pt. 147 - harry halpern

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 147)

Theatricality and ovation. Emotionalism and

vulnerability. Those sorts of things, and their

being opposites of a sort, always projected

themselves into my field of viewing. Sometimes

I didn't stop to explain myself. Sometimes I was

pretty madly vile. There was a guy I knew, from

working at NJ Appellate Printing, Harry Halpern.

He was one of the richest landowners in Woodbridge

and held lots of properties and holdings, collecting

rents from everyone. He looked like a bum and walked

the town as if lost in space and without a care. He had a

large, estate-type house, set back and hidden by hedges,

on upper Main Street, Woodbridge. It's been long ago

cleared and the house 'erased', just gone. Nothing left

but a big empty, gravelly lot with sometimes a few

trucks on it; right near to it there's an abortion clinic

and each day there are two or three protesters, with

placards and large photos of babies and things, with

crosses and rosaries, standing out front to challenge

or otherwise harass in their own way anyone who is

arriving or departing. The protesters are kept, in a steady

stream, supplied by the Knights of Columbus Hall just

down the street, across from St. James Church. I always

have to laugh because that's about the very spot I'd

always be seeing Harry starting or stopping one of

his jaunts, in the late 1960's anyway. He was a short,

strongly-built guy, always in gray khakis, like a

workman's uniform. He never spoke much, or well.

I was always intrigued when I heard of his wealth

and riches, told to me by others, and watched carefully

to see how he acted or what his routines were. They

never appeared any different from anyone, though I

could never really figure him out. I always wanted to get

inside of his head, ask a million questions, find out what

he knew and felt about the Woodbridge he was transforming.

This was the beginning of the 'garden apartment' era, and

those hideous and dumb-looking brick outlays were cropping

up everywhere in what used to be fields and meadows. I

always wanted to know where Harry's education was from,

whether or not he had come up through the Woodbridge

system, with an engrained sense of place and feel for the

town itself, or if it was just another business opportunity

for him. Nothing important, just rather the sorts of thing

I used to think about. I myself had somehow grown an

attachment, whether emotional or intellectual, to that sort

of information. We were, after all, living 'somewhere', and

that somewhere had to have a story and a history to it.

I had another friend, in New Brunswick; she was a graphic

artist, about ten years, maybe, older than me. Her name

was Joanne Mannion and she came from old-line New

Brunswick stock, somehow, and would always tell me

stories and histories, through her family, of old 'port'

New Brunswick, when the waterfront was vivid and active,

stevedores and river pilots and boiler men stalked around,

piles of freight and cargo, boat traffic and drayage people

everywhere. She was way down on that which had befallen

New Brunswick, cursing the town and its people, and by

extension all of current 'America' and its standards and

practices. She had a heart for all that had gone away,

and she somehow sensed I did too. It was one of the

few times I felt that someone was on the track to

understanding a little bit of the way I thought about

things. The funny thing, too  -  let me go back a moment  -

was to see how this Harry Halpern guy gave no care to

being starched or stiff, like any of the rich or historic

characters a place like Woodbridge would puff itself

up about. Here was a regular kingpin of the town, an

invisible real-estate mogul, raking it in, and I could

somehow never envision him getting puffy or important

about himself  - suits and ties and all those dinners and

club-talks those sorts of town guy bigwigs were always

involved with. He really knew how to pull it off. An

interesting and funny corollary to all this, in my own life,

which pretty much exemplifies what I'm saying, was when

I was at St. George Press, just about the year 1990, and

ready to leave, just feeling cramped and constrained too

much  -  all over again  -  by the business world and all the

crap that went with it. I'd begun skimping on haircuts, getting

seedy-looking again, not much caring, and the owner, Bob

took me aside, finally, one day, and told me to straighten up,

look right, 'because the town fathers come in here often. You

know that.' (We did a lot of municipal printing and we'd get

the Mayor and Council people and big business types and

Kiwanis Club sorts, and all the rest). His point was that they

were important enough that I should appear reserved and

proper to them. Oh boy, did I have to laugh at that. (I was

gone about a month later). He actually called them 'town

fathers', like some landed colonial gentry or something. These

were guys whose idea of a grand time was a scrambled-eggs

breakfast meeting, a golf-outing, and maybe a local Colonia

Country Club soiree and dance with their wives or brooding

other. Being a 'Town Father' was the last thing on their minds

and they wouldn't really have had a clue as to what that meant

anyway. All they really cared about was making a buck, and

from what I saw all that meant to them was 'expansion'; growing

the business base of Woodbridge Township  -  more business,

roads, factories, warehouses, housing units, shopping centers

and parking lots. The complete opposite of a town 'father, for

sure. More like 'Town Despoilers.' The whole thing had

become a bad joke. Yet I had to 'look good.'

