We drive down from Hamburg, New Jersey on a road nobody’s
heard of except for Frank, Jimmy bitching at me in the back seat from his usual
soap box in the passenger seat, warning me not to distract Frank while he’s driving
or we might wind up in Oshkosh, wherever that might be.
Jimmy says the last thing he needs is to have a giggling Frank
driving in this remote place, and that if anything sets him off, he’ll murder Frank
to shut him up.
Jimmy, as usual, is in a hurry, although today he might
actually have a good reason, since he hopes to reach his sister’s house before
she leaves for work.
He’s broke again and needs to borrow some money.
But Frank, who Jimmy’s once described as “the most careless
careful driver in the world,” takes a route where he rarely as to exceed 25
milers per hour and seems particularly attracted to 20, pumping up Jimmy’s
outrageous with each painful mile.
We all know that when we get to Jimmy’s sister’s place,
she’ll be gone, and Jimmy will be so pissed he won’t be able to speak the whole
trip back.
We only pretend like we might get there until Jimmy gets
pissed thinking about it and yells for to pull over, and when Frank does, Jimmy
gets out and starts to walk.
We have to beg him to get back in the car by which time,
he’s come up with a new scheme and tells Frank to give him $50.
This puts an abrupt halt to Frank’s giggling.
He sees nothing funny when it comes to money and demands to
know why he should give Jimmy anything.
Jimmy’s say Frank owes him $100 and Jimmy being a kind soul
is willing to settle accounts for half if Frank pays it right away.
Naturally, Frank asks how Jimmy came up with such a debt,
and frowns even more when Jimmy mentions the bet the two of them made at 16
that suggested the sickly Frank wouldn’t survive until age 25.
A relieve Frank giggles again, and points out that he isn’t
25 yet, but 24.
At which point, Jimmy says that’s why he’s willing to
settle. Jimmy doesn’t trust Frank to leave the $100 in his will when he does
kick the bucket next year.
Things are about to get ugly between the two of them when I
point out that we are lost.
Jimmy blames me for distracting Frank, then orders Frank to
pull into a gas station where he might get a map and make a phone call. He says
he’s got to have his sister check the news paper’s obituaries to see if Frank’s
name is in them yet.
Faith not n the ordinary or traditional way – the quiet paganistic
motivations of the world, relying on mother earth or Gaia to give him support.
Remarkably, Jimmy is not dramatically different from Clayton
who he despises (or appears to), and by habit, I mean, he and Clayton both do
things in specific ways, and that the universe – as in Medieval times – tends to
revolve around him.
(Here I need to be careful as to not project onto him
characteristics which are not really his and I suppose some measure of example
is in order here.)
Perhaps the most annoying of these habits is how Jimmy manages
to obtain rides. Years ago, when many of the Garley Gang lived in this
apartment complex in Passaic, Jimmy made a point of contacting each and every
one of us, getting each of us to promise to give him a ride (usually to Quick
Chek), lining us up just on the off chance one or more of us crapped out at the
last moment.
This might seem like a reasonable precaution, except for the
fact that each of usually went out of our way to accommodate him, assuming some
urgency to his request – especially when at times he “needed” to go the library
(we assuming he would pay some late fee if we did not rush him there.)
On one such occasion, Jimmy arranged for a ride to the
library and as it happened, I was the only one available, and he made it clear
it would be a terrible trek to take the ten block walk in the icy rain. Since I
knew Jimmy often had little money to spare, I assumed that if I did not bring
him, his pile of books would be overdue.
After nearly a half hour scraping the ice off my car, I
drove him the ten blocks to the library. He did not have books to bring back,
and he took none out when we got there.
I’m still uncertain as to why we went at all.
But I believe this may be his need for attention.
Last week, James refused to go to work 15 minutes early in
order to accommodate my schedule, even though he’s the one begging me for the
ride, the result of which, he arrived on work at time, and I arrived at my jobs
15 minutes late.
Most often, he has another purpose for his rides, often
getting me to take him to John Ritchie’s house on Totowa Road in Paterson for
the purpose of getting pot – John is kind, always trading pot for a painting
Jimmy has made, and perhaps has the largest collection of anyone.
Sometimes, we go to Patty Joyce’s house in Little Falls for
the same purpose, although he prefers John to Patty, because Patty wants cash.
Jimmy has habits in the apartment that so resemble Clayton’s
that I sometimes confuse who is whom if I only hear them moving around, each
caught in a strange dance, as one does this and the other does that, but always
with the same gestures and steps, putting this here or that there, putting on
or turning off music, mumbling about this or that, or about me or each other.
They could be twins. Perhaps in another life they were.
But from the way Jimmy feels about Clayton, I suspect they
might have been Cain and Abel in the previous incarnation.
