A few years ago I finally retired, and after careful consideration and consultation with some of my family members, made the decision to leave my home of 65 years in the Washington, D.C. area, and travel south to the unfamiliar land of Georgia to be with family. And after one year here, I jotted down a few thoughts on my impressions of my new home away from home, to send to a Washington friend.
But first, for those readers who may be from the heart of Dixie, I sincerely hope I haven’t given offense — that is not my intention. It’s all in good fun. This is really a lovely place, filled with warm, friendly, good people. It’s just that it isn’t Washington, and it’s hard to change 65 years of habit, and impossible not to miss some things as they were. So, taking that into consideration, here we go . . .
“In them old cotton fields back home”
“The great Tom Lehrer — one-time Harvard math professor turned songwriter/satirist/balladeer in the 1950s and ‘60s — wrote a shamefully irreverent song about the American South. He called it ‘I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,’ and if written today, it would have gotten him hanged from the nearest live oak tree, and not undeservedly so. A small sample:
‘Old times there are not forgotten, Whuppin’ slaves and sellin’ cotton . . .’
“He called the South ‘that y’all and shut-my-mouth land’ (rhyming it with ‘southland’), and summed it up with the immortal, ‘Be it ever so decadent, there’s no place like home.’
“Lehrer was from New England, and as far as I know, never lived in the South. I’ve been here in rural Georgia for just over a year [at the time of the original writing], and not in Atlanta or any other large city, but out in the country about 30 miles from Savannah; and I can tell you that Tom Lehrer pretty much nailed it (except, of course, for the part about the slave-whuppin’). This is a place like no other I’ve encountered in my travels throughout the U.S., or anywhere else, for that matter. And they tell me this isn’t even the deepest of the deep South! The scenery is beautiful, but the lifestyle . . . well, it just isn’t Washington. Here are some of the differences that jump out at me:
Instead of: Apartment Buildings Georgia has: Trailer parks
Instead of: Department stores Georgia has: Dollar General stores
Instead of: Smithsonian Museum Georgia has: More Satellite TV
Instead of: Uber, Taxis, and Buses Georgia has: Trucks and motorcycles Instead of: Food delivery Georgia has: Curbside pickup
Instead of: Four distinct seasons Georgia has: Two seasons: Summer, and Hell’s Front Porch
Instead of: The King’s English Georgia has: ‘Y’all,’ ‘sho’ nuf,’ and words with no “g” on the end
*. *. *
“Again, I’m talking about the rural South, not cities like Atlanta and Savannah. And lest you form a completely negative impression of this exceptional bit of country real estate, let me assure you that there are many very positive aspects as well, such as:
– Peace and quiet.
– Light traffic (except when some clown in a pick-up tries to beat the train through the crossing).
– Low stress level . . . really low.
– Low crime rate. (Everyone owns and carries at least one gun, which is supposed to serve as a deterrent to the occasional would-be criminal. It seems to work — around here, at least.)
– Deer in the back yard.
Actual photo, right here in the neighborhood.
– Deer poop in the back yard (maybe not so great).
– Low Country Boil
– Those fried green tomatoes — scrumptious!
– The sweetest, juiciest peaches in the world.
– Tybee and the other Islands
– People who call you ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’ and hold the door open for you.
– Did I mention peace and quiet?
– And guns?”
*. *. *
So what do I do with all of this peace and quiet? Well, for the most part — in case you haven’t already figured it out — I write. There’s this blog, and poems to an old friend, and a book (which may even be published one day, if I’m very, very lucky). All of which I never seemed to find the time to do when I was living in D.C. and gainfully employed. Now, if I could only find a way to get paid for it . . .
But no one ever told me life was perfect.
A much younger, idealized version of me
I kid about the differences between country living and city life — and they are very, very different. But that doesn’t make one better than the other . . . just different. And those differences — just as with the differences among people — are what give life its zest. And what give me something to write about. As they say in France: Vive la difference! So, au revoir until next week.
July 12, 2023. As is my habit, I checked the online news headlines when I awoke this morning — o.k., shortly before noon — and was shocked to see a report of a Russian warship that had arrived in Havana, Cuba, just the day before. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and I even checked the calendar to be sure I hadn’t somehow been transported back to 1962. What was this: the Cold War, Part Two?!!
“The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!”
Well, yes . . . maybe . . . sort of. We’re not talking about live missiles being sneaked in under cover of night and hidden under camouflage. But we are looking at a strengthening of ties between Russia and a desperately poor, needy island nation just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, at a time when even the larger, stronger country — Russia — sorely needs a booster shot of self-esteem. And what better place to stage a little saber-rattling toward the United States than from a former Soviet dependency just a stone’s throw from our shores?
Those of us born before 1950 can never forget those 13 days in October of 1962 that became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. We Americans — particularly those of us on the East Coast — lived every moment in fear of Armageddon being rained down on us. I lived in Washington — the presumed first-strike target of any enemy attack — and did not sleep for those two weeks. And even after President Kennedy stood his ground, and Nikita Khrushchev finally “blinked” and — realizing that his effort at intimidation had failed — withdrew his missiles, it was many months before most of us felt any sense of security again.
Is that what we’re facing now? Is this the Cuban Missile Crisis, Redux? We all hope not, of course. But, as we have seen so clearly this past year and a half, first with the invasion of Ukraine, and now with the confusion surrounding Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted rebellion against the Russian government, no one really seems to know what Vladimir Putin is thinking, or what he is capable of doing. I certainly don’t pretend to have the answers, and it’s probably too soon for even the experts to know what’s going on. But I do know this: I’m not going to sleep quite so soundly tonight.
No, I don’t believe we’re at the stage when we should start digging our fallout shelters, or teaching our school children to “duck and cover” (that’s obviously useless anyway). I guess I’m just sharing this because it’s what people do when they’re nervous — we seek comfort in the company of friends. And we hope for the best.
So you’ve worked your whole adult life, taking care of business, taking care of your family, doing all the right things — just so you could retire someday and take it easy. And now, at last, that time is right around the corner, and your friend at work asks you what you’re going to do when you don’t have to get up early and come to work anymore. And you say the first day you’re going to set the alarm clock as usual, and when it jolts you awake at 6:30 in the morning, you’re going to pick it up and hurl it across the room and roll over for another couple of hours of blissful sleep. And then for the rest of that day you’re going to hang around in your pajamas and watch TV and eat raw cookie dough until it’s time to go online to GrubHub and order $100 worth of Chinese takeout for dinner.
Then your friend asks, “And what about the second day?” And you don’t have an answer.
“Now what?”