-

Places seem to, eventually, just become either ghosts of

themselves or parodies of themselves. Cities begin to

deteriorate and crumble, the 'right' people move out

(meaning the 'money') and the crumbs are left to the

next strand of arrivals, always lesser in standing and

money than the previous, and they let things slide a

little more, and then they leave as they grow out. That's

how suburbs begin, spread and fan themselves out. All

the big-time writers who write about the places they lived

or grew up through, and which are no more, they all write

about things like that. The dilution of place and value.

It's like an old-time American saga wherever you go.

The rise and the fall of the places that were; and it's a kind

of a gift for the writer too, because he can mine that raw

material and spin it in any manner he or she then chooses.

That's called interpretation. I don't really know that Avenel,

using my own for instance, has ever had such a treatment, but

here I am, trying at giving it one  -  it's a sort of structural

abyss around and into which I've woven the DNA strands of

the place I called 'home' in the way that I lived it, or thought

it anyhow. But it's more difficult and awkward here, because
in reality 'Avenel' had only the most rudimentary previous
history. It was really nothing ever more than an out-reach
settlement along a highway that kept expanding, and it sort
of wound up being providentially placed near to where at
least six of these big-time, commercial roadways, met and
crossed. A 'hub' as it were -  not so much for people at all,
which is where the legacy and history would have come from,
but for business and commercial interests. The complete
opposite of any sense of goodness and place; just instead the
'locus' of a rapacious, steady, and greedy growth where
'good' things were steadily eroded and taken away, and
only the most mediocre, fouled, congested and transient
things somehow always remained. 'Town fathers' indeed.

pt. 146 - cozy corner

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 146)

Funny how things are : Avenel was always pretty

rigidly drawn  -  a person knew where each road

went and to what it connected. It was secure in that

factor, not much room to doubt, except for the

occasioned rough areas, not yet fully developed,

or anything on the east slope, the swamps, which

ran down to Carteret and the rest. They were always

unknown. Mysterious, haphazard. The mystery to me

was always how, in all other effects, that was all forgot.

Mysteries are always crooked and hazy to behold, but

the rest of the world seems to always want clarity.

The schools taught linear thinking. I always disliked

linear thinking; the sort of scientific thought in which

the basic sequence of things '- a - b - c -' is always thought

to bring forth 'd'. While that may well be, by their code,

it was never anything I could find belief in. My world

was different, and I knew that, most certainly, between

'c' and 'd' there were myriad other possible outcomes, and

letter factors we haven't even imagined or known about

yet. You see, in reality (what a stupid concept) that's

what Science's job is, and the goons don't even know it.

They keep 'discovering' new concepts about things, and

get flabbergasted when they stumble upon elasticities of

time and the fluidities of objects and states of being. It's

like sending a nine-year old out to do the task of a brawny

lumberjack  -  simply not up to the task. 

-

In Avenel, land of straight streets and straight houses, the

mystery factor was encompassed most simply by 'Cozy

Corner.'  In Science there's something called a 'Singularity',

now; a time when creativity and intelligence will burst forth

and create new things. I always misunderstood that, wrongly,

to mean something that was 'one-off', unique. It's still a

quarrel in my mind, because I can't quite understand where

they're going with that one (it seems so unscientific in

concept), but Cozy Corner, let's then just say, encompassed

something, and always did. 'Singularity' didn't exist, 

except maybe conceptually, back in the 50's, but the 

concept was there in the ethos. Cozy Corner wasn't really

a corner at all, and I could never figure it out, it seemed to

start and end by itself, turning back in on its own space.

I always figured it could be called 'Crazy Corner' and better

define itself. It was most certainly Avenel's prime anomaly.

