It doesn’t take much to make an eleven year old boy happy. A water tunnel beneath a suburban neighborhood will do just fine. We didn’t have any such tunnels in my neighborhood, but my cousin Mike had one not too far from his house. Mike told me about it and I immediately wanted to explore it. But my mother was somewhat protective. So my Uncle Joe (Mike’s father, my mother’s brother) volunteered to take me, Mike and my brother for a walk through the subterranean wonders of Varmint Brook one weekend (name changed so that I won’t be accused of suggesting unsafe activities for local youth). Uncle Joe was just that kind of guy.

Well, Uncle Joe made good on his word. I recall having a great time walking along the tilted concrete floodway with a flashlight guiding us through the dank underworld. The tunnel went on for about a mile, from whence Varmint Brook proceeded through an uncovered causeway for another mile. Then there was another tunnel, and finally the Brook found its way into a river. Mike told me that the second tunnel was pretty messy. But the first tunnel was relatively walkable, and provided all the adventure that an eleven-year old boy needed for a Sunday afternoon.

Obviously, the exploration of such tunnels is strictly prohibited in today’s world. And obviously, some kids still do it. I recently visited the entrance of good old Varmint Brook, so here’s what it looks like today. I certainly wouldn’t encourage any kids to do what we once did, unless you’ve got a really good uncle or father willing to go along. Unfortunately, such really good, down-to-earth uncles and fathers are getting quite rare in this day and age. And that’s a real loss.

Right around Memorial Day, I got to thinking about my college days. I was still living with my mother and father and brother in the same house that I grew up in; we couldn’t afford to go away to college. During the summers I had a job with the local railroad, and much of it was on the night shift. Which I sort of enjoyed, actually.

Anyway, when I got home after working nights, I would often notice the morning glories that my mother had planted along an old swing set. The vines climbed up along some strings that my mother had strung from the swing frame. If it was a sunny morning, the purple and blue and white flowers would be in full bloom. I always gave them a look as I dragged myself from the car into the house, carrying my utility bag, ready to get some sleep.

Well, back here in 2008, I got an inspiration from that memory: why not grow some morning glories out in my landlord’s back yard? He wouldn’t care; he might even like to see them himself. So I shleped over to the local hardware store and bought two Burpee seed packages. Then I found a spot near the back fence that seemed fairly sunny, and did some planting and watering. It was a bit late in the planting season, but there was still all of June, July and August to come, so I figured it was worth a try.

Eventually some vines started growing and I found some wood stakes in the backyard for them to wrap around. But it took several tries. Just as the seedlings were starting to come up on the first try, the people next door did some work on the fence, and the workers stomped out most of the young shoots. So I tried again, with similar results as they came back and put a new fence in. Well, I had just enough seeds left for a third attempt. OK, this time it worked. Or it seemed to work.

As July progressed, the vines made good progress moving up the wooden stakes. If it didn’t rain for a few days I would go outside with a plastic bottle to provide some moisture. Eventually, the 5 or 6 surviving vines sent out all kinds of side shoots and leaves that started wrapping together, which is part of the knotty charm of morning glories. However, as we entered August last week, I started to look for flowers. Unfortunately, there aren’t any signs of that.

As you can see in the picture below, there are plenty of leaves and vines, but no flowers. Without flowers, there won’t be any new seeds falling to the ground to continue the effort next spring. It seems that the plant doesn’t get enough morning sun; because of the trees and the northeastern start of the sun’s daily arc across the summer sky, my morning glories don’t get any sun until around noon. So I guess they just can’t find the genetic inspiration to put out any flowers. Instead, they put out lots of offshoots, searching in vain for an angle that will catch the dawn’s early light. It was a good try, but it turned out to be the wrong place for morning glories.

It’s too bad that many human lives go that way. You can’t help but admire the people who really makes it in the world; they have lots of grit and spunk and tell their tales of how they were kicked around and brought down, but they always picked themselves up and kept right on going. But there are plenty of other people who also did this, but their lives and their potential never fully bloomed. The stars just weren’t in the right place.