But then you remember: you do have a plan, of sorts. You’ve been smart and made your bucket list well in advance, so you go and find that list when you get home that night, and remind yourself of all the things you’ve been wanting to do: climb Machu Picchu, take that cruise around the Greek Islands, sign up for Salsa dance lessons, read the entire set of Great Books you bought 25 years ago . . . maybe even write a book of your own, or take up painting and become another Grandma Moses.
That’s if you’re single.
If you have a husband, wife, or live-in significant other, that’s a whole different ballgame. Let’s say you’re a man who’s lucky enough to have been happily married to the same lovely woman for 45 years. The kids have long since moved away — well, except for the one who keeps running into bad luck and coming back home from time to time — and you and your wife now have to decide on activities you’ll both enjoy. You’d like to rent that RV and drive to Alaska for some salmon fishing; she wants to renovate the kitchen. Or you want to build that sexy little red sports car out of spare parts; and she’d rather take French cooking lessons — in Paris.
Or if you’re a woman who’s been putting up with . . . oh, excuse me, happily married to . . . the same wonderful man for those 45 years, just reverse the above examples. And don’t forget to retrieve that honey-do list that’s been buried in the junk drawer since Jimmy Carter was President. And you both need to remember that everything has to be planned around the dates you promised to babysit with your six — or is it seven now? — grandkids so their parents can take their dream vacations.
“Are we having fun yet?”
So you sit down together and once more fall back on that solid ingredient of every successful marriage: compromise. One for him, and one for her. First, will it be salmon fishing or a new kitchen? Considering the length of that ride to Alaska with the two of you confined to an RV for weeks on end, the traffic you’ll encounter, days of bad weather, only to wind up catching cold from the damp, rainy Alaska climate, and ending up with a couple of fish you could have bought at the local fish market at home for maybe $25 apiece . . . well, this was probably not the best idea.
“Look, honey . . . dinner!”
On the other hand, a new kitchen will last the rest of your lives and add resale value to your house so that your kids will see a bigger profit from it when you’re both dead and gone. So, score one for the wife: new kitchen it is.
Next: sports car or trip to Paris? Admittedly, two round-trip tickets to Paris, plus hotel and meals, the cost of the cooking lessons, and the likely shopping trips (because who goes to Paris without buying a few couture items you’ll probably never wear but will make your friends green with envy?) — well, that’s all horribly expensive. But what else have you been saving and scrimping for all your lives? To leave it to those same ungrateful kids? No? Okay, then — maybe you can afford it after all.
But how about that little red bomb you’ve been dreaming about since you were 16? You already know where to get the parts, you’ve got the manual on how to build it, and you could work on it in . . . oops, wait a minute. The garage! You’ve forgotten about that. It’s jam-packed with a lifetime’s collection of stuff — mostly junk, but not entirely, so it would have to be carefully gone through and cleared out, some of it to be donated, some to be offered in a garage sale, some to be trashed . . . That’s a shitload of back-breaking work before you can even start on the car. And if you manage to do all that, and you actually finish creating your beautiful, sleek little chick magnet, when and where are you ever going to drive it? To the orthopedist’s office? The supermarket? The courthouse to pay the speeding tickets? Suddenly, Paris is starting to look really good. So, score one for the wife.
“Oo-la-la”
Hey — wait just a damned minute! That’s two out of two for the wife!!!
You’re not seriously going to try to tell me you’re surprised, are you? Face it, buddy — marriage after retirement isn’t much different than the first 45 years, except that you spend a lot more time together. So just call in the kitchen designer, and while your wife is busy with that project, you can start reading the guide books to seeing Paris on $100 a day. (And good luck with that!)
*. *. *
But let’s say that life has thrown you some curves over the years and you’ve lost your soulmate too soon; or maybe you’ve kicked the bum out the door years ago, and you’re a single woman again. Time to revisit those earlier options: Machu Picchu, the Greek islands, Salsa lessons, the Great Books, a second career as a writer or painter or whatever you’re good at. At least you don’t have to worry about having to compromise with anyone, although there still may be the issue of the grandkids. But what the hell — you’ve done your years of child rearing; let their parents take care of them and wait their turn for retirement. Now is your time; it’s okay to be a little bit selfish.
First, those trips to Peru and Greece. Both sound heavenly! So it’s “eenie-meenie,” and you decide on the Greek Island cruise, buy the latest travel guides, and hunker down for an evening of pizza and planning. First, do you want to ask a friend to go with you, or would you rather go solo? Having a friend along would make sure you don’t ever have to dine alone on the ship, but might also create some of those compromise issues, and could get in the way of your meeting a gorgeous, suntanned, gray-haired Greek shipping magnate and indulging in a thoroughly scandalous romantic interlude. So, solo it is. And you’ve found exactly the trip you want, and it’s only . . . HOLY SHIT!!! It can’t cost that much, can it? Well, sure it can. First, there’s the round-trip plane fare to Greece, then the single stateroom on the ship, and although the meals are included, the drinks, tips, amenities, shore excursions, shopping, taxes and fees are not. OMG . . . there goes a big chunk of your 401(k), right out the porthole.
“Come back! Come back!”
So . . . okay, let’s consider a Plan B. Maybe you could meet Mr. Hunky at Salsa lessons. But your left knee isn’t doing so well, which is why you didn’t choose Machu Picchu in the first place, and you’d hate to make a fool of yourself on the dance floor. And how likely is it that any guy taking Salsa lessons by himself is going to be more than a “5” on a “10” scale anyway? So, where else can you go to have a little fun and maybe meet someone interesting? You’re clearly too old for the bar scene. Church? You already know all those people and they’re mostly married couples. Online dating? Good God, no!! Not in a million years — not with the horror stories you’ve heard. So, if there is to be a second love in your life, you’re just going to have to hope you’ll find him squeezing melons at the farmer’s market at the same time you are.
“Where are you, Mr. Right?”
Now we’re down to reading, writing, or arts and crafts. How thrilling! Have you really worked all your life to end up with your nose buried in a book or a pottery wheel? Hell, no . . . so let’s try again.
Night classes at the local college? Lots of interesting subjects out there that attract both men and women: history, foreign languages, politics, auto mechanics, English lit., computer science. A definite possibility, though there is the issue of homework. So, score “maybe” on that one. Or there’s volunteer work — so many people needing a helping hand. Good one. Or even a part-time job, something fun instead of just a paycheck. But that’s too much like the past half-century of alarm clocks and commuting. Sigh!
So what is the answer?