Jimmy and I spend too much of a free time figuring out ways
to upset Clayton.
It has become something of a hobby with us, seeking new and
novel ways to offend him, or shake the foundations of his beliefs.
Clayton is a born clay pigeon, abused in and out of school
as a child. His father was a drunk and something of a madman who liked to play
mind games on his kids.
Like the game he played the first time I met the man when I
went over to the house and Clifton and watched him intentionally vomit in my
plate.
I don’t know how much influence Clayton’s mother had on him,
but the father apparently was so full of self-pity it tainted Clayton as well.
To say his growing up was traumatic is an understatement.
It left him unable to deal adequately with the physical world,
forcing him to rely on other people for assistance.
Then, he got religion, and not some sensible religion the
way Ginger did (Buddhism has its merits) but a whacko religion called
Scientology that is more cult than faith and relies largely on brainwashing its
members. He has risen into the ranks of the faith so that he is considered a leader
and has a host of books around him that tell him how to manage people (which
the manuals call units). But when he is very stressed, he puts on headphones
and listens to propaganda tapes that calm him down by dragging him back into
the weird reality – this driving Jimmy craziest, though nearly everything about
Clayton, especially his habits.
Clayton is a meticulous man, insisting on taking two long
showers daily, and has amazingly precise methods of grooming himself –
something that annoys both me and Jimmy, yet we can’t stop watching him with a
morbid fascination.
Clayton is full of contradictions. Fanatically religious, he
is obsessed with war games and insists on playing the role of the Nazis. He and
his friend, Rich, are constantly speculating on the possible ways Germany could
have won the war.
From what I gather, Clayton – who is about our age – is a virgin
and has never even had a relationship with a woman (or anyone else for that
matter).
We don’t pick on him in that way – since any one of the Garley
Gang might have ended up like him. Bob almost did.
But we do other things, like move something he put down somewhere
and goes crazy looking for, since he puts everything in precise places and
expects to find them there.
He gets extremely upset when either of us touches his tapes
or looks into his religious control manuals. So, sometimes, we switch tapes. I
put a tape of rock music in his player once and thought Clayton was having a fit
when he put the headphones on and started to listen. He sputtered so much;
Jimmy actually had his hand on the phone to call for an ambulance.
Sometimes, I go into the bathroom just when I know Clayton
intends to take a shower and stay there, picturing him fidgeting outside the
door in his impatience to use it.
We both play music we know Clayton doesn’t like, forcing him
to take refuge in his tapes.
Clayton gets most upset when Jimmy engages in a theological
discussion, always asking “You really believe that? I mean, really?”
Eventually Clayton runs back to his tapes, totally shaken.
I don’t know what we’ll do for sport when Clayton moves out –
as he has promised to do many, many times. I guess Jimmy and I will have to
pick on each other.
Oh well, Jimmy is in, and it strikes me for the first time
how lonely he really is.
Our temporary roommate, Clayton, too.
Last night, Jimmy and Clayton – like 17-year-old boys –
discussed the finer points of women.
Jimmy seems unaware of his ability to love and be loved.
This might explain his problems with Ginger.
Of all the men in the world who can win the heart of a woman,
Jimmy can.
Sometimes it is only for a brief moment in time, that tick
of the clock when he seems the wonder of all wonders.
There are one or two who came close, but none it would seem
had the same impact as Ginger. No one else won more than a token sign of
affection from him.
Now, approaching the age of 34, he suffers the anguish all
men do, frustration and doubt, the uncertainty of his own appeal.
After years of people like me, Garrick, Ralph, Frank and
others envying his self-confidence, Jimmy appears remarkably vulnerable, making
us fools for believing he was any different than we are.
This is the same mistake we make about women, assuming those
we are attracted to are more confident than we are. We foolishly believe others
control their emotions better than we do.
I suspect Jimmy like the rest of us lives with the idiotic
notion that we must present a stoic front, playing roles intended to give the
impression of self-confidence while behind this mask we struggle.
In my case, I play the role of a semi-intellectual. Clayton
hides behind a mask of silence. Jimmy
wears a mask of the genius hermit, a very successful stone wall through which I
could rarely glimpse the real James.
But inside, Jimmy is no more stone than either of us are. He
quakes with the idea of failure.
Clayton admits his weakness; so, he shows his true self more
easily.
I have tougher skin, cemented with bricks of ego, pride and stubbornness,
which takes an emotional earthquake to reveal – which has happened a few times.
But how does one get to the truth inside Jimmy without
damaging the Michelangelo-like façade he has built around himself, without
cracking the artwork?
Ginger helped, creating tiny wedges through which we can
glimpse the real Jimmy, cracks he’s desperate to repair to keep his exterior
intact.