So, just a reminder not to be so hard on people who seem like losers and under-achievers. They might have thought just as creatively and struggled just as valiantly as an admirably successful person, but because of fate were always one bridge too far. For every Barack Obama or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Mother Theresa, for every athlete in the Olympics or performer on the superstar list, there are millions of others who had good ideas and wonderful inspirations and abilities, but just never found the morning sun.

I’ve been around long enough now to have known a guy who has been turned into bronze. This fellow was a gentleman named Charles Cummings, a former citizen and librarian of the City of Newark, NJ. Prior to his passing, Charles was the designated city historian. He was also a member of the Episcopal parish of Grace Church in downtown Newark. And that’s how our paths crossed.

I spent seven or eight years trying to feel at home in Grace Church, an old “Anglo-Catholic” congregation with deep historical roots. Those roots made Charles feel right at home. And in my attempt to likewise feel at home there, I saw Charles on most Sunday mornings. After the Mass (this was high-church English-style, complete with incense and sung gospel), I would encounter Charles at the coffee hour, exchanging polite greetings and sometimes a few lines of conversation. I knew that Charles was the city historian, but strangely enough he almost never talked about city history while at Grace. I never heard him proffer any interesting facts or stories about Newark’s past. He seemed mostly interested in the personal matters of the congregates; who was sick, who was well, who had a son graduating high school, who had been to Florida recently, who the rector (a rather touchy fellow) was upset with, etc.

I left Grace Church in the late 90s after my best friend there, Roger the elderly “sexton” (Episcopalian word for ‘live-in church building keeper’), was brutally murdered. Interestingly, it was Charles Cummings who called me with the news. I remember Charles’ expression of deep regret at the terrible tragedy: “poor, poor Roger”. Yes indeed. Not too long after Roger left the world so horribly, I stopped going to Grace, and I never saw Charles again. It turned out that Charles met a more peaceful ending a few years later, in 2005.

Not long afterward, the City and the County raised some funds so as to have a bronze bust of Charles made, for display at the renovated County complex in Newark (where I work). Just a few weeks ago, the bust was hoisted onto a pedestal and was dedicated in memory of Charles. I finally got around to spending a few moments with the bronze version of Charles this week. Here are shots of the bust and the engraving on the monument:

Well, seeing Charles cast in bronze was rather weird at first. There’s something about a bronze statue that captures a Roman emperor better than a kindly old librarian. It didn’t seem like the Charles that I remember. The above bust photo seems a bit too angular, a bit too contrasty and bold; something more in keeping with a Hannibal or an Alexander the Great.

But, having some belief in the photographer’s creed, I decided to keep shooting at different angles until the spirit of Charles was found. The two shots below come close, I think. The bust seems to convey Charles as he probably was in his early 40s; by contrast, I remember him as a gracefully aging 60-year old. Nonetheless, these two shots better convey the patient and kindly, but somewhat distant and proud nature of his personality — as I experienced it.

Unfortunately, as can be seen in the last shot, the local birds have little respect for bronzed busts, heroic or not. But then again, I’m sure that Charles would have been patient with them. Charles appreciated the great themes AND the more quotidian elements (such as pigeons and starlings) of the city that he loved.

I took a nostalgia trip today, to Main Street in downtown Passaic. This was where my mother and father used to shop back when I was a kid. The first of the big highway malls were just starting out at the time (around 1962-63). We eventually took to the malls, with all of our fellow suburbanites, leaving Main Street to the poor and working-class folk of urban Passaic.