Well, it seems the answer is . . . there is no single right answer for everyone. Because all of our lives have been different, all of our current situations (and limitations) are different, and all of our likes and dislikes are different. So whatever seems to suit you, stop with the excuses, get off your behind, and just go for it. Only one word of advice: Make the most of whatever time is allotted to you. Like the money through the porthole, time has wings . . . so enjoy.
Oh, yeah . . . and one more thing: Lay off the cookie dough before you can’t get up off the couch!
Author Mitch Albom has written many delightful books, my favorite being “The Five People You Meet In Heaven.” (The movie is equally wonderful, and can be found on Amazon Prime.) After I’d read the book for the second time and watched the movie, I started thinking about the five people I’d really, really like to meet in my afterlife, and I found that five weren’t enough. Perhaps I’m greedy, or maybe I’ve just lost too many wonderful people; that’s what happens as you grow older. So I allowed myself an extra five to include some people I never actually knew but would like to, and I made a list. Then I gave myself explanations as to why I had chosen those particular people. It was an exercise that offered me an entirely new perspective on the people who have had the greatest effect on my life — and, in some cases, how I affected theirs.
As Good a Guess As Any
Obviously, no living person knows where or what Heaven actually is, or whether it exists at all; but the general consensus seems to be that, if there is a Heaven, it’s up. Probably because that’s where there’s the most room for all of those dead souls, or angels, or whatever we become in the next life. In my imagination, it would look something like Cape Cod, or maybe a never-ending English garden — someplace pretty and smelling like flowers or the sea. And all of the people there would be good, and happy, and healthy, even if they hadn’t been exactly like that on Earth.
So here are my ten choices, from last to first, and my reasons for wanting to meet up with them when I take my final trip.
No. 10: Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev. It should be no surprise to anyone who knows me that I would wish for a chance to talk to one or two dead Russians — not people I knew personally, but a couple of individuals of great historical importance, not the least of whom would be Mikhail Gorbachev. I would like to start my conversation with Gorby by asking him what on earth he was thinking when he dismantled his country’s political and economic structure (communism) before he’d had a chance to create something viable to take its place (presumably, democracy and capitalism). By doing so, he left the door wide open for every opportunist, every charlatan, every criminal in Russia to jump in and create total chaos — which is exactly what happened. He thus also created the foundation for his own political demise.
My second question to him would be, “If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?” Not that it’s possible to rewrite history, but I’d love to know the answer to that one. I often wonder: what would Russia — and the entire world order — be like today if things had not played out for him as they did? Sadly, he was a good man, with good intentions, who just didn’t get it quite right.
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev
No. 9: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin). Vladimir Lenin may seem an odd choice for my list, since it’s not clear to me that a mass-murdering despot would ever have made it into Heaven in the first place. But he’s the guy who started it all, so I’d really like to chat with him. Therefore, on the off-chance that he may at the last moment have repented his sins, and that his repentance was sufficient to have earned him admittance through the Pearly Gates, I imagine asking him this: Why — since his initial aim was allegedly to rescue the Russian people by ridding them of the tyrannical rule of the Tsars — did he then feel compelled to become the worst possible version of himself . . . far worse than Nicholas II, the Tsar he had so cruelly overthrown? Or was he simply an inherently evil individual with a good sales pitch?
And while I was at it, I would like to ask him to autograph the portrait of him that has been hanging above the desk in my den since 1993 — the one I smuggled out of Moscow in my suitcase after buying it from a Russian government official who had undoubtedly stolen it from some government facility specifically to sell it to me for $50 U.S. money. This, of course, is on the assumption that I will have been allowed to bring that prized possession into Heaven with me — along with (I would hope) some family photos, a couple of favorite books, my iPad, and a big bag of M&Ms.
My Portrait of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. Lenin
No. 8: Abraham Lincoln. Talk about a 180-degree turn-around — from Lenin to Lincoln! There would be so much to discuss with this remarkable man, whose portrait looks for all the world as though he was envisioning his own demise. Or perhaps he was just unbearably sad at the state of the world. If so, it’s a good thing he can’t see it as it is today . . . or perhaps he can.
I would first ask him whether he regrets, or ever regretted, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, in view of the turmoil that followed . . . and which, to a different degree, continues to this day. And I would like to know whether he issued that Proclamation as a result of his firm belief in the inherent equality of all people, or for the more pragmatic purpose of hopefully bringing an end to the Civil War and preventing a permanent dissolution of the union. Or, more likely, both.
The one question I would not ask is the one that has become a meme of sorts — and a sick one at that: “Other than that, Mr. Lincoln, how was the show?” Not cool. Not cool at all.
Abraham Lincoln
No. 7: Marilyn Lewis. One of the Golden Girls — my Golden Girls, not the ones on TV. We were five women who worked together and became BFFs, then brought my sister into the fold making it an even half dozen. Marilyn was the mother to all of us; not because she was the oldest (she wasn’t), but because she was by nature an Earth Mother — loving, nurturing, at once a tower of strength and an incurable softie — caring for her own family, her friends, and everyone she met who needed a hug or a helping hand. She exuded warmth and a joy of living that was contagious. I would have no questions to ask of her; I would simply tell her how happy I was to see her again, and then move in for one of those huge, heavenly hugs.
No. 6: Dora Lipson. My mother. At once a smart, attractive, honest, hard-working, practical, sometimes funny woman; but also an insecure, jealous, controlling, possessive, manipulative one. I would first want to determine whether she had shed the negative traits and retained the positive ones, as I would hope we all have a chance to do in Heaven. And then I would want to ask whether she had been aware of the effect those negative qualities had on her family and friends. And I would wait for an apology.
Then I would forgive her — because that’s what you do in Heaven — and I would begin making up for lost time, perhaps by mixing up a pitcher of her favorite whiskey sours and sitting down at the piano with her to play one of her favorite duets. She loved the “Poet and Peasant Overture” — but, as always, she would want to play the melody while I got stuck with the rhythm part. Oh, well . . . baby steps, even in Heaven.
No. 5: Rose Swartz. My maternal grandmother: my Bubbe. Always there, always ready with a bit of old-world wisdom, a lecture, a word of encouragement, something to eat . . . or all of the above. A steady, loving, non-judgmental presence in my early life, she brought comfort when it was needed and gentle discipline when it was called for. And the best food I have ever eaten, even to this day. Of her I would ask for stories of what her life had been like in the old country (Ukraine), and how she and my Zaide (grandfather) had managed to come to the United States and make new lives for themselves here.
I would also like to know what her maiden name (Goldman) and married name (Swartz) were originally, back in Ukraine, before the Immigration folks in America mangled them into something more pronounceable here.
