 

here may ever have read that book, but it's worth a look-see. 

So, go ahead. You can even come back later if you'd

like. Do something first for yourself. Start the process.

-

I go far back into my memory, and I know a few things: the 

Avenel Post Office is one. I know, historically, before the 

underpass was dug out and all that, the postal office for the

small town was at the quaintly handsome home that tripled

as the train station, the lending library, and the postal office.

Somewhere right where Abbe Lumber is today. Then when

the underpass was dug, all that was lost. The underpass

essentially killed and cut off that entire other side of business-

fronts which once had been along the old straight line of

Avenel Street, where now there's only that really lame, cold

and dank (used to be) all pissed-up underground stairway passage

beneath the tracks. All those stores are dead for a reason. The

town killed itself, killed them, when they by-passed the street

and dug the re-directed underpass. My 1954 memory says that

whenI first arrived here, the postal office was in the location

where, later, Gallo's Barber Shop was. Then it moved into that

building that later, again, became Mike's Sub Shop. Then, into

a new and larger brick quarters  -  actually quite nice, and I

remember it well from about age 14, which would be 1964, 

when my mother took me there to get started with a Social

Security card and the beginning of working papers' processes.

just down the street and next to Metro's  -  the whole mess of

which is, today, some wild form of infant and child day-care,

as is the old Stanziola Coat Factory, next to Mike's, which also,

through the 1980's was Sanford Werfel Studios, an artist, called

Sandy, who was a really nice Jewish guy with an old and long

life history of biblical art on the lower east Side, NYC, and his

wife. This guy knew some arcane shit. We became friends.

Anyway, then it was, by 1968, that the present Post Office,

that usual government-looking structure, was built and still is

in place, funtioning. So that's five post office's for Avenel, by

my reckoning. In one lifetime, that's a lot. Even if it's really 

like a lifetime and a half; you get the picture. 

-

So, you see here, the gist is that this place has gone through 

some changing, and I was afraid to sit in Mike's. Those are 

the two most relevant points. The other is that, if Avenel had

a river running through it, even in place of the train tracks,

it would have really been cool. The train tracks did the 

same purpose, but they weren't half as interesting as if it

were, or had been, a river. Tracks are all about efficiency.

You can't drift or amble, they have to run on clock-time.

Rivers can be a sleepy and lazy as a turtle on the dirt, if they

want to be, or they can rear up and become a rip-roaring

final terror. There's a real game for you. Anybody can run

a railroad. Hell, the rails do most of the work for you. After

that, it's all tickets and gravy. Rivers take time and bluster, 

and they challenge and twist. A river will rip an oar, for 

instance,  right out of your hands, and break your wrist while 

it's at it. It'll change its course, on a wet whim, where and 

whenever  -  and never take into consideration your clock

or your schedule or your boudaries or wishes either. Ain't

none of that in River-World. Ownership's for railroads.

-

Later on in  life, after I left Avenel, and after some years,

when I ended up in Elmira, New York, the house I wound up

buying there was from a lady named Jeannie Bollen. She 

was about 40, I'm guessing. Interior decorator, nice little 

business. She'd just re-hab'd the old house, made it up all 

nice and spiffy and design-oriented. Nothing we'd ever 

consider to do, but here it was, already all-done up for us. 

It had all been meant for her, but she was forced into selling, 

and we grabbed it. Really fancy stuff, for us. She'd been 

forced to sell  -  and here's where  this all ties in  -  because 

of the Chemung River. That's the river  that cuts Elmira in 

two, literally. You have the North Side, where real stuff 

happens, and the South Side, which carried a far-lesser

clientele, seedier businesses, crummier houses and poorer 

people. Not that it all mattered much in a place like that  -  

the better class would buy Three Musketeers and Hostess 

Cakes. The other class would get Snickers and Ho-Ho's 

by comparison. Not even Ring-Dings. As it went, she had 

two, pretty wild sons  -  one about 17, and one about 14. The

17 year-old one and his friend had gotton very drunk one day,

rowed out into the Chemung, to one of the little islands out

in the middle of it, and continued drinking. The friend passed 

out, stone-cold drunk. Jeannie's 17-year old son panicked.