Last night, he could not keep these closed, speaking frankly
and bitterly about life and romance, creating a new façade made out of anger
that would keep us from seeing just how vulnerable he really is.
This is my favorite performance of the band, an outdoor concert at a bikers' picnic in August 1975, which I recorded. I left some of the sidetalk in this version that is not included in some of the other versions I gave out over the last few years.
The day begins with the quiet before the madness of
customers: a container of OJ, a glimpse at The New York Times, and a moment of
reflection.
We seem to have arrived at yet another great moment in time,
a conjuncture of importance that comes with Jimmy’s return to Passaic.
It hardly seems as if three and a half years have passed
since his last being here.
He seemed to live in Towaco for an eternity.
This has much to do with his infatuation with Ginger.
A huge portion of Jimmy’s soul inhabits that large house,
like smoke rising from its chimney into its wooden rafters, embedded permanently
along with the scent of burning wood.
Jimmy and I spent a number of evenings seated in front of
the stone hearth, talking, playing guitars, listening to classical records.
It was the earthiest of places, full of last century’s wholesome
feelings, and yet close enough to civilization to seem practical.
In fact, too close, with civilization creeping closer inch
by inch, hemming in that little hill so that you could not go a mile in any
direction without running into walls of concrete.
I remember one Christmas climbing up that hill with rain at
its bottom only to find the top covered with snow, making me realize that each
visit there was traveling into another time and into another world, a magical
world that somehow defied the temptation of civilization during those years
when Jimmy was there, and is perhaps part of what attracted him there.
And for those three or so years, I often found Jimmy
puttering around outside, digging the earth with his hands, painting in one of
the remote rooms upstairs, tending gardens, clearing stone and glass he found buried
in the slanted back yard.
Each time I visited him; Jimmy was up to something there.
Yes, he and I both understood that it would not last –
everything came to an end eventually.
But at the time, the end of dreams such as this were hard to
visualize.
Jimmy appeared to have found his place in the world,
becoming the Merlin character he so envied from the Mary Steward books, the
aging Merlin who was learning the arts of the earth.
I thought the end would come differently than it did, that Mrs.
Fennelly would finally come to realize that the place was just too much to
handle for her to keep up alone and would sell it back to civilization and the
tide of progress – which always tends to ruin thins like this in the supposed journey
onto better things.
I think this is why Jimmy worked so hard, struggling to delay
that inevitable day, knowing down deep in his heart, even he couldn’t keep it
back forever.
And even though he had minor victories, it was always a
losing battle.
But even the struggle was a delight: the smell of lilacs in
season, the grinning faces of the orange button marigolds, the gray faces of
the dusty millers, and for three seasons, he struggled to grow radishes,
carrots, pumpkins and tomatoes, stirring them up out of the soil like children,
green umbilical cords clinging to them as he gave them birth.
He hoed up the thick black soil, dug, planted and even
begged for those plants to grow, raising them from seedlings in the kitchen
when it was still too cold outside to plant, even after the thaw, they hanging
in pots from every window, he petting them like pets, their green limbs
overflowing their pots, like green rain, sweeping down, creating veils
throughout which he could squint out at the world beyond.
The sunlight through these veils alone created a kind of
magic.
But there had to be a price for all this, and part of this
was watching the woman he loved drift away.
For much of what he did in this magical world involved her
with the presumption that if he created paradise, she might be enticed, he
always assuming that paradise required two people.
Jimmy made Ginger into a goddess long ago, and I fully
believe that he thought of her when he tended his flowers and plants, she the
greed buds he prayed would blossom into something grand, her face in each of
the flowers he tenderly caressed, he holding her at each stage, at 17 when he
met her, and 22, when she left him at Pine Street, and on and on, each a growing
monument to a magical time we all knew could not last.
I like to think he tried to protect her from the inevitable
pain. Oh, yes, there had to be pain – for in the end, even Eden came to an end,
and in fact as much as Jimmy wanted this to be Eden, it was not.
He and she were two souls with differing visions of the
world.
Jimmy was essentially a mystic with a hazy view of the real
world. He was not a dreamer the way many were. He understood the darkness and
evils that could work their way into the deluded dreamer. He simply avoided the
whole issue, pretending such things did not exist when he knew they did.
To me, early on, it was Ginger who attempted to blind
herself to what the real world was about, making awakening all the more
painful.
In Eden, it was knowledge that devoured Eve – ambition for
something more. Ginger seems to want to be something more than she is, and
wants Jimmy to be something, too – and seems to see Jimmy as wasting his
talents.
Jimmy could have become president had he wanted it.
Ginger seemed to learn from Jimmy the rudiments of survival,
but having learned them, began to grow beyond him and away from him, using Buddhism
to obtain something Jimmy could not provide, meeting others who could help her.
She would be something someday with Jimmy or without him.
