pt. 27 - the hermit

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 27)

Eccentricities abounded, yes, and there were always

odd things lurking: there was an actual hermit living

at the corner of the woods and yard up at the Krug 

Mansion, as we called it. The corner of Monica Court,

on the northeast side of  Woodbridge Ave. Actually, it's

the very spot, to the centimeter, where some years later

a sometime friend of mine named Ron Sutor and his family

had their house  -  red brick one, modern, plain style. More

on that in a bit. I once read that in the height of Victorian

England, that era, it was the pinnacle of fashion to have a

hermit living on your property.  Maybe that's what went

on here, I don't know. Another friend of mine, John

Virchick, with his older brother Mike, and his father, lived

right across the street from this as well. The hermit was

always there  -  a small, short guy, raging white beard, 

longish hair; he was always in a gray colored khaki type

work suit  -  pants anyway, with maybe a flannel shirt

and suspenders. Some sort of country hat. He never talked,

that I recall, but we were, as kids, merciless towards him -

throwing stones and pebbles at him, and his little, square

one-room hut. If I ever saw it today I'd swoon  -  it was most

assuredly the coolest thing in the world. I don't remember

any weathers about him  -  hot, cold, snow, rain, can't remember

a thing and it seems, in retrospect always nice and cool and

crisp and sunny out. Neither do I know who he belonged to, 

why he was there, what he did, who kept him, how he was 

fed and ate, where his bathroom was. His beard, white, was

yellowed all around his mouth, like food stains or something

had taken its toll  -  maybe tobacco, I can't recall. He'd slump

around, trying to ignore us, but we never quit  -  I guess it was

on Saturdays and stuff, because I can't remember much else;

maybe all Summers long. I don't know how many years it 

went, or what he did or where he was before our houses, right 

up to his very yard, were built. The nearby Krug house was 

tall and white, with one of those widow's peaks atop it, whatever 

they were called, a tower lookout, inside staircase I guess, all 

that. There were paths through the grasses and trees, to all 

different places in the big yard, but we knew nothing of them. 

No dog or anything either  -  just this strange hermit guy. 

Anyway, to us he was like anti-matter today : a negation, he 

wasn't supposed to be there, wasn't supposed to exist  -  he went

against everything we'd been taught and had learned. Unsocial,

an unkempt loner, someone else's ward, an underling. For all I

know, thinking back now  -  and I've thought on this many times  - 

he was maybe just a gardener, a lost uncle to the family, a crazy

son no one ever knew what to do with, a pity case. Maybe it was

the war, anything : no matter, one day he just went at us with a

salt-pellet gun. He'd finally had enough, we'd broken through. 

And from that time ever after  -  which wasn't really long  -  

anytime we even came close to the place out came the pellet

gun. We called it a salt-rifle, because we thought it shot rock

salt or something. I don't think we meant to say 'assault' rifle;

it wasn't, and we weren't that dumb. Quite close, maybe, but not

that. The game was over, evidently. I don't know what happened. 

He was gone. I know I'd never told anyone about him, and I don't 

know if any of the others did. But one day his little house too was

gone, and the next season the land was cleared there, and Ronnie

Sutor's house went up. The Krug house was still there, and remained

in place until Winter '68 or '69. I have photos of it somewhere that

I hope to be finding soon; but nothing of the hermit, nor his place.

I always thought of it as more a sad story than anything else;

being a jerk to the guy, I'd wish forgiveness now and would

have loved, thinking now, back, to have talked to him instead

of taunting him. Stupid, jerk, Avenel brat, me.

-

This Ron Sutor guy, I've lost touch with him a hundred years ago,

his story is odd too. As a casual School #4 acquaintance in maybe

5th and 6th grade, it was just 'Hi, what's up, how are you?' Real

simple and off-handedly casual. I thought nothing of it. Then one 

day his father called my parents up. He said that it was Ron's 11th

or 12th birthday or something, and Ron's request, as a birthday gift,

was to go to Palisades Amusement Park for the day....with me. If

I had been able to curse at home I would have said, 'Huh? What

the fuck's with that?' No matter, it was all agreed upon, and a few

Saturdays later I got picked up and had an all-expense paid day with

Ron and his father in Palisades Amusement Park. And, basically, 

that was it  -  we remained 'friends', distance returned, I think maybe

Boy Scouts, can't remember, but we never became close buddies 

or anything like that. It was weird. The next Summer, I remember,

Ron got only slightly injured crossing Rt. One at Avenel Street on

his bicycle  -  brushed by a car and hitting the pavement hard  - and

I asked his father about him, how was he, send wishes, etc. But, no

more  -  and then he too disappeared; I think they moved away. The

house is still there. I can remember, that day, up by Fort Lee, Ron's

dad pulling over to ask some guy how to get from where we were to

Palisades Park. The guy seemed a bit annoyed, and crankily said,

'Well, do you mean Palisades Park, the town? Or Palisades 

Amusement Park? It's two different places you know.' Cranky

chip-on-the-shoulder bastard he was. Not Avenel at all.