It was a huge, slow curve  -  not really a 'corner' at all. It 

almost seemed to have its own 'time', a different element of

density or thickness of things. It was also funny, to me, in

that it seemed the 'place' for hot-rodders and all the car 

guys to live, just right. But they all seemed to live in he

Fifth Avenue area, out behind Murray and Martha's. Or

maybe the Cozy Corner crowd had heir own place, like

Charlie's Sweet Shop or Dirty John's. I never knew. Funny

too, how Dirty John's today is, instead, some cloth-napkin,

Italian Restaurant, and has been for years, thriving. Called

Dominic's. I know the owner guy, we started him out in 

business, in fact, some time like 1982  -  printing all his

needed materials and menus and changes and gift cards

and the whole shebang back at St. George Press. He says

'This restaurant has been very good to me', now, and he 

does real well. Even the square back room where John's 

had all the pool table areas is now in use as his rentable

banquet space. Funny how things turn out  -  all these

squibblers in there, chomping down their veal scallopini

and pasta dishes and chocolate desserts have no clue.

Jo-Jo De Marino, and Vince Martino -  two local political

hacks  -  they know about all of that, but not many others. 

Those two guys are in there at least once a week to 'dine'.

Can you imagine people 'dining' in Avenel, land of beer

and baloney sandwiches and pickles in wax bags? Funny.

My seminary friend David Shershen used to live right next

door, where it's all condos now, and his father  -  for years  -

had Shersen's Barber Shop. Everyone on that side of town

frequented Shersen's for their haircuts. They all moved  -

the Shersens  -  to New Hampshire long ago. But anyway.

in looking for the twists and turns of reality, Cozy Corner

always embodied a particular form of strangeness for me.

Certainly a break-out from the usual Avenel linear rigidness.

It must have had something to do with just a parcel of

excess land the developer found left over and decided to

cover with homes, or, more likely even, it had to do with 

water.

-

There's an entire underground concept of water that we 

don't ever know about. The world of progress and civilization,

in fact, used to orient itself by water, nothing else  -  maybe

water and paths through the woods. Like we use highways

and interstates now to connect places and map things, the

original concourse of travel, trade and commerce, obviously

had always and at first and for the longest time, been water.

The section of Avenel that began and was tucked down under

Cozy Corner was water  -  swamp, bracken, and riverway. 

Every so often, a furious storm comes through and re-awakens 

everything  -  the watery torrent returns, and people even die

there -   like Alvin Williams and those two kids he was trying 

to rescue. (He was a Woodbridge cop, back about 1982, who,

 along with the two kids, gut sucked into the raging water 

funnel while he was trying to rescue them, and they all died. 

He's now honored here and there around town with parks 

and namesake plaques. Anyway, once men began to

understand and learn how land could be drained and water

could be led into underground sluice pipes and causeways,

all that original geography began to change and nothing was

ever the same  -  mostly thanks to Henry Ford and those

motorhead geeks who transformed the nation with cars and

roadways  -  no looking back, no regrets. (I never even 

understood who of those guys would eve understand to

invent 'rear-view mirrors'; it's a concept completely foreign

to them). It's hard for us to imagine now how things were

because so meticulously transformed everything and

gotten away from any semblance of the original concept.

Try to consider new Brunswick, if you will, as a bustling

and important inland port, with schooner ships and 

cargo-boats bustling and jostling around with trade and

commerce, an entire (now gone) waterfront of shops and

tanneries and hard-goods and cartage and wagon stops. 

The terminus of waterways and canals to places like 

Bound Brook and points west, north, and south. 

Now there' nothing like that, as any Joe can get in his

car and fart his way along Rt. 18 or Rt. 1, forget the

past, and get where he's going. Eventually. And the

only real place,  -  to prove my point  -  that shows 

any of this historic, old waterfront history is in the

vestibule of St. Peter's Church, which, with its 

ancient cemetery and markers. They have a few 

old photographs of when that was a small, mariner's

village area, right on the waterfront. It's all mostly 

inaccessible now, and the area gone  -  highways 

and condos and everything in its place. You have

to use your imagination to see. But, there really once

was another world people lived in entirely, when

rivers and waterways were the highways of the time.