Now, Jimmy returns here, devoured by Beowulf’s dragon,
learning for the first time that Ginger is not a goddess at all, but a dark
queen whose sin – the need to be more than she is – cannot be erased merely by
Jimmy’s love.
Maybe cutting his finger on Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the
news that Ginger is getting married – to someone other than Jimmy.
But it took Jimmy a long time to come out and tell us.
He said that it didn’t affect him at all.
“It’s only Ginger getting married,” he said. “It had to happen sooner
or later.”
He said she told him over the phone on Thanksgiving, an apparent slip
of the tongue that required her to come north to explain.
Happiness has a way of bubbling out and not likely meant to cause hurt.
Jimmy, however, IS very hurt.
Something is being taken out of his life, if not love, then someone he
considers hugely important.
And he can’t quite bring himself to like this “new” fellow of Ginger’s.
He tells me he thinks the man is beneath her.
But Jimmy has made a goddess of Ginger and that’s the problem.
No one ever be good enough for her – not even Jimmy.
Jimmy said Ginger claims this “new” fellow is a lot like Jimmy –
something Jimmy clearly didn’t want to hear.
I keep recalling the tale Jimmy repeatedly told about how he stole Ginger
from the clutching grasp of Ralph.
He says he remembers the exact day and time and the things they did
together.
He also remembers the failed attempt to live together and the sense of
failure he felt when she said she had to leave.
She’s all grown up now, hardly the 17-year-old Jimmy first swept up,
and in growing up, Ginger has developed her own philosophy of life. She lives
in the real material world while Jimmy seeks some existence less physical.
“It had to happen,” Jimmy told me, the pain in his eyes so obvious I
almost have to cry just looking at him, but a controlled pain, and that, too,
is part of the problem.
Maybe if he had begged her to stay one of those previous times. Maybe if
he had cried like a normal human being might in the same situation.
But his pride seems to make him resist showing the kind of emotions the
rest of us would show.
He keeps the worst for himself, giving everybody else his wit.
Now, the year ends on this long, sad note.
The song which ten years ago had been one of joy is joy again, but not
for Jimmy.
Now, he is alone again.
Now that special hope which had been in the back of his head all along
is shattered, and he sits on a mountain, a nowhere man with no blue meanies to
blame, not unless these meanies are the ambiguous feelings which he has felt
since his first meeting Ginger back in 1970.
He doesn’t have anyone else to whom he can turn, upon whose shoulder he
can cry, or anyone he can cast hate at, or even a place where he can hide.
There is only the sad call of age and the empty years ahead.
Ginger has grown up, and grown away from him, and part his ability to
mature is to learn how to accept the fact of it.
Just why we kidnapped Frank Quackenbush that day in 1975 I don't think
any of us know even all these years later.
Perhaps Jimmy suggested it. Or we have since talked ourselves into
believing Jimmy did.
At first – when we were all sitting in Louis’ living room at 86 Passaic
Street concocting the plan to dump him in the middle of the Tappan Zee Bridge
and leave him there – Frank thought we were kidding.
None of us were if he could make it back on his own and we bet against
each other as to whether he could or not
Had Frank thought we were serious he would never have gotten into the
van with us.
He didn’t figure it out until a few blocks later at which time he
started to complain, and a few blocks after that when we reached Clifton, he
begged us to stop, and finally, he simply started to moan.
We would have done it, too, had not the inevitable question arisen as
to who was going to pay for gas and tolls, at which point we turned and went
back to Passaic to get high.
This was a period of time I still envy when Garrick, Jimmy, and Lewis
had built an impromptu artist community in an apartment complex owned by Garrick’s
aunt. Louis, a photographer, and his girlfriend Jewell were still in school.
Louis and Garrick were supplementing their income by making jewelry in some
sweat shop in Hawthorne. Jimmy was both artist and musician. I figured they
needed a writer like me to make a full set. But Jimmy, me and Garrick in a very
small space did not mix well, and I eventually made my way uptown to what Jimmy
later called “the fancy apartment,” and when I went broke there, I moved back
to the rooming house in Montclair.
Jimmy had moved into Passaic after leaving Pine Street (late 1974 or
early 1975) at a time when red vans were all the rage in the Garley Gang.
Louis had one, which he used as a roadie for the band.
I drove a red van starting in June 1974 when I left the card company
for the cosmetic warehouse.
Jimmy actually got a job driving a red van for Outwater Plastics on River
Drive in Garfield in early 1975.
Sometimes, Jimmy and I would pass each other on the road. We kept
telling each other we should meet up on the road somewhere, but never did.
Jimmy got obsessed with finding the headquarters of 84 Lumber company whose
signs he kept seeing everywhere along the road. He never did find it. I found
one of its New Jersey facilities much later during a trip to Cape May and kept
meaning to tell him, and regretfully never did that either.