-

I consider things like that to be oddities  -  stuff I remember like

yesterday (which of course it was), but which lack meanings and

reasons, which don't quite even yet have all the lines colored in. I

wish I had more. Reconstruction, like after the Civil War, is sometime

just a poor replacement for the real anyway. Lots of Avenel things 

are like that to me. There were a few girls I can recall who, as the

phrase went back then, around town 'had reputations', were 'fast'. 

I wondered then, and still do now, if that could have been true, 

or how one got to find this out. Even then, it was about words.

John Virchick had an older brother, Mike. Never saw him much, but 

there was a small contingent of older teens around when we all were 

about 10 or 11  -  they already had cars and hot rods and car clubs 

and special carplates for the club on the rear. In those years cool

cars were lowered in the rear, not the front, like in the 70's and

80's. Lots of dagger-like chrome, megaphone exhaust stuff, loud,

low rumbles. These guys, and some girls, used to hang out with 

their cars, either at the School 4 and 5 wall  -  which used to seem

like it was 6 feet high, where they sat and hung out  -  now it looks

to be about a foot and half high  -  or down the street some, at 

Cameo's  -  another soda and sweet shoppe  -  and do the same

thing. Probably the other side of Route One Avenel had its own

places. I never knew. Down that end there was like 'Dirty John's',

a pool-hall sweet shoppe of sorts  - really considered bad-ass and

nasty (and I'd heard about, 'good' for girls, wink, wink), or again

Charlie's Sugar Bowl. Same deal. Charlie's Sugar Bowl was cool

because it had a row of really nice, wooden pay phone booths

along one inside wall, maybe 5 or 6 booths. When later I had a

crummy car of my own, I used to go there and call Chicago

direct, right out of one of those phone booths, to order parts

from the J. C. Whitney catalogue. I did that at least 5 or 6 times.

-

There were always interesting and solitary things in the background,

it seemed. Avenel was filled with the quaint and the eerie, the quiet

and the loud, the easy and the hard. Growing there as a kid, you

really did have to stay sharp  -  so as to be able to distinguish, pick

your direction, go straight or go crooked. I had a kid I knew, for

instance, Joey Banich, and his brother Eddie. Eddie was in my

6th grade class, and just basically sat there the entire year  -  never

much spoke. Nicest guy in the world, if you could get to him. Word

was, at home, his Albanian family only spoke Albanian, so he was

having great difficulty merging into English here, with us. I tried a

few times to prod him along, be nice. Nothing much happened. On

the other hand, he did have, a grade or two back, a brother named

Joey, who was the complete opposite  -  brash, crazed, energetic,

fulsome, strong. No problems with language  -  every other word

out of his mouth was 'fuck' or 'fucking'  -  verb, adjective, noun,

you name it. He had the language conquered by 5th grade. No

matter what they spoke at home, he picked this up really well.

Another kid, 6th grade, Peter Tolendino, who also had an older

brother (one whom I did not know, in any way); Peter spent the

entire year reading a book, always with him, called 'God Is My

Co-Pilot.' He loved that book  -  I'm not ever sure what it was or

what sort of book  -  I think it was a war-memoir about someone

flying crazy war missions in the air and leaving it all to God. My

own life was getting good  - I was picking things up everywhere,

knew what to watch for, stayed aware of all that was developing. I

was not so much in any way learning 'school stuff' or excelling   -

that was all chump-change anyway to me, and I figured, if they 

wished, probably any fruitcake could put their mind to it and do

good at school. It wasn't for me  -  my route was going to be more

direct, without all the niceties and the bullshit of parents' nights,

teacher's conferences and all that. I was going straight for the

heart of life  -  like a kid-surgeon with a really mad exacto-blade.

pt. 26 - crystal set

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 26)

My favorite times of year have always been the

dark, shortened, chilly and gloomy days of November

and early December. Before the real 'cold' sets in  -  more

the little transitional stuff that happens before the Dec. 21

solstice. That was always me  -  I love to see people

bundled in coats, and I was always so captivated by girls

in their coats and scarves, gloves and hats, with the presence

of the eyes taking center stage, with their face. It was always

totally artistic to me, other-worldly, magical, and with more

love and mystery than ordinary life ever afforded.
I loved the hidden, the swaddled.