And then I would ask: “What’s for dinner?” Given a choice, it would be her rolled cabbages (golubtsi), or pot roast with potato latki, and maybe some blueberry varenniki for dessert, and later a midnight snack of rugelach filled with raisins and walnuts and cinnamon, and a cup of tea. I’ll bring the Pepto Bismol, since my digestive system isn’t what it used to be; but it will be well worth it. Or maybe indigestion doesn’t exist in Heaven. That would be really nice!
No. 4: Emily Ross Taggart. My beloved granddaughter. In my imaginary Heaven, Emily has cast off her physical challenges and become whole, enabling her finally to be the beautiful, healthy, active, happy-go-lucky girl she should have been on Earth. Her brilliant mind and huge heart led her to do so much good for so many during her short time in this world; hopefully, she has been able to carry that over into her second life.
I would have only one question for my Emily: “Are you happy?”
I love you and miss you, my sweet girl.
Emily
No. 3: Merna Lipson. I’ve already devoted an entire chapter to my sister, so you know that she was my best friend and stalwart confidante. But I would first tell her that I’m sorry about so many things: about the years we spent arguing instead of fully enjoying one another; about tarnishing her perfect school reputation with my mischief and misbehavior; and mostly about not being able to ease the suffering of her last illness.
As for all the times I embarrassed her in public by fainting, or shooting off my big mouth, I have only this to say: Sorry, not sorry. Had to do it.
And then I would ask her if she’s made our reservations at the spa, and reserved our tickets to Les Miz. This is, after all, Heaven . . . right?
Merna, with Emily and Nate, c.2000
No. 2: Walter Sterling Surrey. Where do I begin with this man who had unquestionably the greatest influence on the second half of my life? His accomplishments were legion: brilliant attorney; former member of the OSS during World War II; principal draftsman of the Marshall Plan and the NATO Treaty; advisor and confidant to heads of state and corporate leaders; and father figure to so many, myself included. For me, he opened up a whole new world of international relations, history, and intrigue.
I would have so many questions for him — far too many to list here. But there are three that are foremost in my mind:
1) How would you fix the current problems with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, India . . . ? Okay, that’s a multitude of questions, but you can’t fix one without the others.
2) Do you think I did the right thing in 1993 when I agreed to help the two KGB officers defect to the United States? and
3) What was the origin of your nickname “Dink”? You trusted me with everything else, but never that.
See you later, Walter.
Walter Sterling Surrey
*. *. *
And finally . . .
No. 1: Robin Williams. Because I just want to exit this life, and enter the next one, laughing my ass off. And this is the guy who could do it for me.
I’ve been doing a little midweek mental meandering as I finish polishing this coming Thursday’s chapter on leaving Moscow; and for some reason, I’ve been focused on the subject of obsolescence. Not the obsolescence of things — we all know what science and technology have wrought . . . and discarded. Just think of the gas lamp, dial phones, manual typewriters, clotheslines, gigantic boomboxes, the Blackberry, and the icebox. No, I’m talking about the obsolescence of people.
I always planned to age gracefully and beautifully, gradually becoming the matriarch of my little family — revered for my wisdom and accomplishments, feared for my authoritative nature, and loved for . . . well, just for being me. Or are matriarchs limited to wealthy, aristocratic English families, like the Crawleys of Downton Abbey? That’s certainly not my life.
The Crawleys
Or maybe the other end of the economic spectrum: the Depression-era Waltons of the Blue Ridge Mountains? Enormous, wonderful family; dirt poor. Nope, not me either.
The Waltons
So, no matriarchy for me.
The Japanese revere their elderly. So do the Chinese, Koreans, Native Americans, and many others. So maybe I should move to Japan and get myself adopted by a lovely family there. Not practical, but worth considering.
Yet what about the rest of us here in the United States? When did we become a nation that values the foolishness of youth above the knowledge and wisdom of experience? Why do we push people into retirement at 65, when they still have so much to contribute? When did those beautiful grandparents become an annoyance to be shuffled off to an old folks’ home where they live out their days thinking about the past because they have no future, and no present worth living?
American GothicUkrainian Ideal
Whether your “grands” are the stern-faced couple from the American heartland, or the sweet, rosy-cheeked Babushka and Dyedushka from the old country . . . treasure them. They’ve spent their lives caring for their children (your parents, aunts and uncles), and spoiling you, your siblings and cousins. Give them back the love and respect they deserve while they’re still here. They’ll be gone all too soon.
I’ve just realized that my last ten Reflections have carried us up to the 1980s, which means that those of you who have been reading my blog from the very beginning (December ‘22) already know what happens next: I take that job in 1979 that changes the entire direction of my life and pulls me — fully compliant and even joyously — into my “Russian Adventure.” And if you haven’t yet read my first 28 Chapters on that subject, I invite you to do so; they represent the most exciting time of my life.
But I have not yet run out of words, and I pray that that never happens; for what are we, really, if we can’t communicate? So today I’ve chosen to reflect upon another subject with which I am intimately familiar: Jewish mothers. And you can’t talk about Jewish mothers without also running into the whole guilt thing. And if you’re old enough, orphanhood will inevitably follow if it hasn’t already — possibly, but not necessarily, relieving you of all that pent-up guilt at long last. So, moving on . . .
“Are you telling the truth?”
As I see it, there are three basic kinds of Jewish mothers. First, there are the old-fashioned ones like my mother’s mother — my Bubbe — the loving, caring, fussing, apron-wearing, cooking, never-sitting-down, can’t-do-enough-to-make-her-family-and-the-whole-world-happy kind of mother, whose own happiness depended on only one thing: seeing everybody else safe, healthy, and above all, well-fed. I’ve already described her at length in Reflections 1 and 2. Thinking about her always makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Then there’s the second kind: the guilt maven. The kind who could just look at you and make you confess to crimes you would never even dream of committing. The mothers like mine. (Anyone have Dr. Freud’s number handy?)
According to my favorite aunt, my mother had been practicing the Art of Guilt for her entire life, until she finally became the Queen of Guilt. When she was just a teenager, and her whole group of friends wanted to do one thing and she wanted to do another, she would use the “Never mind — just go ahead without me” routine, until they felt sorry for her and went along with whatever she wanted to do. And she honed that act until she had it down pat, so that by the time she was married and had two daughters, it worked like a charm. Every. Single. Time. And not only on us.
Example: One Mother’s Day, when I was already grown and had two children of my own, we were all going to lunch with a group of close friends to a favorite family-style restaurant on a beautiful farm far out in the Maryland countryside, more than an hour’s drive from home. We had made the necessary reservations weeks before, and everyone was looking forward to it. It was a warm, sunny spring Sunday, the drive (in two cars) had been pleasant, and we arrived in plenty of time. When we got there, we found that orders had to be placed on arrival and we were given menus to make our selections before being seated — which should have been no problem. And it wasn’t a problem . . . except for one person: my mother, of course.