Native-Americans lived right on the banks and the flats.

They moved as they had to with the seasons and the

weather. Nowadays every little doofus complains 

about high-water or flooding or surges, like little

stupid spoiled brats whose realization of things stops

at their nose's end. They built all their 'permanent'

homes in places the waters still occasionally claim.

An Indian would just, wisely and with good sense, 

at that point, pack up things and move along a little,

until the next dry spot or spell. They sure knew how 

to do things, way better than us.

145 - christmas girls

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 145)

One of the hardest things to have to do is 

to find a meaning; I guess that's the most 

ordinary quest of youth. All the tales and

fables, exploits and conquests, deal with

it, each their own ways. What is civilization,

after all, but a unification of many quest-stories

into one larger, over-riding myth. Everyone, in

their own way, takes it up. My own world, in

so many ways, went no differently than anyone

else's. That was an odd thing I always felt about

myself; I don't know why, or what it meant, but

it felt as if I'd actually 'been' at every stage of

every man, of every other person along the way.

It led to a shared complicity, and was a way of

getting along with people, although none of it was

really 'me'.  If someone was a sentimental crybaby,

I felt that I could help and understand, because I had

been one of those once too. If someone was tough and

gritty, I could be that, because at core I understood

perfectly well what living with the level of Life was

like. I'd have done that. With the sickly, I could be

sickly; with the religious, religious; I'd done that.

In fact, that tired old phrase, 'been there, done that',

it seemed to fit me pretty well. It's a way of getting

along, I suppose. Been there, done that was later

supplanted somehow by 'yada yada', which was a

sort of Yiddish version of etc., etc. All so strange.

-

There were two guys  -  this was later, during that

high school interregnum for me,   -  two seminary

guys from like Fords and Perth Amboy, I think,

maybe Fords and South River, something like

that  -  Ed Nadolny and Ray Nalepa, as I recall.

They kept coming around, more than a few times,

sort of to check up on me, say hello, hang around 

a little. They'd always been a twosome, pals forever,

and now that the seminary was breaking apart, I guess

in their doldrums during those waning days, they 

were set loose. They seemed fascinated a little bit

by me. I was sort of just bored stiff by them. It was 

bad  -  the reason I say that is because I'd somehow

developed a haze, or a hazy screen, around myself

that wouldn't really let anyone else in. I knew those

two guys were talking to me, at me, but I really

wasn't intent on listening to what they  were saying,

and can't even tell you what it was. As I said in the

previous chapter, in that quote, I had become my own

biggest obstacle. No one could break through that 

screed around me; it was custom built just to keep 

others away. I had no idea what these two guys could

possibly want from me now, and I let them know it. I

feel pretty shitty over it now, but that's the corner-box

I was painted into  -  embroiled, raging, trapped. I was

soon to get out, but at that moment I had no place. I

had no place because nothing was real; the entire 

world presented to me was a sham and a working lie.

And it wasn't just them I did this to  -  I have another

Avenel friend, way back from kid days, Al Zinze. He 

relates to me how, in these waning high-school days,

one day how I just blew right past him and another 

friend, Robert Stewart. Didn't even acknowledge 

them, responded to nothing, went right on by their

entreaties as if they weren't even there. I've tried to

explain, and I've told Al how sorry I am for that

now  -  but I was lost, I was unresponsive. I was

living in another place  -  so far gone I couldn't

even hear the whippoorwill or the owl if they were

perched on my shoulder. I still feel so bad over this.

There's no triumph in that. I was a fool, being a fool.

-

Imagine what it's like, to have someone tell you, forty

years later, what you'd done  -  or not done  -  to them

that is still so grievous that it wounds yet. It's not a 

good feeling. Quests, and all those 'searches' for 

meaning, they're actually quite meaningless. 

