Today is, of course, Pearl Harbor Day, and fortunately for we blessed children of the Greatest Generation, all is well. Denny from ATT was here at the crack of noon, and replaced our museum ready modem. He told me our neighborhood would probably get fiber instead of copper in a year or so, and that would greatly increase our internet speed. I told him we were fine as we were -- tvs and a couple of desktops and my beloved Sonos. I need no more speed.
He left me his phone number, explaining we are "his ticket" for 30 days. ATT gets a lot of bad press, but this service was first rate. I shall so tell any HR ATT people who reach out to ask me...
But my thoughts on this date always envision a 22 year old young man, pushing multiple dress carts through the streets of Lower Manhattan. Dad told me he had grown so adept, he could manage 4 at a time -- schlepping the carts to the various factories that would add buttons, collars, finery, etc...All of a sudden, he said, like a movie, life stopped.
Cars and busses pulled over, and everyone went to the storefronts where radios were playing: FDR's famous address explaining what had happened in Hawaii. After the speech, everyone went back to their business, but solemnly. Dad said he knew he would soon be drafted, and sure enough, 4 months later the letter came to his Bronx home -- report to Ft. Lee, NJ for induction into the US Army.
I asked if he had any idea how long was to be his service. "Absolutely," he told me, "same as everyone--for the duration!"
Wow, When I was 22, I had graduated college and embarked on a tough journey -- law school. First, I had little fear that grad school might kill me, and I knew no matter how hard it was, it would last 3 years.
For Dad, the service was near 4 years. And it was the birth of my modern family. Mom first visited him at Camp Lee, Virginia -- the base had a program where girlfriends and wives could visit and be put up by locals. It was Mom's first time away from the Tri-state region. Dad borrowed a Jeep and fetched his girlfriend, and they drove to a farmhouse couple hosting them. They were a nicer older couple, and they invited Mom and Dad to come to First Baptist for services the next day. Dad said thanks, but they were Jewish.
He recalled the room temperature seemed to lower, and the man finally said "Well where ARE they?" My Dad was perplexed, and the man explained their pastor had told them that Jews had little horns just below their hairlines. Mom and Dad laughed, and invited the nice couple to feel for themselves -- no horns! In fact, my Dad admitted later he was indeed VERY horny, as Mom wouldn't put out until after they married, but that's another story.
They had more American adventures during the War -- but the big one was Mom getting on ANOTHER few trains, this time to cross the entire US to California, where Dad was based in Pasadena. They were married at the Huntington Hotel by a base Rabbi, and began their lives together in a bungalow in the Pasadena Hills. Dad would report to the base, and Mom got a job as secretary to the Dean of CalTech -- oblivious to what was clearly Manhattan Project stuff going on.
She told me she DID recall a few times when a group of professors met and had Mom lock the door -- no visitors allowed. She also greatly admired her boss -- the first PhD she had ever met -- a true Southern Gentleman, she said -- from Vanderbilt. On the day before Yom Kippur, he told Mom to have an easy fast -- Mom laughed -- she wasn't religious and planned to come to work. The Baptist said "Oh no -- your people are our older sisters and brothers -- PLEASE honor the holiday and G-d --I'll see you in 2 days." I wonder if Jews are so welcome on the CalTech campus these days, or are labeled baby killers and colonialists...
In any event, Mom got pregnant in April of '44, and since the War was still raging, they decided she'd return to The Bronx to have the baby. My oldest sister was born in January of '45 -- she's about to turn 80! Dad had few regrets in life, but one was not staying in Southern California -- maybe he would have gotten a job as a writer or editor -- he loved it there.
Instead, the dying Winds of War blew him back to the Bronx and 3 jobs to support his wife and baby girl, who was followed by another baby girl in June of '48. As the years passed, he was able to shed jobs -- two, and then a single one -- salesman for a glass company called Pittman Dreitzer. And then, in 1960, after Mom had a miscarriage, they decided to try for one more child -- even though they were 40 and 41. Dad had taken a new job with a glassware company called Toscany, and I joined the band in July of '61 -- my sister and I essentially bookending the Boomer generation.
The two bedroom apartment in Queens Village was too small for the family, and Dad went to see his boss, Morris Katz -- a boss out of central casting. He asked for a $2000 loan to buy a house on Long Island -- Dad's childhood friend Bobby Danzig was already living on Charles Lane, and a house a few doors down was for sale for , I think, $12K. Mr. Katz said yes -- he had a feeling Dad would be an earner for Toscany (funny -- 3 of the owning partners were Jews, one was indeed Italian) and when I was one, we moved to Long Island.
My oldest sister had graduated high school, Martin Van Buren (Madeleine Kahn was a few years her senior) and the younger one transferred to Levittown Memorial. My sisters were none too pleased about moving "out to where the Indians live." Apparently I had no opinion.
My older sister became close friends with Maureen, a fellow daily commuter on the LIRR to NYC, and Maureen invited her to a welcome home party for her brother -- returning from a Vietnam War stint in the USAF. My sister attended, and, again like in a movie, knew she was marrying the skinny handsome Irish boy. And she did.
The younger sister met HER first at Southhampton College, and the two hippie types moved to the Upper West Side, but alas, the marriage didn't last, and the younger sister moved out west to California, and has been there now well over half a century.
I had a classic "Wonder Years" childhood in blue collar Long Island -- making some friends I keep to this day. The smartest of the lot, Kenny, who I met in Junior High, is coming over with his amazing wife Joelle tomorrow night for some take in and maybe a viewing of the movie about our generation's music, "Yacht Rock." Their boy Nathan will come, too, and Kenny and I will NOT bore our wives and his son about our days in Wantagh/Levittown/Seaford -- not exactly the triumvirate of culture.
But in my mind, Pearl Harbor Day's tragedy got the whole ball rolling. And Japan has long been one of our closest allies -- hell -- our best family cars have been Mazdas and Lexuses!
So stuff changes from a date of infamy. But I always smile thinking of that handsome young Bronx born guy stopping the dress carts for the radio broadcast...
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