RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 699 (the quiet life) It's funny sometimes how things run. Mentally it may be better to just let things go, and move on, and forget them, but sometimes, as a weird form of lava, they pop or ooze up out of some kindred deep  that is uncontrollable anyway. There's not really anything you can do about  it, and if you're any sort of a creative person it becomes raw material. For this, that, or something. That's always been my favorite part of life - and I'd really hate to give it up. Even when I'll, someday, have  to. Can you even imagine eternity? - Those houses, the new ones, along Inman Avenue and Clark Place and Monica Court, and a bit of Madison Ave., too, they were built basic and okay. I'd guess. There must have been codes and inspections and all of that. But, none of the houses had storm  windows or screens or storm doors and screen doors; and of course what we grew to learn as ...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 698 (possibilities are never endless) Weatherstripping, insulation, storm windows, fencing, curbs, edging, hedges, a cellar entrance, lawn-mowing, dogwood trees, more hedges (rear), a huge clothes-pole, a wooden shed, scrap lumber, bicycles, a dog house, a black hairy dog named Rinny (from Rin-Tin-Tin), a small treehouse, a swing-set from Dooley's, a water spigot installed outside on the back wall, for the long green hose to reach the large rear yard with spray water, and - lastly for now - a hand-made-by-Dad, (oversized) picnic table with attached seats, and redwood stain. Craziest! - Those are some of the enumerated things I can recall from my first year in Avenel, or at least in that 'new' house. The change of the complete environment, and my being 5, made everything new anyway, but so many things stand out. The road was still rubble, and not macadamed until 1963, maybe, Until then it was loos...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 697 (handmaidens and louses) The first words of Richard Nixon's autobiography are: 'I was born in a house my  father built.' There probably aren't too many Nixon fans,  and that's understandable. In fact though, I wonder how many people there are who actually even know the  name. No matter; for the lame they make walkers. That opening sentence always hit me good; it has an understated, almost,  elegance of the sort little found these days. Most people would end up saying, if they say anything, 'I was born in a local hospital and taken home to one of the development homes all in a row and pretty much alike alike, built by the 'Founders Acres Land Mill Group,' an investment-builder firm.' Something like that -  and whatever it would be would be a far cry from the home your father built. Everything's changed. - I don't even know what that would feel like - to be able ...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 696 (zombies) There was never much of a difference between 'doing' and 'not doing' once I got involved, almost foolishly, with the workaday world. In whatever I was doing, it was the same as not doing. The things I had to start to do made no sense to me at all. Yes, and believe me, I tried. Working made no claim on me; I never could keep my mind on it, disliked it, could never figure out why people would do it for 'money' or pay. I found no value in it - not in the dealings with others; not in the lame use of language and instructional words ( a worse use of verbiage, I've never seen, except perhaps in politics). Concepts, evasions, misrepresenting things, different ends from the originated intentions - and all that for the search of a few measly bucks to make a salary. The business world hated me, and I hated it. Yet, there I was, thrown like a lamb to the large-mawed lion starin...