RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,096 (when lawlessness becomes the law) One thing I always noticed in the Pine Barrens - which is a large area - was the lack of any real police patrol or presence. It's been said, of the many supposed issues of dumped bodies and hasty burials, that the mob boys, over from Philly, in one direction, or New Gretna and Atlantic City from the other, that the gangs and mob boys loved the sandy soils and the isolated roads and paths, for just that reason. An easy dig, and an easy dumping. Maybe so, and I read numerous accounts of whores and call girls being found dead along the Atlantic City Expressway and roads leading in and out of the Pine Barrens. Always unidentified, and always a 'mysterious,' unsolved slaying. Perhaps. And only perhaps: 'Jimmy Hoffa, meet Jasmine Lilyflower.' - The only times I saw police activity were when a passing State Trooper whizzed along a paved road. One episode

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,095 (no joke, but it was funny) Some people said Pine Barrens, some said Pinelands, some said Jersey Pines; some even said 'The lungs of New Jersey.' Whatever they said, I always knew what they meant. It was a grand expanse of open-air space: Water, streams, lakes, camping areas, old roads, the factories and encampments (most fascinating) - seasonal encampments. Bog factories. Cranberry-workers' settlements. I found at least 3. Lines of 10 or 12 cabins, weedy and almost wrecked, with communal outdoor water-troughs with soap and shaving mirrors, all that stuff just left there, as if the guys just departed; except it was dried out and caked. Fungus. Bugs. Mold. Slapping screens and doorways, and old funky cars left, down on their springs. Here and there, old houses, or remnants of old houses, homes, small farms, and recreational camps were still left around. By the 1980's, apparently from wha

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,094 (dreaming once my dreams of sand) Deep into the Jersey pine barrens, once I got a decent vehicle, we'd often enough go. It was like exit 6 or 7a, I forget, on the Turnpike to Rt. 206, if we went that way. We'd get off the Turnpike at the exit and it dumped out at the old Sandman Truck Stop. It was cool. All these trucker guys from like Tennessee and Georgia, deep south accents, sitting at each table, and each table had a telephone, next to the juke box music thing. They'd be calling their home base (this was in the 1980's), reporting on where they were, on the way to whatever, small talk, reports on the roads and freight and mileage and all. There was a Go Go Bar attached, and, of course, a motel, low, and with strips of rooms. I imagine too that they had a fine stable of girls for service. Food showers, rest, etc. for the truck guys. I used to love that place. The food was cheap and good enough for the kinds of crap I ate. Charles Sandman was a bi

RUDIMENTS, PT. 1,093 (high hopes for my ropes) Sometimes - and note that I say sometimes - in my drifting and mindless ways, I just wandered. Who was it, Wordsworth or someone, who wrote about wandering 'aimless as a cloud.' Well, actually, it was 'lonely' as a cloud, but I never liked that, and only seldom did I ever see an unattended, by itself, cloud. So - Mr. Wordsworth sir - I change it. My impetus here was aimless, not lonely. - "I wandered lonely as a Cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze..." It goes on from there, but I did always see it as really lacking. What I mean by that is that, for whatever its value as a 'Wordsworth' poem, it's more truly just a pile of words. It's just not the sort of writing one can do today, representa