A little background: she had very high cholesterol, and had suffered one heart attack several years before, at which time she decided that she had to spend the rest of her life depriving herself of everything she loved . . . and sharing her misery with everyone within earshot. To her, that meant eating nothing with butter, eggs, chocolate, animal fat of any kind — all the good stuff. Not a taste, not ever, because even a bite was going to kill her on the spot. (She used to say that when she was dying, she wanted her last meal to be a bologna sandwich — an odd choice, but apparently what she was missing the most.)
“I told you so . . .”
So this lovely Mother’s Day, she took one look at the menu and announced, as usual, that there was nothing there that she could eat. Nothing. Nada. Zip. There was beef (too fatty), there was pork (ditto), and there was chicken (usually o.k., but this was fried). How about the fish? Not in the mood. A nice veggie platter? Yuk. And out came the sad face and the sulk, and the declaration that she would just sit and watch the rest of us eat. But the restaurant had a rule (admittedly, an unfair one) that you couldn’t be seated, even with a large group, unless you ordered an entree; even an appetizer wouldn’t satisfy their requirements. And she was adamant that there was nothing that she could order.
We all stood around looking at one another, totally stumped. I don’t recall the exact conversation, so I’ll just skip to the end. We wound up telling the manager what we thought of their rule, which had just cost him a large number of customers, and finding another restaurant a couple of miles away that could accommodate all eight of us. It was very nice, but not as good as the one we had been looking forward to, and the entire mood of the day was spoiled. But the Queen of Guilt was happy, which apparently was all that mattered. I firmly believe that the only thing that saved her from being strangled to death that day was the fact that it was Mother’s Day, and the irony would have been just too great.
*. *. *
There was also the kind of guilt she dropped on my sister and me when we were growing up. If she thought we’d been up to something — goodness knows what, since we really were pretty good kids — she’d grill us until we became convinced we actually had done something wrong, and then she’d inflict the ultimate punishment: the Silent Treatment. Sometimes for days.
And when we were a bit older and wanted to go somewhere for a sisters’ day together, just the two of us, she’d pull out the old “Don’t-worry-about-me-I’ll-be-fine-by-myself” routine again. Fortunately, we eventually outgrew that one; but there was always that little remnant of guilt that we felt for leaving her behind. And if she ever thought we needed reminding, she’d pull out the one she kept in reserve: “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”
OH, YEAH? DON’T COUNT ON IT, OLD WOMAN!
She also took advantage of Christmases and her birthdays to remind us every year that she was getting older and that “this might be my last [Christmas] [birthday]” . . . you fill in the occasion. But we noticed throughout the years that she was a different person when she had had a couple of drinks, so for every celebration we made sure to start her out with her favorite whiskey sour (or two). Too bad we couldn’t keep her loaded all the time, because on those social occasions when she let loose, she was really a lot of fun. She could have been such a happy drunk.
Another round, barkeep!
*. *. *
Then there is the third type of Jewish mother — the Jewish mother of sons, a.k.a. “the Smotherer” — like the mother of the first young man I was engaged to. Let’s call her Sadie. She was a widow, and her son — we’ll name him Lennie — was her entire reason for living. To say she doted on him would be the grossest of understatements. He was, in her eyes, solely responsible for the rotation of the earth around the sun.
Lennie and I met through a co-worker of mine when I was just 18 and he was 25. He was an attorney with the U.S. Government, intelligent, nice-looking, and fun to be with. He always thought of great places to go on our dates; and before I knew it, he had proposed. Being very young, and very flattered, I said yes; but I was smart enough to know that I was too young to get married just yet, which he understood, and thankfully a long engagement was planned.
Then he told Sadie the big news.
Now let me backtrack a bit. Before Lennie and I started dating, he had a regular Saturday night “date” with Sadie. He would take her to dinner, perhaps a show, mainly to get her out of the house for a while. He was a nice, thoughtful guy. But when he met me, he wanted his weekend date nights to be with his girlfriend, not his mother. The nerve! — right? So he told her he’d like to switch his regular evening out with her to another night in the middle of the week. Not like she had anything else on her schedule, and not like he’d dumped her. But she was less than thrilled because she had been relegated to second place.
So now he was telling her he was engaged, and she was envisioning her precious boy flying off with some little trollop and forgetting all about her — the woman who had gone through countless hours of labor to give birth to him, seen him through all his childhood illnesses, and been both mother and father to him for all these years. I was competition! Even my mother, who was surprisingly cool with the whole thing, couldn’t get through to her. This was potentially the mother-in-law from Hell.
Third Wheel In My Own Marriage?
The person I am today would simply have made verbal mincemeat out of the old bat. But I was a more timid 18-year-old, and had been taught respect for my elders. So I told myself I wasn’t marrying the mother . . . until it became clear that I would be. Suffice it to say, that engagement didn’t last very long — I preferred to marry a man, not a momma’s boy. But I did benefit from it in one way: it made me eternally grateful that my mother had never had a son!
*. *. *
Maybe there is a fourth kind of Jewish mother out there, and if so, I’d love to hear about her. Or maybe I’m the fourth kind: not nice enough to be like my Bubbe, but too nice to be like Sadie or my own mother. I shudder to think of what my kids will blog about me when I’m gone.
And speaking of being gone . . .
Eventually, and inevitably, my mother’s predictions of her own demise came true. She passed away peacefully, of congestive heart failure, on the morning of September 18, 1991, at the age of 84. Sadly, she never got her bologna sandwich because if we’d given it to her, she would have accused us of trying to kill her.
That day was my sister’s 58th birthday — one final “gotcha!” from the woman who would not be denied center stage. And as we planned her funeral and all of the other things that follow a death, we began reminiscing, mostly about the funny stuff, and came to realize that the years of guilt had indeed finally evaporated. She had been, after all, an honest, hard-working, attractive, clean-living woman, able to squeeze 110 cents out of every dollar, and dedicated to the welfare — as she defined it — of her daughters. And we threw her one helluva farewell party.
“Bon Voyage!”
Do I miss her, as she said I would? Sometimes, when I remember how we would sit at the piano together, playing duets; or when I would take her to Maryland to play the slot machines (she loved to gamble); or, most of all, when she’d had a couple of whiskey sours and danced with every man in the room. And occasionally, even today, I’ll get a whiff of her perfume — Oscar de la Renta — and I know she’s hanging around, making sure I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t be . . . although at my age, I can’t even imagine what that would be. Maybe eating too much chocolate?