-

Time was passing. I'd achieved a few minor milestones

of my own, one my own, but now was coming the

transitionary stuff that brings one over the hump, to

adulthood, or at least to growing up. To make that

passage, there are certain rudiments you need to meet,

I knew that, and I wasn't exactly ready or willing to

meet them. One of them is 'social' conditioning. That

was a problem to me. I remember, I guess it was

Christmas, 1966, my mother did a weird thing to me  -  

in her zeal to have me merge well, and in her and my

father's zeal, as well, to have me 'find' an Italian

girlfriend (I'm going to admit ahead of time this is 

a solitary and bizarre story to relate, almost as if

some form of 'arranged' marriage was being formed,

but it's true. Alas, it didn't work, much to my parents' 

chagrin. Not, however, to the girl involved -  she turned 

out quite well, married someone else and has had a

lovely, and successful, life. In addition, to avoid any

embarrassment  -  mostly my own  -  I've simply made

a name). The girl's name was Emily Bardozza, and

she had three or four sisters, and a young brother.

I'd taken her, already, to the high school senior play,

under duress, yes, and again to appease my silly

mother, who thought this to be a wonderful match 

made in Heaven. The play that year was 'Brigadoon', 

some supercilious mess of fantasy and wonderment 

about a magical place or kingdom or something (I really

paid little attention. It bored me to prickly heat.) with

all these silly, singing people. Seniors in senior plays

are gruesome  -  all that chummy happiness and singing

and jumping around. It's fey, humorous without intent,

and 'barfy' as well. The play sucked. I sat there glumly

counting my marked cards and hoping for out. I'd also

been recruited to take her to a few basketball games,

a sport I detested  -  smelly, rank, noisy and useless.

She was a popular girl, attractive as much, and every 

time she'd reciprocate a hello or a smile to someone

back, a lot of guys too, I'd think,'what's going on, she

certainly doesn't need me around here, dragging her

fine ship-of-social-state down.' It was horrible. I

mean, as well, to say, we never kissed or fondled  

or none of that. I was too stupid anyway. This was

all my silly mother's doing. And then came Christmas.

For whatever the Hell the reason was, my mother had

it so that I'd go over to their house (around the corner)

and spend Christmas morn with them. Imagine this!

Like five girls and a boy kid, and a mother (I can't

actually recall the presence of a father, but whatever).

They got their presents, there were like cupcakes and

stuff brought out, small talk, social stuff, and the rest.

Her mother was real nice and seemed to wish me well,

went along with all this, and smiled nicely. I was as

awkward as a beetle on a tentpole. The morning ended, 

and I left. The whole thing had been like a Louisa

May Alcott story or something. That was the end of 

that entire experiment, never mentioned again. I 

didn't see that girl again until years later, when we 

met in a hospital lobby as parents were ailing, and

then again a few years later at some  guy's 'friend's 

reunion party' that I got suckered into in Freehold, NJ.

-

So, I brought all this out to sort of see if I could

integrate the bones of this story into the more rattly 

bones of my own life. Finding meaning, socializing 

and getting along. Well, the answer, thankful to me 

to say, was and is 'NO'. A great big outstanding NO. 

Because I was me, and that was it  -  my mother and 

father would have never understood that, school certainly 

had missed that boat, peddling all their shenanigans, 

and all my Avenel days and friends no longer much 

shared in this stuff at all. A sort of mannered parking 

had taken over : you get to where you were going, 

pull over, park, and stay there. That's how very many

of these people ended up, until then, about twenty

years later or less, all those same people began 

breaking apart, getting divorces, splitting up kids,

losing a house, paying all those bills and alimony 

and tuitions and cars and vacations and all that. There

was a whole, sweeping period of that, and then they

all settled down and did the same thing all over again,

except with someone new. In therapy, that's called

'repeat behavior', and is the base result of an enforced

'patterning' that's been engraved in a young mind. Most

of these people can't escape their fantasies if they tried.

They're all stuck in their own versions of  'Brigadoon!'

144 - jeff gutman / mr. zucchini

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 144)

Well, looking back is easy, mostly it's the looking

ahead that gets difficult and pointed. I'd have to say

that nothing much came from my time in Woodbridge 

High School. I'd just go home each day, wearied by a

lot of fool circumspection and irritation. It's difficult

for me to aptly get across, only because the times were

so strange : I hate to say 'you had to be there', but you did.

I've written about it a little too, in the early chapters, but 

there's just so much to wade through that I could be doing 

this for a long time. The one big mooncloud over everything

was Vietnam. It was looming, that was it. Period. Guys were

getting taken off the planet, it seemed. Occasionally there

were rumors so and so had gotten killed, or someone or

someone. I never knew what was true, who was there and 

who wasn't. If a big rumor got started, like the kind everyone

would begin whispering about, it seemed to be always the

name of someone who had been really disliked anyway, and

it turned out to be false. Like 'Billy Ryan', as a for instance.