Thinking him dead, he walked over to the little shelter they

kept on the island, for themselves, just like some wooden 

lean-to, a boy's thing  -  got the shovel, and went back and,

in that panic, buried his passed-out friend. Alive. And left;

got back in the boat, rowed back to shore, and went home.

When it all came to light, later  -  the friend was dead, the

kid admitted what had gone on, and was in jail, on trial for

manslaughter, involuntary or whatever. She needed all sorts

of money for bail and lawyers and fees and things  -  the 

house was being sold (her pride) to begin the process of

re-paying some of the money she'd arranged for in her

troubles. Just goes to show what a river can do to little

people, and big people too, I guess. If Avenel had had

a river-spine of that nature, it would have been  -  truly,

truly, Paradise for boys, and maybe girls too.

pt. 85 - security steel, and mike's

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 85)

One time a plane crashed over Brooklyn, or rather

two planes collided over Brooklyn, and debris, and

bodies I guess, fell down into the city neighborhoods

below. That was about 1960. January 10, 1961, actually.

And some of the bodies (138 people) and debris fell

into Park Slope, Brooklyn, and the rest (other plane)

fell over and into Staten island. Anyway, the time that

happened my father and I were in Mayfair Pizza on

Rahway Avenue, waiting for a pizza to be made. We

were to take it home. The television in the pizza place,

a small TV screen, perched up high over the doorway

and waiting area, had all the reports, and the reporters

and people screaming and hollering about what they

saw  -  the live shots, and all that. It was pretty scary,

and I only grasped a little of it really  -  my mind had

somehow overlooked all the tragedy stuff and had

gotten transfixed, instead, (I remember it well) on

the physics and physical characteristics of the crash

itself : two planes in motion, opposite directions to

each other, meaning of course one was coming in 

and the other was climbing out  -  two different speeds,

one accelerating and the other back-pressuring to slow

the air speed and approach a descend-for-landing speed.

They collided, each with its own forward momentum  -

some things and people landing in Staten Island, and

the others in Brooklyn  -  a few miles apart, maybe

ten, maybe twelve miles, I'd think, at the most. (I 

know, I know, 'where'd they bury the survivors'  -  

that was an old, schoolboy joke, always making the 

rounds). But the aspects of that collision that captivated

my mind surprised me, inasmuch as they were almost

'technical' matters, precise and perhaps even with a

mathematical-force component. I found myself

surprising myself with that one. Everyone else in the

place was oohing and aahing over the dead, the wrecks,

the tragedy, the unknown, talking about their Uncle

Louey or Aunt Theresa in Brooklyn, or whatever  -  all

the human and emotional component. I'd glided myself

right past that, and found myself as a technocrat, computing

arcs and angles, wondering why nothing fell in the water

between the two places  -  all that stuff. It was a momentary

weird thing that stopped me, as myself, short. I found 

myself scolding that other 'me'. I was thinking like rich people

think : facts, cause and effect, cold logic. This was not

that sort of place -  it was old work-class Woodbridge and

Avenel, where people emoted, screamed and wailed. That

was a major class difference I saw. Why was I crossing it?

-

My friend Denny Montecalvo's family owned that pizza

place  -  formally called 'Montecalvo's Mayfair Pizza'. If

memory is intact, it also had a little swim-club thing out 

back, where you could join and use the nice, olympic-type

built-in swimming pool. Very clever, captive pizza 

audience and all that. Inside, everything was weirdly 1950's.

Faux-leather, bright green seats, with rivets and designs

throughout, booths with matching backs, two or three rows

of seating, a bar area, and the pizza-serving area and ovens.

It was quite an operation, and it's still around there  -  without

the pool and the rest. Inside, I don't know. Haven't ever gone

in. Entire name-change and stuff, long time ago. Down the

road, towards Rahway there used to be another pizza place,

by the Maple Tree Tavern, called 'Snooky's' I think. That's 

long gone now too. It's as if a once-wagon-trail has, over time.

been changed over to an efficient and steady highway, with

any and all the weirdnesses just wiped away. I think when 

people worked in places, all around there, they got their 

lunches and stuff and frequented such places. Now -   years

later  -  there's no manufacturing to be found, no lunch crowds,

'no nothing', as they say, except truckers and 

stuff just passing along.