Well, Main Street is still there, as can be seen in the pix below. It looks and sounds quite a bit different today; Spanish language and Latin music fill the air, and the stores are certainly more colorful looking, if a bit more raffish. The big office building with the funny tower on the top is empty now, awaiting an uncertain future. My mother once worked there. The YMCA and Salvation Army are also still there, as can be seen. You also see the usual hotel for urban transients. The fancy restaurants have been replaced with fast food and ‘adult entertainment’ bars. And the last movie theater (the Montauk) has bitten the dust; even porno couldn’t sustain it. Nonetheless, it’s nice to see that Main Street still has a pulse.

 

 

 

We’ve had a relatively easy winter here in New Jersey. There were a couple of snowy days and a couple of cold snaps, when it went down to 7 or 8 degrees. But we’ve had nothing like the Siberian conditions experienced out in the Midwest, with weeks of snow and sub zero temps.

But even a mild winter gets me down. There are still too many short gray days and long dark nights. I think that Seasonal Affective Disorder has been getting to me. But sometime during this past weekend, it struck me that it’s March. Then the sun came out and the air had changed: the smell of plant life growing had returned, if only faintly. There could still be an Arctic front and we could still get snow. But you know that the “S.A.D.-ness” will soon be coming to an end.

Back in December I posted a crude translation of a little poem about the start of winter, from some Russian lady’s blog site. She marveled about how winter could be “cozy” and “bright”. But the truth is that winter is more dimness and grunge, even when it’s relatively tame. Here’s a pick that I took a few weeks ago which captures the feel of winter. It also helps to explain why it feels so good when the gray finally starts going away.

About two weeks ago, the UPS guy showed up at my apartment house and left eight boxes on the porch. I saw the boxes and out of curiosity, I looked at the shipping label to see who this stuff was for. To my surprise, it was for me! But I didn’t order it, it was a big mistake. I recognized the name of the sender, an internet purveyor of specialty food items; I had ordered from them before, but not for several months. So I went on line, and to my relief I didn’t see any unexpected charges against my credit cards. Then I shot an e-mail to the company telling them that it was all a big mistake, I didn’t order this stuff. They wrote back and asked me to open one box, get out the invoice, and give them the reference numbers. I sent that back to them, and asked them when I should expect the stuff to be picked up. Two days went by, no reply. So I wrote again, asking ‘when are you having this stuff picked up?’ Again, no response. So, I got out the invoice and decided that whatever this stuff was, it was now mine.

Actually, it was a lot of beans. Another customer had ordered big 25 pound bags of beans and grains from this company. I can’t figure out why; their prices per pound are almost twice what you pay in the supermarket (despite being bought in bulk). Well whatever, the stuff was now mine, por nada.

Actually, I gave three of the bean-bags and a sack of organic couscous to a homeless shelter that my brother used to volunteer with. That still left me with a good supply of lentils, black-eyed peas, wheat berries, split green peas, and white beans. I got them put away in my kitchen, but then I started thinking about the bags that the stuff came in. Most suburban people (like me) normally never see bagged foods in bulk. You see cans and plastic wrapped food in supermarkets, but unless you work in a warehouse or a food factory or an institutional kitchen, you never see 25 pound bags of beans. So here’s a picture of one of the bags. This is what it looks like, straight from the heartland of America (the bean company is in Nebraska). It definitely looks different. It didn’t come from coastal, urbanized America; it’s plain and understated, but colorful and creative in a certain way. Perhaps it’s something waiting to be discovered by the artistic crowd in Manhattan. Yes, I could see a special display at one of the big art museums, maybe the Whitney: “Straight from the Heartland: Bulk Bean Bags of America”.

WALLINGTON, NEW JERSEY used to be notorious for its bars. Well, perhaps notorious is too strong a word. They generally weren’t centers of gambling and prostitution. They were mostly blue-collar shot-and-a-beer places. But there were plenty of them, located on both the main drags and the back streets. Back during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, a lot of homeowners put an addition on the front of their houses and opened up a bar where the parlor would have been. Despite all the national unemployment, there were still many people working in the mills across the river in Passaic, and with all of the gloom, most of them could use a drink on the way home. So there was just enough demand for convenient liquor as to allow these homeowners to make a few coins. Back in the Depression, every little coin helped.