*. *. *
Becoming an orphan is a weird thing. You wake up one day and realize that “Oh my God! I’m the older generation!” And I’ve found that when that happens, the best thing to do . . . is just reach for the whiskey sours.
Just sayin’.
Have a happy and safe 4th of July, Brendochka 7/3/23
And here they are: not all, but a substantial part of my family (on my mother’s side) in the 1940s. If you enlarge it, you’ll be able to see the faces of my childhood, named below.
Top left: My bathing beauty mother, front and center as always; her parents (my Zayde and Bubbe, seated); and I have no clue who the woman behind them is. Maybe this was the first photo bomb.
Top right: My mother’s brother, Uncle Bem, with three-year-old me on his knee.
Second row left: My Aunt Selma (married to Uncle Monty, pictured later), holding little me, with my sister Merna standing beside us, squinting in the sun.
Second row right: My mother’s older sister, Aunt Minnie, holding my little cousin Andy. Note the tumor under his right eye — he was born with it, it was benign and was successfully removed when he was a little older.
Third row left: Me, around age five, looking cute.
Third row right: Uncle Bem again, with his wife Simone (white blouse dark skirt) and his sister, my Aunt Ethel. In the rear are Aunt Minnie again (left), and a lady we nicknamed “Aunt Minnie in the green dress,” to differentiate her from the real Aunt Minnie. I can’t for the life of me remember what the relationship was, but I remember that we liked her.
Fourth row left: Little Andy, sullen little me.
Fourth row right: Me again, seated in an inexplicably uncomfortable position.
Bottom row left: My sister Merna, holding cousin Andy.
Bottom row right: A rare photo of my maternal great-grandmother, with my Bubbe, Aunt Selma, and her husband Monty (my mother’s other brother). If you look hard enough, you’ll also see my sister Merna hanging out on the porch in the background.
So there we are: a “typical” American family. Only, who can say what is typical? In our case, we’ve got a great-grandmother and grandparents who were all born in Russia, and left because they were Jewish and saw the handwriting on the wall — the pogroms against the Jews. We have two sons/brothers/uncles in the Army (and another, not shown here, in the Navy), all of whom served overseas — and survived — in World War II. Other “typical” families may have come from France, or England, or Poland, or China. But together, we all made up the patchwork that was, and is, America.
There’s a complex of buildings on the banks of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. called The Watergate, built in 1962. Two of those buildings are designated as commercial office space; the remainder consists of some of the most expensive residential condominium housing in the metropolitan Washington area, and for many years was the most favored location of members of Congress, political appointees, and other “inside-the-Beltway” notables.
The Watergate, Washington, D.C.
In 1967, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) moved its headquarters into space on the sixth floor of one of those commercial office buildings. And on June 17, 1972, a break-in occurred at those offices that set in motion what was arguably the biggest political scandal of the 20th Century, popularly referred to simply as “Watergate.” It ended the careers of a number of high-level political figures, not the least of whom was the President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon. Conversely, it also was the making of the careers of two young, previously little-known Washington Post reporters: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
You needn’t have been born before 1972 to be familiar with the Watergate scandal; it remains one of the most written-about, talked-about, analyzed, regurgitated, and debated pieces of 20th-Century American history. And the ghost of that scandal hangs over the White House and its occupants to this day, 50 years after that break-in at DNC headquarters.
To begin with, it led to the passage in 1978 of the Presidential Records Act, clarifying and mandating that all Presidential records are the property of the U.S. Government, not of the President — although word of that has apparently not filtered through to all of the subsequent occupants of the Oval Office, whose names need not be mentioned here.
And virtually every President since Nixon has in one way or another been affected — “haunted,” if you will — by the ghostly memory of Watergate. There was, of course, the Iran-Contra affair during Ronald Reagan’s administration, which engendered its own devastating effect on the entire country while simultaneously dredging up painful reminders of the Watergate scandal a decade earlier. Subsequently, Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, had a difficult time distancing himself from the fact that, in his early political career, he had been a favorite of Nixon’s. And more recently, the many scandals involving Donald Trump, and the similarities that have been drawn between his actions and those of Richard Nixon, are all too familiar to us.
So in one sense, the Watergate complex on the Potomac does have its “ghosts.” But what about the other kind — the ghosts of a paranormal sort? It has long been asserted that there is no shortage of those in Washington, D.C. While cities such as Savannah, Gettysburg and Salem regularly top the lists of the most-haunted U.S. cities, Washington is also known for its large number of specific locations that should be high on any self-respecting ghost-hunter’s bucket list: the “demon cat” in the U.S. Capitol; Abraham Lincoln and others roaming around the White House; the sad young woman in the Octagon House; and the wandering Mr. Lincoln again — and reportedly also John Wilkes Booth — at Ford’s Theater, to name just a few. But I’d like to add one lesser-known location to that list, based on personal experience: the Roosevelt House at 1215 – 19th Street, N.W.
The Roosevelt House 1215 – 19th St., N.W., Washington, D.C.
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. — or Teddy, or T.R., to those of us who came to know him well — was an imposing figure with an exuberant personality and a wide range of interests. He had been a sickly child, but through single-minded hard work and determination he overcame his limitations by forcing himself to adopt a strenuous lifestyle, thus transforming himself into the robust, athletic adult we now recognize. He joined the Rough Riders to fight the Spanish army in Cuba; served as Governor of New York for two years; and became Vice President of the United States under President McKinley for six months until McKinley’s assassination, when he, Roosevelt, succeeded to the Presidency for the remainder of that term, and then was elected to a second full term.
But before all of that, he had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, during which time he lived at . . . isn’t it obvious? . . . 1215 – 19th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. And that is where I came to know him. Or, rather, his spirit. I worked there from 1968 to 1978, when the building was occupied by the law firm of Galiher, Clarke, Martell and Donnelly. And T.R. was still there, mischievous as ever — willing to share his home with the odd assortment of new folks, but determined to let us know he was still in charge.
Teddy Roosevelt: Mischief Maker
The interior of the formerly grand residence had been redesigned into four floors of office space, and an elevator was added at the southern side near the internal stairwell. The stairwell itself opened onto each floor, through doors that were kept locked at all times; we had to carry our keys with us, or use the elevator. Visitors entered directly into the ground-floor reception room, and were unable to access the stairway or the elevator unless accompanied. At night, all doors were double-checked to ensure that they were locked, and the elevator also was locked off by the last person to leave for the day.
