Displaced Snippets of Bayonne by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

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Exxon did contribute $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association in May, 2014, when Mr. Christie was serving a one year term as its chairman and another $500,000 contribution was made to Mr. Christie’s campaign fund subsequent to his election.

Purported Exxon spokesman, Carmine D’Alessio said; “Hey, we give money to every player. This is SOP. Fazool.” Exxon officially stated; ‘We have no relationship with Mr. D’Alessio, and we make suitable contributions to those candidates we believe to be friends of the environment.’

Oil tanks on Bayonne’s Hook Road after landscaping; property of the author.

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One critic of the settlement said; ‘Today, many of these dredge fill areas still look and smell like petroleum waste dumps. The oil tanks in Bayonne, NJ have produced a 2,500 acre marshland of tar and another 450 acres of sludge lagoons; onetime tidal marshes used as hazardous waste disposal facilities. Restoration estimates far exceed ............... ‘“

The article continued with the usual quotes from the usual suspects, naively outraged citizens, and representatives of two state funded study groups. Always an egalitarian state, NJ had one to represent each side.

Troma was good, no question. But, if you think that their shit required any creativity, you don’t know your film or New Jersey history. They’re undisclosed documentaries.

Mom is nobody’s fool. She was putting me on with her initial optimism. She said; “You don’t really think that they’re going to pay. Do you?”

I said; “Well, Christie got some of his up front. But, I expect they'll screw him on the back end.”

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#50- Manhattan’s Specialty Bars

I was about 21 when I was working at the same Manhattan bank with McConnell from Irish 13th Street. We were in different areas and I didn’t know him all that well in either place. But he approached me about accompanying him to a bar in Manhattan.

The bars in Manhattan are of four types; 1) Upscale chic, 2) De Classe chic, 3) Specialties; like "Cheaters," and 4) Gay with differing degrees of intensity.

He wanted me to go with him to one specializing in older women who liked to have young guys go down on them. When he said that my face turned beet red and he started laughing. He said;

"You didn't know that everybody knows that’s your thing. Shit.

Ha ha, and ha."

Well, I didn’t go and I didn't bother to correct his simplistic assumption by adding the other aspects of my affection. I was kind of resentful of a stupid mind which only sees one of them.

Later that day I figured out that some of those women must talk to each other with more crudity than the guys do. I was shocked. Bunch of big mouthed sluts.

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#51- My Future With Moe

Things were a bit different then. I had been accepted to all three of the colleges I had applied to. But that was no particular cause for celebration for me as so was Charles Sharkey. Charles was in a number of my high school classes and always did his best to imitate a deaf mute, with a specialty in saying a blank faced; “Whut?”

Before I knew him better, I asked him something like; “Did you do all of Mrs. Wright’s algebra homework?” Charles just stared at me; right in the face. I was intimidated at first, or considered that he might be too cool to talk to me. That may well have been the case, but his silent gaze soon proceeded to gather in the surroundings to our left, right, and the heavens.

So, I cut my losses and said; “Me either,” and extricated myself from the situation. Charles was at a loss without his good buddy Sweeney.

It was a perfect relationship. Sweeney never shut up and Charles didn’t seem to know or care about what anyone was talking about. I guess college trained him to do something useful.

I decided that I’d rather get a job, in that way the income generated would make me independent, though also making me

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susceptible to residing in a Viet Nam body bag. I asked my father about the job and he told me to go see Moe. ........ I didn’t want to go see Moe, and didn’t understand what Moe had to do with the whole thing anyway.

I’d later learn that Moe was some sort of filter between aspiring employees and companies which considered the new EEOC

laws a burden and a distasteful excursion into the unknown.

Businesses have always preferred “predictable” expectations.

Most jobs were listed in the local paper. But without Moe’s blessing you wouldn’t even get an interview.

I remembered Moe from that time he “happened” to enter the Little League bathroom when I was 12; showing me his tiny friend, and saying “We’re both men here. Aren’t we?” {If a refresher is required, please see Chapter 17.} I really didn’t want to see Moe again, and if that was what was required to get a job in Bayonne, I’d have preferred options 2, 3, 4, etc.