Many of these little mom-and-pop bars held on into the 1960s and 1970s. A few would still open up now and then, into the 1990s. By 2000, though, just about all of these neighborhood places were gone. Not that Wallington has gone dry, but you now have to stick to the thoroughfares and find a bar with upscale pretensions, or maybe a place with a restaurant attached (or the bowling alley on Paterson Avenue). Interestingly, though, if you walk the back streets of old-town Wallington, you will notice all of the funny-looking houses with living rooms extending out to the sidewalk line; i.e., the remains of the old bars.

Actually, there is one little tavern on Locust Avenue that is barely hanging on, but it’s in its last days. Locust Avenue is one of the main drags; however, the layout of this place is definitely classic Wallington-1930s, i.e. a shoebox in the front of an old two story house. The establishment in question had been run since the Depression by the Puzio family. Sometime during the late 70s or early 80s, one of the sons living at home decided to fix the place up a bit and keep regular evening hours on most weekdays and on Saturdays. It was no longer a dingy old bar smelling of spilled beer and rye, with a couple of old guys on metal stools burning cigarettes in the dark while watching a ball game on a TV above the cash register. “Pee Wee” (what everyone called the fellow who ran the place) built up a patronage of college students and young middle-class professionals during the 1980s. And I was one of those patrons. The “Colonial Room” (the place actually didn’t have a sign with that name, but there were printed matchbooks saying “Pee Wee’s Colonial Room”) was always a nice place to start the evening with. You’d leave by 10pm for other points of interest, for places where more exciting things may or may not have been happening. But even if the rest of the evening went bust, at least you got a nice hour or so in at Pee Wee’s.

Pee Wee works a day job, and by the 1990s, he lost interest in being a barkeeper by night. The place wasn’t open as much, and then finally wasn’t open at all. The 21st Century arrived without a Colonial Room available to stop into for a beer and a quick chat with good old Pee Wee. The world had lost another good thing. But not totally, as it turned out. Last year, my brother told me that he had run into Pee Wee at his church, and even though the guy is now in his early 80’s, he said he would try to open the bar on Saturday nights – although he couldn’t promise that it would be every Saturday.

Nonetheless, Pee Wee did make good-enough on his promise, and late last December I stopped in with my brother for a reunion. It was bittersweet. Pee Wee was now an old man; he’s still in pretty good shape for his age, but different from the guy I remembered (although he still has a good barkeeper’s knack for hospitality; e.g. he still gives you a glass with your beer bottle, without asking). The place was mostly empty and quiet. Pee Wee only had the background lights on, unlike the old days when all the lights were lit and the seats were full of people chatting and laughing. Behind the bar were just a few bottles, just enough to fix a couple of mixed drinks; quite unlike the rows of bottles on the shelves against the back wall, as in the old days. The reunion was great, but there was no doubt that it was 2007, and that the old magic wasn’t coming back.

My brother and I got there again last week; things were about the same, but I wasn’t expecting much this time. In a way, the melancholy had lifted somewhat with oldies music playing in the background, and with another customer or two present. But a “new era” for the Colonial Room is not in the offing. Pee Wee told us that he and his wife now have the place up for sale, and hope to move out of state in a few months. So although we will hopefully get back there at least once more before the end, the focus must remain on the past, and not the future. The goodbye process has begun. But at least there will be a goodbye process. Too many good things pass without a decent goodbye.

So here’s a pic of “the Wee” in his bar, with two friends. He’s obviously the guy in the center; Wallington is not good with irony, so you don’t expect a “Pee Wee” there to be a 7-footer, nor a “Big Moe” to be four-eight. Nonetheless, Pee Wee was a classic “tavern keeper”. The world will have lost something on the night when he locks the front door of the “Colonial Room” for the last time.