His name kept popping up as a dead Vietnam guy, from

Iselin. But damned if I ever found out. I never even really

knew him, though I had shared classroom space with him 

back in 7th grade  -  only because he'd been in 7th grade

about 3 times already; so he was older, and bigger. Shoot,

he was 'sexually experienced' already, as it was told to us,

with Laura Brezewski, whom everyone sort of knew of.

She was in her rightful grade, maybe 9th, and she'd already

bloomed a quite proficient set of mammaries, as it were.

So, Billy Ryan had been there first; or so the story went.

And then, a few years later, the same story went that he

was dead in Vietnam. Never found out, nor did I ever ask

Laura, who is also lost to the ages now, somewhere. So,

as I was saying  -  go ahead and try to live a normal high 

school life with the thought looming over your head that

in about 6 months or so you could very well be in some

rotten jungle somewhere shooting at things you couldn't

see, and having those same things shooting back. It sure

put all our prison-farm frolics in perspective quickly, but

sure as hell made Avenel a lot more valued too. The place

you suddenly didn't want to leave. Most certainly not for

Khe Sahn, Danang, or Pleiku. The politicians were all

playing games with stuff  -  call-ups and drafts and shit  -

and no one was ever sure really where they stood. Staying

in college was, at first, thought to be a good bet for 

deferment, but then that stopped helping too. Pretending

you were gay (that word wasn't really in use then), or

retarded or crazy, that only worked sometimes. And then

you had to live with the result. Lucky you. Maybe you could

get married and have a quick kid; it was thought that helped.

But, in the end, if your number was up, it was up. A lot of 

guys gave up the guessing game and just joined. But, inside

the high school, no one ever advised us anything, never spoke

about the war or what we were doing there or why or how we

should be comporting ourselves, especially as and when we

came around to thinking it was all a bunch of bullshit and nothing

worth fighting for. A cause with no cause, just a political war,

and one where YOU were the expendable game-piece. You'd

think any one of those geeky male teachers would have had

some real wisdom to impart, an assembly or a teach-in or

something. But, no way. Salute the damned flag, and shut up.

All we ever had were guys like Emery Konick, my Homeroom

Teacher, who mentally, it seemed, was still in military mode 

anyway. There was militarism all around us, in varying degrees.

It had to be difficult, because as much as all that Vietnam stuff

was on our minds, so was the tempting idea to snag one of these

wonderful little girls who were growing up all around us. That's

a tough one to figure out. Everybody wanted to get lucky, but

everybody said, at the same time, 'girls love a man in uniform.'

What the hell was that? The only real place that some of these 

issues could be shouted out was Mr. Brown's History class. We'd

get the NYTimes there each day  -  piles of them were brought

in for free  -  and everyone would then just dive into issue-oriented

diatribes about this or that issue; war, peace, finance, you name it.

I don't actually mean 'everybody' would join in  -  some kids just

weren't there, in the head, for that stuff. Others were, way over

the top. Like Jeff Gutman. He was a small, smart (considered)

Jewish kid who like went off the deep end with Jew-pride over

the Six-Day War, (June 5-11th, 1967. Also called the June War,

or the Arab-Israeli war). It was a quick, blitzkrieg like action,

by both sides, Egypt's and Israel's, and fact of the matter is

Israel won it stunningly and quickly. The Arabs were 

outmatched, and we here in the USA probably had a lot to

do with the Israeli imbalance too, but, whatever. Jeff Gutman,

each day, would just about burst out of his little clothes with

enthusiasm and rallying cries for Israel. It got pretty sickening

pretty quickly, but good for him it was over soon. He would

have probably, eventually, have taken a beating for his

yarmulke waving. In public school no less!

-

This all went on while Mr. Brown  - a dense, deep, quiet and

reserved man  -  would try to slowly expound the various issues.