Working in New York City was one of them, but they required that one had at least “attended some college” or be in possession of a union card.

So, the decision was rather easy. Foregoing financial independence and having to see Moe again, I opted for college, and the deferral and possible elimination (which turned out to be the case) of a shrapnelled ass in Viet Nam.

Three out of four ain’t bad.

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#52- Loss

This jocular diatribe has probably made some readers wonder if the writer has been disingenuous in not speaking of the sad times. Their suspicions are well founded. Like the victims of sexual abuse, these things are hard to talk about and in most cases are left unsaid.

However, in the interest of truth, the writer is compelled to lay on the maudlin stuff through the tears.

I had my first girlfriend at the age of seven. She was 32

and similarly experienced in matters of the heart. No, she was seven and in my second grade class. Madonna and I kissed a few times, and spent more time holding hands and skipping down the street. I don’t recall how it started, but it lasted at least a few months, until one day I went to school and found out that she and her family had moved away. It was quite a shock. I felt empty, alone, and wondered why she had not told me. At the least we could have become pen pals. She must have known. After a few days I realized that this was no bad dream. This was the reality and without explanation, it sometimes ends.

I had some preparation, though. When I was five or so, I used to play with a group of kids, and my best friend was Johnny. We all had hula hoops and did all sorts of things with them.

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One day, the group leader, Sharon approached me in a seeming show of surprise and concern, much like your standard TV

“news” reporter of 2018. She told me that Johnny’s real name was Juan, as if we had been improperly been exposed to a crime. I didn’t understand at the time and was thinking “So what?” but thought that the wrong thing to say and remained quiet. Johnny-Juan never again came out to play and in about a month his family moved away.

The same group had a member with Downe’s Syndrome. Richie was fat and very un-coordinated. He could never get the hula hoop to spin around him more than twice. Sometimes, in apparent frustration, he’d get angry with the others, say “I’m gonna get you,” and chase after us. We’d run and dodge. It was easy to do as he lumbered so slowly. Sometimes he’d even fall.

Then some boy I don’t remember moved to the area, and refused to run. He stood there and punched Richie. Richie tried again and got punched again. He was bleeding when his mother took him back in. Richie never came out again and moved away.

My family stayed there, and I began to lose some of the zeal I had in going out.

Just a bit later my mother took me to the park. Some older boys were chasing a frightened kitten. After ten minutes and apparently tired, the kitten tried to hide in the middle of a bush. The fat boy leader dropped a sizable rock in it, breaking

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its back. He picked up the kitten, now howling in agony, and carried it to the park monitor, asking if she could help this poor kitten he had just found. She called the police, and the cop came within an hour and put the kitten out of its misery with one gunshot.

For some reason this is the story in this chapter which I’ve never been able to forget. It might be because it solidified my suspicions about male humans. Fatso may not have yet known it, but he was a natural for politics.

So there.

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#53- A Serious Ending? Not a Chance

I made a lot of fun of Bayonne during the course of this book. It is far from revelatory. No doubt it could have better been done by any of a number of my half-century-passed friends, were any of them reasonably literate. Haha. By now, the reader must understand that Bruce Springsteen nailed it when he wrote;

“The poets down here don’t say nuthin’ at all. They just stand back and let it all be.”

So did many of the other antiquated residents in their mis-remembered youths. As far as I know none of them has yet chosen to tell the tale even though a bit of it is common and actually true. Having been there I know that the residents would make even more fun and laugh about it. Some of it is actually warranted.

I never specifically said what a great place I think Bayonne was for a kid to grow up. Kids didn’t need cyber

“friends” or “reality” games for fun in old Bayonne. There were loads of other kids to play with on safe streets. That’s a relative judgement, using the-preponderance-of-the-evidence’s lower legal standard.

If you’re anything like me and have forgotten most all of the things which the functionaries deem “significant”; and if

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you don’t fear the ensuing recriminations; and if you have a good lawyer capable of keeping you out of supervised “care”

facilities, don’t worry. You’ll be all right if you just remember where you came from and that; “If you really love your cat, prove it and just put an armpit on her.”

The Final End of a Book That I

Didn’t Want to Write

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