-

On those sorts of days, when a kid, again about 1960, I'd walk

up and down my street, take big circle walks to the highway, the

trailer court, Avenel Street and the rest, often while holding

that radio  -  which would be playing  -  through the magic of

transistor  -  any one of a fifty tunes that swept me forth, took

me away, led me to a lamplight somewhere I could only see

myself. No one else ever knew what I was talking about : I was

another, I wasn't me. I had somewhere to go, some score to

settle, some outer-banks somewhere, to achieve. It was the same,

 indoors, upstairs in my attic room at the back of the section

my father had somehow nicely transformed into living

quarters : with him, hammers, nails, & boards, I'd spend

some time putting up walls, finishing banisters and doors, 

etc. My uncles would come by to help, laying insulation, 

stapling to bare walls, then plaster board, then smoothing,

then painting. Actually all that tedious stuff I simply grew 

to hate. We made a cedar closet, out of real cedar wood. All

lined and finished, it gave off the strongest smell, when you

walked in, of, I guess, the cedar wood, which was supposed to

keep protected and free from moths or something all those fancy-

ass clothes and furs we never had anyway. Never figured that 

out. But anyway, I got a really nice room out of it, large,

secluded, well-lit. It was, everywhere, very nice. I only

begrudged my father his choice of flooring. He always did 

have terrible taste  -  everything had to be large, super-strong,

overdone, but usually pretty tastelessly, without any finesse or

decoration. Simple, cut plywood, overly-large pieces of lumber.

But, in this upstairs, he ruined everything by selecting two things

I really hated. First was 'spackled' walls. Instead of like a smooth,

nice coat of paint, he used some ridiculous contraption that

'sprayed' some sort of silly, multi-colored, tiny-specked, textured-

finish paint. It was horrible; touches of pink and red, really lame.

Than, even worse, we had to lay, tile by tile, some horrendous

1950's style grey, 12X12 inch asbestos floor tiles, after first

swabbing the plywood floor with a thick brown gluey stuff with

a metal trowel or whatever it is. The tile was horrible and also 
swirly with bad marks of color, and its being just so horrible,

in conjunction with horrible wall-finish, became just gross.

But I lived with it  -  until I repainted my own space at least to get

rid of the wall-paint. I used a light tan, or eggshell color, I don't 

remember. He also did a lot of paneling, which is pretty much

equally as bad as anything else. But I liked my room, and for those

years it was mine, I dug having it. Once I left home, however,

about 1961, late, it was no longer mine. Bummer.

-

When I was maybe 9 or 10, another Christmas thing I got, which

I put together and was fascinated by  -  kept it for a while, on a pedestal

like a sculpture, near the center of the room  -  was what was called

'The Visible Man.' I don't know what my parents were thinking, or 
where they'd gotten the crazy idea for this, unless perhaps they 
thought I'd be a doctor or something  -  it was a clear plastic, 3 ft. high 
MAN. To construct it, as I did, you first had to literally put together
 the inside body  -  all those spinal parts, colored organs, bladder, 
heart, lungs, things for veins and bones and cartilages, etc. Pretty 
much everything except a penis, which was 'suggested' by a plastic 
bulge. (Probably by the same guy who invented the Speedo bathing 
suit, or something). Once all that was finally done (after following 
some way-weird instruction booklet) it was all encased in clear, 
full-body plastic, so it showed everything  -  brain, eyes, jaw, neck 
and chest stuff, heart and kidneys and all that crud. It was, let's 
say, bizarre. I've always enjoyed bizarre, I guess.

-

I also had, my father built for me, a crystal set  -  a short wave radio 

of sorts. It wasn't great, but I had it in a back closet, nearby to a 
window out of which I'd hung antenna stuff. I could rotate and 
move things around, in varied directions, to get clear signal. I'd pick up 
every sort of strange place the world had. Other languages, talking 
people; I do remember, specifically two wonderful things. One was a 
'Radio Romania' thing. I hadn't even known then about a place called 
Romania, but they, in English too, were always weaving Romanian 
folktales, telling stories, talking their history, having people on singing 
Romanian and Gypsy folktunes, showing a real pride in their past

and their culture. I was fascinated and so taken. I loved it. And

another lucky instance too, was the Francis Gary Powers U2

Spy Plane incident  -  which almost became a real crisis. I got Radio

Moscow and I got their viewpoint  -  which totally differed from ours.