-

Speaking of which, there really was a time when Avenel had a

thrumming 'town-center' - a place of vibrancy, traffic, and

activity. At shift-change, twice a day, there'd be a cop posted

to direct traffic. The whole street would get clogged up; truck

deliveries, the Rahway Avenue entrance for the really large

ones, and the Avenel Street gatehouse for the smaller. There

was a large parking lot, filled with the swoop and swirl of 1950's

and 1960's cars. High School kids with little prospect of college,

or no interest, or better things on their minds, would take jobs 

there. The greasers and the hoods loved working there. It was

their Harvard! This was General Dynamics, previously named

Security Steel. It's all gone now  -  not so long ago obliterated

for some more of the usual yo-yo magnet condos and apartments

and assisted-rent housing which balances all the other high-end

stuff. They expect outsiders to run to it because it sits athwart

the train station. Great opportunity. For someone. It's all gone

now and just a large, leveled field right now with preparations 

starting for footings and curbs and pipes and plumbing. Only 

the lingering ghosts of what I remember still keeps it in place 

for me. It'll never die. It afforded this rat's ass of a place a 

reason for being. It actually added something to the general 

ambiance of where we lived. No one even ever really 'knew' 

what they made.  No one cared either. They made paychecks. 

Paychecks with free parking to boot. If General Dynamics 

didn't take you in, the Avenel kids always had the GM Plant 

out on Rt. One, just a few miles up, in Linden. Thousands 

worked there, and happily too. Just before them, the chemical 

plant at Merck. There were plenty of jobs  -  and bars and 

sandwich places too. Right outside General Dynamics, right 

across from the main entry gate almost  -  perfect for  the 

lunchtimes and the breaks of the workers, was Mike's Subs.

General Dynamics made electronic tracking systems, or 

something, for submarines  -  but 'Mike's' made the subs.

Sandwiches, that is. He'd have a constant stream a line, in

fact  -  a moving, slow squib of people, moving along to 

get their 'No. 1', or 'No 2' or whatever, He never caught up 

to that stupid modern gimmick of 'naming' sandwiches  -  

the 'Avenel', the 'Hiram' or anything stupid like that. It was

just by number. People ate these things voraciously. I think

this Mike guy was just a Woodbridge High visionary who

saw no future anywhere for himself but in slinging salami

and finding the perfect location. He'd gotten it. He must have

made plenty of money when it was all rolling in. Mike was no 
dummy either. He knew how to draw a crowd. He'd hire a lot
 of the nicest looking local high school girls you could find, or
girls who had just recently graduated or were in some local 
college-type schooling. Anything to get the factory workers 
piled up. Pleasant atmosphere and all that.  Besides the

people always in line, he'd get the smokers and coffee guys on

factory break or lunch, out front, eating, smoking, talking. There

was a bar next door  -  the Roxbury, I think it was then  -  and in

there was the more hardened crowd. The after-work boozers.

Different crowd, more sinewy and weathered, maybe battered

and mean and morose too. Shot and a beer punchdrunks. But I

bet they ate Mike's sandwiches too. General Dynamics afforded

Avenel a vibrant center, of whichever nature it may have been. 

Factory towns -  the large ones, like Lowell, Mass, or Paterson, 

NJ, or even Binghamton, NY, when they lose their industrial

base, things go sour. Look at Detroit for the real extreme. 

Disaster looms. Avenel, while it had General Dynamics, was

able to hold onto some quaint mysteriousness of it own lease

on some errant but tangible reality  -  people coming together,

to labor and to make something together -  and get paid for it,

pleasantly, without all that grief and turmoil and labor-strife.

It lasted a good while, and while it lasted it was good.

Soon to be  -  another collision, this one of cultures, 

and that would begin changing everything.