Garrick moved out of the apartment with Jimmy in the place Louis previously
lived in, briefly living in 84 Passaic Street before moving onto a larger
apartment at 82, while Jimmy moved into 84, and some Latino family took over 86.
When Jimmy lost his job with Outwater and could not pay his rent for a
year, Garrick’s aunt evicted him. He moved back to his father’s house in West
Paterson and lasted there until his father told him he had to get a job – after
which he came to Passaic again, and lived in Garrick’s attic. I moved into 84
Passaic Street on March 1, 1978
By that time, Jimmy and Garrick already planning moves of their own.
(Jimmy would later return briefly in 1984-85 but it wasn’t the same. I had lost
my job as driver and by that time, all three red vans were consigned to
history.
I don’t know why this means so much to me or why I felt such joy waving
to Jimmy when I saw him on the Parkway, he coming while I was going, and yet
both of us caught up in some strange magic – he would later call synchronicity –
one of those silly coincidences that make life interesting.
And to this day, I wonder if Frank would have made back from the Tappan
Zee Bridge had we had the money for gas to get him there.
As much as Jimmy depended on Frank to get him around, calling him at
all times, all seasons to get him from one place to another, these journeys
were fraught with frustration -- especially in the early 1970s when Frank was
apt to take Jimmy the long way around to get any place.
At some point when the three of us were in Haledon and needed to get
some place near Oakland either to meet Garrick or Ginger, Jimmy insisted that
Frank take well known highways to get where we're going.
Jimmy was naturally in a hurry as he always was to get some place most
likely we were seeking pot first and then seeking to make the meeting later
Frank insisted he knew a shortcut, something that would get us to the
first meeting first and then on time for the second meeting -- and despite Jimmy's
protest, Frank took off in a direction completely opposite the one Jimmy
wanted.
I had been on this trip with
Frank before and knew where it ended up eventually. Since we had often taken it
to get to where Jimmy intended but I was uncertain just which was quicker and so
seated in the back seat as I always was, I generally kept my mouth shut.
I let the usual dialog take place in the front seat where Jimmy
insisted that Frank hurry and Frank insisted he was with Jimmy asking every few
minutes: “Are we there” and Frank saying “not yet, Jim -- soon though.”
Jimmy of course then pressed Frank
to drive and Frank told him “no way.”
This restriction on Jimmy's driving came after two unfortunate
accidents which were not Jimmy's fault, but which Frank blamed on him.Both of these occurred in West Paterson and
both on the exit ramp off Route 46 and in both cases I was in the backseat when
the car was rear ended.
In both cases, Jimmy had stopped for a stop sign near Browertown Road and
the car behind wanted him to advance through the stop sign and did not stop.
Prior to these, Jimmy always insisted on driving partly because he
suspected Frank was always trying to get us lost in what frank called “A
Magical Mystery Tour.”
In some cases, Jimmy was right.Frank ache for the carefree days the summer of 1972 when we all eligible
bachelors rejected by the women we loved and wandered around the landscape
enjoying each other's misery.
Jimmy distrusted Frank's driving as much as I did.
Frank and I had been in at least three accidents together one of which
left Frank with a broken neck and me with a mashed-up face.
Frank was the only person I ever knew that while learning to drive
managed to get involved in a multiple car accident with six parked cars and
managed to nearly knock down his own front porch.
Jimmy's minor fender-benders we're nowhere near as serious but had
dented the bumper of Frank's relatively new car.
After the first accident Frank was cautious but allowed to drive again
after the second heat put a ban on it and insisted on becoming Jimmy's
chauffeur.
Such was the case this time but as in all of these trips that Jimmy
insisted Frank take Frank went his own way.
“Are we there yet?” Jimmy would ask.
“Not yet, Jim,” Frank replied, “but soon.”
After a particular long stretch
of trees Jimmy glanced back at me in the back seat inside then looked at Frank
then looked out the window and said, “This is very scenic but I've scenic all before.”
We eventually did arrive at both meetings and relatively on time. The
real frustration came when it was time for Frank to drive Jimmy home.
Jimmy wanted to be dropped off first even though he lived Jimmy wanted
to be dropped off first even though he lived in Passaic at the time and I lived
in Montclair and we were coming from the direction of Verona.
Frank said it was easier for him to get home from Passaic then to have
to come all the way back to Montclair to drop me off second.
So, Frank did with Frank always does and went where he wanted which in
this case was to my house in Montclair.
When we pulled up to the curb Jimmy looked over the seat at me nodded
said goodbye then looked at Frank and said: “ I am going to go call up your
mother to have her pray to St Jude so that St Jude can talk to God to have the
bird of paradise fly over here and shit on your head.”