Eisenhower, in fact, had a Summit Meeting with Kruschev cancelled

over the issue  -  an American spy plane pilot, this Powers guy, was

shot down way high up over Russia, on a flying spy U2 plane mission,

which we claimed weren't even ever happening. He was captured, the

Soviets went nuts, he was forced to a confession, the plane parts 
were recovered and shown  -  all a huge brouhaha over the usual 
Government lies. I had a ringside seat, for months, because of my 
crystal-set radio. Me and, of course, my Visible Man  whom I never 
named because, no, no matter what they said, (as if in a Government

story), he didn't really exist.

pt. 25 - transistor radio

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 25)

One year, when I came home for a visit from

seminary school  -  probably 1963 or '64  -  to

my surprise, I saw that Inman Avenue had been

paved. Regular hard-black macadam. The small

gravel and stones with light tar were gone. The pebbles

were no longer pushed to the sides by the weight of

passing cars. Walking up the street, from the train station

and Abbe Lumber area, it suddenly appeared to me like

a major thruway  -  seemingly wider now, and ready for

big traffic; uniform, straight, smooth and new. Almost a

solid letdown, there was really no room for any elation,

though I instantly knew all those fathers and their cars,

and the snow-plow guys and the bicycle kids and all the

rest must already love it. It was  -  for most practical

purposes a perfectly good representation of the state of 

things : Lyndon Johnson, his 'Great Society' programs,

efficiency, thrust, a vague collectivist spirit at large about

everything. Get things going, 'We'll' do it for you, no worry.

One dead President out of the way, and let's move on. 

Tough times to have to pick a side. But it was all coming, 

and I  knew it and sensed it already. Entering those years, 

my sense of 'place' had begun to both dwindle (since my 

old Avenel stuff was mostly gone), and grow, (since my 

expanded horizons were crying out in hunger for substance 

and fulfillment). The smell of the Vietnam War was (also) 

just around the next corner, and it did finally break everything. 

If you weren't there for that, it will be hard for me to explain, 

but eventually I'll get to that.

-

As a kid, about 8 or 9, 1959, the first transistor radios came out.

I got one for Christmas that year : it was a stunner. A black,

12-transistor Emerson. about the size of a small book. A not

so bad looking black plastic, with silver-imprinted knobs and

numbers, and a little disc or circular thing to move for channels

and volume and such. Back then pretty sleek-modern. 12 transistor

was pretty big-time, most were 6 or 8. I think that had to do with

strength of signal, or what you could draw in, or something. In

those days, music was nothing like it is now. Mostly mainstream

stuff, for staid adults, kind of moody and always tiredly romantic.

Boring people talking on about their boring stuff. Who cared?

And then, with this, all of a sudden here and there I'd get tuned in

to some blissfully alive, real thing : a sound, with words, something

I could fit my teeth onto. Now always about 'Love' and heartbreak, or

at least not in those same old, tired, un-ripe ways and words. The first

song that really slayed me, I'll admit, was something enticingly strange 

to my ears. By Ben R. King, whoever he was back then, it was called, 

or I called it 'There Is a Rose in Spanish Harlem'. If you don't know 

the song, go, please, look it up now, and listen. It's hard to say, but it

confirmed for me that 'my' world, the other world, where my feet and 

mind were headed, existed. About a flower, or even a person, if need

be, named Rose, blossoming, growing up through the concrete, 
bursting out to the street. There's a line in there about 'I'm going to 
pluck that  rose and watch her as she grows, in my garden'... well, or 
something like that. I was smitten, lost, and taken away. Let's talk 
confinement, let's talk ghetto, entrapment. And then let me talk, 
myself, of my own liberation. Real-world juxtapositions or right and  
truth as only I saw it. No matter what else Inman Avenue was doing, 
had done to me, it was soon to be over. I swore  -  even its own crummy
 sidewalks, in spots, were already heaving and breaking up. A few years 
before, I'd ride my bicycle blissfully over those cracks and heaves, 
pretending I was an airplane pilot somehow cruising over the jagged 
and rutted landscape below me as I scanned down. Now that was over. 
Arthur C. Clarke had once written a book called 'Childhood's End'. 
I was certainly at mine.

-

Another song of those years, this one on my Dad's car radio, 

also took me away. We were parked down by Avenel Street 

and St. George Ave., out front of the St George Pharmacy, 

(there's still a crummy row of  stores and banks and Dunkin' Donuts 

crap there, but this was real early on; none of that existed except 

maybe for the sweet shop or whatever, called then 'Charley's Sugar 

Bowl'. It too is gone). I stayed in the car, my father had gone inside 

for another of the endless rounds of prescription medicine for my 

mother (usually we had it delivered; don't know what this was about).
I so remember it well, in my mind's image anyway  -  it was freezing
cold, it was late January, the car-heater was blasting, and the
Winter's snow was piled up, in plowed and dirty gray heaps,

and on the radio came this massive, grand song that just blew me

right out of my clothing. 'In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion

sleeps tonight'. It was by the Tokens, I think, some black guys and 

the song was from South Africa  - a folk tune, all re-done. I took it

immediately to heart  -  that lion was my soul, about to awake, 

sleeping inside my peaceful for now body. But soon it would arise,

there'd be a roar, and it would be me! Reborn again, and ready!