RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 302 Making Cars I can't remember when, but the  first time I ran across fast food the concept just seemed pretty  natural. But I have no recollection. I know that in about 1956 we drove as a family, in my father's 1953 Ford station wagon, with my grandmother along, to Washington DC. We stayed five or six days in some cabins along the road just out of DC, in Virginia. I can remember that well, because it left an impression, strong. I'd never been in a 'cabin' set-up before, and enjoyed it. There were a few lawn  chairs set out and we sat around the two cabins in the long evening  light. What most stands out is that  I recall eating in this large place filled with people, and in the center of the large room was the food service center  -  something which I'd never seen before. The people all got  trays and cups and forks and all and made their way to this center area where, after calling out wha

RUDIMENTS, pt. 301 Making Cars There are thoughts that you debate with others, and there are thoughts you debate with yourself. For me, it was always, with myself, 'How could I be such a jerk?' Like the day that my mother tearfully told me that Robert Kennedy had been killed (which of course I already knew about, and wasn't current, breaking, news; I forget how it came up), I turned on her, in her distress, and just said, 'Good; maybe it'll teach him to keep his mouth shut.' Looking back now, that is about the most brazen and stupid comment anyone could make, let alone into the face of their own sad mother  -  sad at the occurrence  -  and not deserving the snide swipe I'd thrown at her. (I noticed, however, she'd not been sad  in the same way at all, just previous, when Martin Luther  King went down. I probably  could have used that same  dumb comment then too).  Perfect idiot stuff. And, in 

RUDIMENTS, pt. 300 Making Cars Long about 1964 I really did fell  in love with the Russian dissident movement  -  Samizdat it was called  -  hand-published manuscripts and critiques of the society, hand-copied, or printed and surreptitiously distributed. It got lots of people in trouble. Yuli Daniel, Andrei Sinyavski are two who come to mind right off; of course, along with the biggies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. I don't know what I was doing among the  - a know-nothing American kid reading the fringes. But they fascinated me, as did their movement itself  -  the ways and means of their distribution, meeting, exchanging information, eluding authorities. It was a quite thrilling world, and one I was quite caught up into for a while. I liked the purity of the ideology, even though, in truth, I knew little about any of it but through hearsay. These fellows went through hell, labor camps, exile, forced marc