Jimmy was still fuming when they
pulled away Frank nearly burst his gut laughing which only pissed off Jimmy
more.
We went west to see the band in what has become a yearly Memorial
Day ritual, something akin to a bad Blues Brothers move in which my old friends
insist on picking up the pieces of their youth, to relive glory days they did
not know where glory days when they were young.
Since our moving to Jersey City, we had grown out of touch
with Jimmy and others – not so much because of distance, but the direction of
our lives.
And since his moving west to Lake Hopatcong in 1985, the
whole area had changed and become less comfortable – largely due to ever
increasing development.
The state had removed the kinks out of the winding road from
Route 80 to where Jimmy lived and worked, and in exchange had allowed
developers to plow down whole mountainsides of trees. Everything looked naked
or posh, far from the resort area my grandfather dragged his kids during The Great
Depression.
My first Garley Gang encounter with the area came in 1972
when Jimmy, Frank and I went there to get drunk to recover from our failed
romances.
We found a small combination bar and liquor store just up
the street from the library and across from what would later become the local
Quick Chek.
The bartender didn’t like us on account of our long hair, and
neither did the rednecks who thought we were trying to steal their girls.
We got out of there with our lives and decided to go find
Richard Haas, who Jimmy claimed was staying at their summer retreat on Bertrand’s
Island.
We got sidetracked by the bumper cars – which was Frank’s idea
– each of us climbing into our own car in the attempt to take out our aggression
on each other. It didn’t occur to me until late that Frank was still recovering
from a broken neck at the time, and still wore a collar when he felt discomfort
or pain.
Still drunk, we left the park, Jimmy decided to find Richard
and we came out onto the slanted narrow streets behind the park where we were
confronted by three large dogs who took a particular interest (or so Jimmy
claimed when he leaped into my arms) in Jimmy.
We abandoned our search for Richard and sought refuge in
Frank’s car.
It would be a whole decade later before I actually found the
house again when Jimmy asked me to meet him there in the summer of 1982 when I
brought back my ex-wife and child for him to meet, all of us wandering down
into the amusement park where Jimmy did his best to keep my daughter amused.
Three years after that, Jimmy moved into the house with
Richard in a move as dramatic as retreat to Richmond by Robert E Lee,
foreshadowing some great surrender I was only vaguely aware of.
I made such frequent trips to the place I might have lived
there as well, even though Jersey City as a longer haul to get there than was
Passaic.
After Frank’s death in 1995, my trips grew less frequent,
partly because my own life in Jersey City became very complicated – I was
taking care of my mother until her death in early 2002, and I had a job that
consumed my time.
Jimmy had settled into a career of his own at the local library,
and though he still worked on art and music, he seemed content – even after he
got put out of the Haas house in 1994 and lived in an old house near the
library he was convinced was haunted.
Jimmy got nostalgic for strange things – including old tapes
he and I did (sometimes with others) while high and kept trying to convince me
to do more. We never got around to it.
I always ached for the reunion of the band – the real band –
in whatever configuration they could arrange.
Two years ago, we went to see John, Jimmy and Garrick perform
at the fire house. This year, Jimmy told us, John assembled a whole band
including drums, base and keyboard.
And under a tent in a field, the band played although only a
handful of locals sat with us, perhaps the volume being too loud, a far cry
from the more acoustic version than won praise two years ago.
I liked it, although I could feel tension among the band
members, bringing back the glory days when they were always fighting. Some of
it had to do with John moving in with Jimmy’s sister, but it was more than that
– something I still haven’t put my finger on.
Jimmy drags me to Bob’s bookstore
in Boonton to help Bob close up shop – a big disappointment for Jimmy because
for the previous two years he could almost always trade books with Bob for pot.
It doesn’t really occur to Jimmy why Bob was upset when we get there.
Bob complains about Jimmy’s being late and that we have every little
time to pack up all the books – what Bob intends to do with them after that was
anybody’s guess.
The volumes he deals with are hardly best sellers or if they are, they
made the New York Times list sometime prior to the fall of the Roman Empire.
Jimmy, of course, owes Bob for a life time of favors that include
additional out of the way trips such as picking Jimmy up at Ginger’s Towaco
house, dropping him off at the library, Quick Chek or shopping mall, while
in-between buying lunch (Jimmy’s version of Whimpey’s “I’ll gladly pay your
Tuesday for a hamburger today,” with Tuesday not coming until today, and today
being Sunday leaving us one day to clear out the store before the landlord
sweeps in with a bulldozer to clear out the junk and cobwebs to make way for
some boutique or antique shop or some other high fashion place the landlord
aspires to have an a tenant.
Bob claims yuppies don’t’ read anything but self-help books that won’t
help them anyway because they are too far gone to be helped.