But T.R. wasn’t hampered by locks and keys. And he loved that elevator, which apparently was like a new toy to him. At random times, with no one aboard, it would simply start up, running up and down and up and down, with no way of stopping it until someone yelled at T.R. to cut it out! The elevator service company would be called, a technician would come out to check the mechanisms, and would invariably declare it to be in perfect working order. Until next time.
T.R. may have loved modern machinery, but he did not feel the same about contemporary music. One evening, a young secretary was working late and was alone in the building. She had personally checked to be sure all of the doors were locked, and had also locked the elevator at her floor. To keep herself company, she had turned on her radio to a rock music station. At one point, she left her desk to go to the copier in another room, and when she returned, the radio had been tuned to a classical music station — FM instead of AM — which would have required the turning of two knobs. Puzzled as to how that was possible, and feeling a little uneasy, she nevertheless changed the station back and returned to work.
A while later, the young lady had to use the rest room, which was on another floor. Taking her keys, she walked up the stairs, did what she had come to do, and walked back down . . . and found her radio once more tuned to the classical music FM station. That was enough for her. She left her work unfinished and fled the building. When she returned to work the next morning, she declared that there would be no more overtime for her unless someone was with her. Several of us tried to reassure her that it was only T.R. being frisky, but she was having none of it.
“T.R.? Was that you?”
My own most memorable experience with the former President occurred at Christmastime, on the day of our annual holiday party, which was being held in suburban Maryland. I worked on the second floor with two other women in a large, L-shaped open area, and two attorneys in private offices. Since I lived in Virginia, I had brought my party clothes to work with me so that I wouldn’t have to go home to change before the party. One of the women, a friend of mine named Kathy, lived just a few blocks from the office, but I had offered to drive her to the party and home afterwards, so she had also brought a change of clothes with her. When everyone else had left the building, we double-checked all of the doors and locked the elevator off at our floor. Then she went into one attorney’s office and I went into the other to dress for the evening’s festivities, closing the doors in case someone might return to the office for some reason.
After a few minutes, I heard very distinct, regular, heavy footsteps in the outer area, like someone pacing back and forth on the tiled floor. I called out, “Kathy, is that you?” She shouted back, from the other office:
“What did you say?”
“Is that you walking out there?”
“What are you talking about? I’m over here.”
So who was outside my door? Carefully I opened the door a crack and peered out; the pacing stopped, and no one was there. I went to the elevator and the stairway door, and they were both still locked from the inside. Returning to the attorney’s office, I closed the door and continued changing my clothes. The pacing resumed.
“Kathy, now cut it out!”
“What the hell are you talking about??!!!”
Now dressed, but still needing to fix our hair and makeup, we both came out to the open area, where once again the pacing had stopped. She had not heard a thing. When I told her what I had experienced, Kathy — normally not a skittish person — lost it. She said she was going home and asked me to come with her. But I was fascinated by the phenomenon, and said I would stay, and would pick her up at her apartment in a little while. And with that, she gathered up her things, said she would catch a taxi, and bolted out the door, letting it slam behind her. I was now alone in the building . . . except for the mysterious pacer.
I triple-checked all the locks and headed back into the attorney’s office. But before closing the door all the way, I looked back out into the open area and said, “All right, T.R., it’s your house so you may stay . . . but no peeking.” And as I closed the door behind me . . . you guessed it . . . the slow, steady pacing resumed once more. And when I was ready to leave, and had phoned Kathy to tell her I was on my way, the pacing finally stopped for good. I walked to the exit door, turned around and said to the silent, apparently empty room, “Good night, T.R.”
And since you’re obviously wondering — no, he did not answer. In truth, I’m not sure how I would have reacted if he had. But somehow I knew he was there, and I was sure he was smiling his big toothy grin, happy that at last he would have his house to himself for the rest of the night. He didn’t like it when we stayed late.
*. *. *
I picked Kathy up at her apartment and we went on to enjoy a great party that evening. I never let her live down the fact that she had chickened out — and run out — on me. We laughed about it for many years, but the fact is that that evening made believers out of two hard-core skeptics. And from time to time, to this day when inexplicable things happen, I remind myself that . . .
“There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
If I were asked to pinpoint the true end of the Age of Innocence, I would say it wasn’t the Roaring Twenties of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but the Sobering Sixties of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The early ‘60s were a busy time for me. At some point, I decided that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life working at the same job, or even the same type of job — there was a big world out there, and there must be other opportunities. A client of our law firm ran a small electronics manufacturing company and was looking for someone to manage his office. My entire experience in office management consisted of taking over a few of the tasks of our office manager when she was on vacation each year: handling the payroll, ordering some supplies, and calling maintenance if something broke. But I was ready to learn something brand new, and in the early part of 1962, I said a tearful farewell to the only office family I had ever known, and took my first steps toward a new future.
Why didn’t somebody stop me???!!!!!
Biggest mistake of my life, on two fronts. To begin with, the job itself — compared to the mentally more challenging legal work — was boring, boring, boring. But that would have been easy to remedy; I could simply have quit. The second part wasn’t so simple. One of the industrial engineers was handsome, brilliant and charming, and by August we were married. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
“. . . ‘til death do we part”? Really?
You don’t want to hear the details; and I really don’t want to recite them. Let’s just say that the only things I got out of that marriage were two beautiful children . . . and a divorce. So in 1966 it was back to work in another law firm and onward into the last of the ‘60s as a single mom. It may sound bleak, but it really wasn’t. I was loving my work again, enjoying motherhood, and dating from time to time; life was good just as it was. And the world in the late ‘60s was producing enough fodder to serve as a feast for any student of world history or political junkie such as myself.
*. *. *
When JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the full weight of the presidency passed immediately and seamlessly to LBJ — Lyndon Baines Johnson — when he took the oath of office in an airplane on the ground in Dallas, Texas, with the widow of the late President Kennedy standing by his side in a pink suit freshly stained with her husband’s blood. A Boston Brahmin had been replaced by a Texas cowboy . . . and the entire character of the White House was transformed once more.
“I do solemnly swear . . .”
But personal differences aside, Johnson wasted no time jumping into his new role with Texas-sized gusto. During his time in office, from November ‘63 to January ‘69, he created his vision of a “Great Society,” concentrating on advancements in civil rights and desegregation; continuation of his predecessor’s space exploration program; implementation of Medicare and federal aid to education programs; environmental activism; and other by-products of his liberal political leanings. But for every action, we should expect an equal and opposite reaction — right? And we had them, a-plenty!