Not the issues about Vietnam, mind you, which to me counted

a lot more than Jeff Gutman's merriment around the 

Getzvalstimenial Memorial Tree (I made that up), but about

the issues of the Israeli-Arab conflict, of which he had lots to

say. That didn't make too much sense to me, but then again

Mr. Brown was in no danger of being sent to Vietnam to pick

bullets out of his ass. That was left to us. It got to the point

where I started fearing for my own life  - figuring one more

dress-code infraction and they'd ship me right off to Hanoi

for target practice. So I started wearing Brooks Brothers. 

OK, kidding. The room got pretty raucous, but no real

information ever came out of it. The issues were always

confused and misrepresented  -  as in all such arguments

everyone was only convinced and concerned with the

'rightness' of their own side. School's not really very 

even-handed about things like that, even though they like

to say they are. It's like the New York Times itself, supposedly

all the 'News', but most of it propaganda muck setting out to

make a pre-determined point. The NYTimes only represents

one opinion, ever. Its own and it's largely upscale and largely

Israeli-flavored readership. They were rah-rahing for Israel

all along. Just as was Jeff Gutman. All a bunch of know-nothing

flatheads, if you ask me. Israel doesn't even belong there, where

it is, and there's nothing semitic about it as a nation -state. In

fact, putting aside all their 'desert God' stuff, they don't even

know what they're talking about. An interloper police-state in 

someone else's land. The nation-state of Israel is, today, really

nothing more than the transplanted east-Euro Khazars, a nation

of nothings which stole an ancient religion and claimed it for

their won and then, about 1920 or whatever it was, with Balfour

and those guys, decided to land-grab, based on their stolen 

histories, and suddenly claim to be Semites, Arabs and the 

rest. The Semites (means sand-dwellers) part of Israel's present 

state, is a joke. There's not a damned thing Middle Eastern 

about them. From Begin to Netanyahu, they were all East

Europeans running with a stolen ancient religion and they've

never had any business talking Palestinian lands, no less 

being given Palestinian lands. Yeah, there's 'Holy Sites' there, 
but they belong to the ages of History, just as do Plamyra and
Assyria, not to the fake East Euro-Jewry who now claim them, 
as 'Home' no less. No wonder Jeff Gutman was full of shit. It's 
like the American  Indian fiasco all over again, and it's all crap.

-

Well, that's what we had to put up with. I never did see any

Jeff Gutman type go off to Vietnam. They had too many 

rich schools to hide away in and pontificate (Christian word, 

that) from while their parents paid the tab. It's a gimmick, 

like everything else. I would have swatted him with a

frying pan, if I was a Mrs. Goldberg who was willing to 

know and admit the truth. The world's a dark place, and

things like this just make it darker. Woodbridge High

School, professing itself in terms of self-importance and

radical middle-ground, achieved nothing, taught nothing, 

and instilled nothing. Even its limp flag wouldn't fly straight.

-

Just about this time, too, the world of 'education (har-har)

was opening itself up to new experiences. They introduced a

course adventurously called 'Non-Western Cultures.' It was

run by a horny fop named Mr. Figliorini. He was eventually

fired, teaching was taken away from him, for fucking around

with one too many of his girl students. His family owned,

in Plainfield, a thriving fruit and vegetable store, on the 

main drag, fresh produce, etc., and they soon branched 
out to having a truck or two, and delivering their produce  
to restaurants and diners and things. Which is where this  
Mr. Figliorini guy ended up after he was canned. I think he 
may have impregnated  someone, though I can't recall the 
incidentals. Trust me, you can look it up. The idea of this course 
(which somehow I sat in on for a month  or a term or something),  
was that this fast-talker up front, between flirtatious comments 
and leers at the varied girls in the room, would 'teach'

about South America, or hone in on Peru, or Africa, or

whichever, and top it all off with sampling the 'cuisine' of the

locale being studied. Oh boy! What a delightful trap. The weird

thing was this was the one guy who never said a word nor could 
not have cared less about what I or anyone wore to school.
You'd think the opposite  -  figuring he'd get some real delight 
over singling out some girl whose top or skirt he had to check for 
length and fit. Know what I mean, Mr. Zucchini? See, I guess it's 
apparent I hold no grudges against the wonderful education 
I received at Woodbridge High School, in 1967, finishing up  
in the June of the Arab-Israeli War.