“They all hate us aging hippies,” Bob says. “They’re just waiting for
us to die so they can take over.”
“Take over what?” I ask.
Neither Jimmy nor Bob has an answer.
Inside, the store smells of rotting paper and with good reason. The store
front has bookshelves along every wall, and across the intervening free space
with aisles so narrow even the always skinny Bob struggles to get through them.
And all the bookshelves sag, overstuffed with ancient tomes on whose leather
spines the print has worn away to dust.
The heat makes it worse, cooking the old paper so that each breath
seems as thick as beer in my lungs.
“What’s with the heat?” Jimmy asks.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “It’s always been like that. Must be the way
the air circulates.”
“Or doesn’t,” Jimmy says. “Maybe you should open some windows.”
“They are open. They are always open. Even in winter.”
“Maybe you should have opened a nudist bookstore where people could
leave their clothes at the door,” Jimmy says.
“I don’t think the town would like that,” Bob says. “The mayor hates
hippies, too.”
“Well, the sooner we get this over with the better off we’ll be,” Jimmy
says. “Where exactly are we moving them to?”
“My apartment.”
“All these books to your apartment? I thought you had another location
in mind.”
“I can’t afford another location. I dumped all my inheritance in this
place – I was sure Boonton was the perfect location – I mean will the college
graduates who live in the towns around here.”
“So, what happened?” I ask.
“I told you, yuppies don’t read – I should have opened a comic bookstore,
something on their reading level. I made a huge mistake investing in classics.”
Jimmy examines one of the books.
“I would hardly call these classic – these things are so dull nobody
read them even when they were in print, which is nearly a century ago or more.”
“It’s TV,” I suggest.
“If it is, then it’ll only get worse,” Jimmy says. “There are things on
the horizon that will make TV out of date.”
Jimmy is up on a lot of those things, always predicting amazing things
we will see – not like the Worlds Fair a decade ago, but stranger. He and
Ritchie Gordy sometimes talk about what’s on the horizon. Gordy builds Heath
Kid computers, and attaches them to phone lines, tapping into some strange information
world I still don’t understand.
“It’s America,” Bob mumbles. “I should have opened my store in Paris.”
“Where nobody reads English?” Jimmy asks.
“Some people do.”
“I’m gonna suffocate,” Jimmy says. “There must be some way to let more
air in here.”
“There’s more windows in the back I’ve never been able to get open,”
Bob says.
Bob hands Jimmy a screwdriver and somehow, we manage to wedge the back
windows open.
Fresh air from an early spring pours through the opening though not
enough to dispel the scent of cooked paper and the sense of age inside the
storefront.
Bob doesn’t seem to mind the smell. He has lived with it his whole
life, not just for the two years he’s operated this store.
Maybe it reminds him of his father – the old man I always used to see
seated in the living room of their house on the hill, newspaper or book in
front of his face without which I might not recognize him.
He and Bob are so much alike they might be twins – except that Bob has
become enamored with Jimmy, the way we all have, sending him in a far different
and less practical direction, selling books in Boonton nobody wants to buy.
Bob tells us we can choose any book we want as payment for helping him
move since he can’t possibly afford to pay us in cash – though Jimmy wants something
other than a book.
I look over the spines of books I can barely read, even if the gold
lettering wasn’t as faded as it is, volumes about subjects so obtuse I need a
college course just to learn how to peal open their covers – though Bob assures
me I might fine one or two amusing.
Jimmy grumbles about the fact that Frank isn’t here yet.
“He promised to help,” Jimmy mumbles.
I tell him I’m sure Frank will get here. I have my doubts, having heard
from Frank about some new romance with some younger woman who none of us have
yet met.
I ask how Bob expects to fit all these books in his apartment.
“I’ve seen your apartment, Bob, it’s half the size of this place,” I
say.
“I can’t keep them all,” Bob mumbles, sadly, looking down at his hands
like a father who must choose between his offspring, which shall live, which
shall die, which does he love the most.
Bob tells us another collector made an offer on some of his books, but
only the good ones, the rare ones, the books Bob intends to keep.
“Maybe you just leave the books here that you don’t want,” Jimmy says. “Let
the landlord figure out what to do with them.”
“I would. But I want my deposit back,” Bob says. “I leave a mess the
landlord will keep it – besides, he’ll throw them out.”
“Isn’t that what you’ll end up doing anyway?”
“I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t look my father in the eye if I did.”
Jimmy sighed.
“I always thought running a bookstore part time on weekends was a bad
idea,” he said. “But I have an idea. But I wish Frank was here. We’re going to
need more hands to do this.”
“What did you have in mind?” I ask.
“First let’s separate the books you want, Bob, from the ones you don’t.
After that, I’ll tell you what we can do.”
That alone is a chore, a military operation that takes us through the
store one bookcase after another, creating piles near the front door – the largest
of which is the pile we have to somehow dispose of.
Jimmy is in the back of the store when he gives a yelp.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Come here and I’ll show you,” he says.
Bob and I converge on Jimmy who has just finished emptying a bookcase
at the rear of the store. He points to the wall.
“You know what that is?” he asks.
Bob squints through his glasses.
“It looks like a thermostat?”
“Exactly. And do you see what it’s set at?”
I look. the line points to the number 90.
“It’s been on that high since the day you moved in two years ago,”
Jimmy says. “No wonder it’s so hot in here. And no wonder your landlord wants
you out. He must be paying a fortune in heat. But no point in turning it down
now. Let’s just pack up the books you want in your car and get the hell out of
here.”
“What about the other books?” I ask.
“We’ll take them up the street to the library,” Jimmy says.
“The library is closed,” Bob says. “Besides, they won’t want most of
these books and won’t take all these if they did.”
“They’ll have to do something with them if they find them piled on the
front step,” Jimmy says. “Today is Sunday. We have the rest of the day to get
them up there and then get the hell out of town.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” I say. “There’s a hell of a lot of books
to move.”
“Then, we better get started,” Jimmy says.
Jimmy finds a hand truck; Bob stacks books on it; I wheel this up the
hill to the library where I put the books near the door and when I run out of
room there, on the steps, leaving just enough room between them for someone in
the morning to make their way to the door with the key.
It is tedious work and we are overheated even outside, Jimmy
complaining the whole time about the number of books Bob manage to collect over
the years.
“Has anyone told you that you are not the Library of Congress?” he asks
Bob.
Then he bitches about how unfaithful Frank is.
“He promised to be here,” Jimmy says. “I though I could rely on him.”
“When it comes between being loyal to you and being with a woman, the
woman wins all the time,” I said.
“I’ve seen the kind of women Frank goes with, he’s better off with us,”
Jimmy says.
Then, he stops, stares up the street.
“Cheese it, guy, it’s the fuzz!”
I glance up the hill just in time to see the patrol car turning the
corner near the library.
“If he looks at the books on the library steps and then sees us, we’re
doomed,” Jimmy says. “Quick, pull everything inside.”
So, we drag the hand truck full of books through the door, stacks of
books Bob has ready tumble like the center of San Francisco during an earthquake,
one pile falling into the next until there is nothing but rubble.
Jimmy stares out at the street.
“What’s he doing?” Bob asks.
“He’s going slow,” Jimmy says. “Do you think he’s on to us?”
“Maybe not,” Bob says. “There have been a number of burglaries.”
“On Sunday?” Jimmy snarls. “Those cads!”
“It’s getting hot in here again,” I say. “Can you open the door more.”
“Not without the cop seeing us when he passes.”
“Why should that matter?” Bob says. “We’re not burglars. This is my
store.”
“Precisely. Tomorrow the library is going to see those books and call
the cops. If the cop sees us in here today, he’ll remember that tomorrow and
then come looking for us. Do you really want to go to jail for illegally dumping
books?”
“If we’re going to get arrested, I wish he would do it soon, jail
couldn’t be any hotter than this,” I say.
Slowly, the patrol car makes its way down the street, the officer
inside inching long the curb to stare into each shop as he passes, coming
closer and closer until we’re scared, he will see us even with the door closed.
Then, he passes us, and moves down the hill, and then is gone from sight.
“We need to get this over faster,” Jimmy says.
“It would go faster if you did more than supervise,” Bob says.
“With you two somebody has to supervise,” Jimmy says. “But if I must, I
must.”
And so, he starts stacking books outside for me to collect with the
hand truck, and I roll them up to the library only to find twice as many stacks
on the sidewalk as when I left.
“Don’t they ever run out?” I ask. “The books I mean.”
“The store is almost empty,” Bob assures me.
“It is. I’m running out of room in front of the library. I’ve already
filled up their return book bin, too.”
Eventually, I get to the last stack and roll it up to the library, and
leave it on the sidewalk there because there is no place left to put any, piles
of books as tall as I am, waiting for a good wind to knock them all down into
the street.
I get back to the store to find Bob standing in front of is with Jimmy yanking
on his sleeve to make him leave.
“I’m going to miss this place,” Bob says.
“Yeah, yeah, but it’s over now. We have a long way to drive to get the
rest of the books to your house.”
“I suppose,” Bob mumbles and turns away.
“I get the passenger seat,” Jimmy tells me.
“But the back seat is loaded with books.”
“You’ll fit if you squeeze.”
“I can squeeze better in the front seat with you.”
“With my trick knee?” Jimmy says. “Forget it. Speaking of which…” Jimmy
addresses Bob. “You won’t forget what you promised me for helping with this
will you?”