*. *. *
Regardless of your age, I know you’ve heard of a little thing called the war in Vietnam. It began in 1955 and continued to escalate for 20 long years, until the tragic fall of Saigon in 1975. In 1965, during Johnson’s presidency, the U.S. officially entered that conflict for a number of complex reasons, the most palatable of which was the fight against the ever-increasing spread of communism. It was the war that no one really wanted, and it spun off massive protests on university campuses like Yale and Berkeley, and in dozens of major cities in the U.S.
They say it’s an ill wind that blows no one good; and the folk song writers and performers of the ‘60s — such as Barry McGuire (“Eve of Destruction”) and Bob Dylan (“Blowin’ in the Wind”) — profited nicely from that one. The youth of America had found a cause they believed in and began to make themselves heard. Young men burned their draft cards, and many fled to Canada to avoid being called into the war they considered illegal and immoral. And not to be left out of the fun, young women began burning their bras in support of women’s rights — or perhaps simply the right of their bosoms to be truly free. Just an interesting side note.
“Who Let the Puppies Out?”
In 1966, my sister Merna was working for a U.S. research and development company that had a contract with the military to produce technology — I have no idea what kind — in Vietnam. They needed to send a team to Saigon, and Merna quickly volunteered. I had returned home with two babies and a pending divorce, and here was her golden opportunity to escape the resulting chaos. But she knew if she told our mother where she was going, the worry might easily bring about a second heart attack, the first one having occurred just months earlier. So we cooked up a story and told her Merna would be going to Bangkok, which wasn’t a total lie. The team actually would be spending time there first, and while there she could buy up a lifetime supply of postcards and souvenirs, which she then could mail to us from Saigon with an A.P.O. postmark that could have been from anywhere.
I also had to learn to lie to my mother with a straight face, and not to get tripped up by those lies. Merna would write letters addressed to both my mother and me at home, and separate letters to me with the true story of conditions in Saigon, which she would mail to my office address; so I had to remember what she had written in which letters. And my mother did wonder why I had suddenly become so intent on the news broadcasts about the war, which I explained away as being of major worldwide importance and something that she should also be more concerned about.
Vietnam Memorial Wall, Washington, D.C.
After about three months, Merna came home for some R&R. But the team was due to return to Saigon in a few weeks, and she decided it was time to confess. And when she did, the reaction from our mother was entirely predictable: she exploded! And exploded again when she found out that I had known the truth all along. Then — declaring that she would never trust either of us again — she proceeded to call all of her friends and brag about her brave daughter. But she never told us how proud she was — we only heard those things second-hand from friends and relatives.
*. *. *
But the war wasn’t our country’s only problem in the ‘60s. Even a cause as nobly-motivated as civil rights is going to have its detractors, and they began coming out of the woodwork. The tension built and built until, on April 4, 1968, the foremost leader of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. And the United States began to burn. Aptly-named “race riots” erupted in Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Baltimore . . . and of course, in Washington, D.C.
I knew a couple at that time who hosted gatherings on Friday evenings for any of their friends who were available — food furnished, bring your own booze. Their apartment was on an upper floor of a high-rise building in close-in Arlington, Virginia, with a beautiful view of D.C. stretching from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol. And on that Friday, April 5, 1968, a group of us sat in their living room staring out of the big picture window at the orange glow from the conflagration that began in the predominantly Black neighborhood known as the “14th Street corridor” and spread east from there. I felt like Scarlett O’Hara watching Atlanta burn, as we all sat helpless, choking back tears.
Washington On Fire
One of that group of friends arrived late that Friday and explained why he had been detained. He worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital in a not-so-good section of the city, and had to drive home through a neighborhood where some of the spill-over from the riot was taking place. A co-worker of his lived in that neighborhood, and he offered to see her safely home. But when they reached her block, they were unable to get through the crowds to her building. Instead, he dropped her off at the nearby police station, where she would remain safe until she could get to her home. In the meantime, he still had to drive through that crowd, where a group of teenagers suddenly jumped onto his car, rocking it back and forth and trying to turn it over. Terrified for his life, he instinctively hit the gas pedal, sending bodies flying from his car in all directions . . . and he never stopped until he reached Virginia. Then he came to the party; it seemed the only place he wanted to be — with friends.
The next day — a Saturday — I had an unexpected opportunity to see for myself what was going on in the city. We had recently moved to Virginia because it was a better location for my two small children who were approaching school age. My sister had returned safely from Vietnam and had an apartment in Washington, but her long-time hairdresser was in Alexandria, Virginia . . . and she would never, ever miss a Saturday appointment. She didn’t drive, so she took the bus as usual, and expected to be back at her apartment hours ahead of the 7:00 p.m. curfew that had been established for D.C. But while she was in Alexandria, it was announced that the curfew had been moved up to 3:00 p.m., and it was already nearly 2:00.
Now, ordinarily she would simply have spent the night at our place. But that happened to be the week that a friend from California was in town and staying with her, and she couldn’t leave her friend alone all night in the middle of a riot. So, of course, she called me. Could I pick her up at the beauty salon, normally a good 20 minutes away, and get her home — another 20 minutes or so — and get myself back out of D.C. before 3:00? Oh, sure, no problem. Right. But first I’d have to stop for gas because my car was almost on empty — and all the gas stations were also closing early.
So I left my children with my mother, ran out to the car — a cute little Chevy Corvair — and headed for the Beltway. Not the shortest route, but the fastest. And as I drove along, listening to the news reports on the radio, I didn’t realize that I had that baby up to 90 m.p.h. When I noticed it, I did slow down a bit, but not by much. I picked my sister up at the salon, stopped at a nearby gas station, and headed into D.C., where I let her out at her apartment building and watched until she was safely inside. It was 2:45 p.m.; I had 15 minutes to get out of the city.
I was driving down New Hampshire Avenue toward the nearest bridge leading out of D.C. — no more than ten minutes away — when a military convoy approached from the opposite direction and pulled across the road, stopping directly in front of me. I also stopped — not that I had a choice. Several very young soldiers jumped out of their vehicles, carrying bayoneted rifles, and positioned themselves across the roadway. One of them began walking toward my car.
“Oh . . . hi there”
“Excuse me, ma’am, did you know there’s a curfew at 3:00?”
He was so young, and obviously so scared. I explained, very calmly and politely, that yes, I was aware of that, which was why I was trying to get home to Virginia before the curfew. He clearly did not know what to do with me.
By the grace of some higher power, there happened to be an older D.C. police officer standing on the nearby sidewalk, observing our little standoff. He came strolling over and asked me what the problem was. I explained to him that I lived in Virginia and was trying to get out of the city before 3:00. He nodded and smiled, turned to the still-confused soldier, and said, “Listen, son. You’re supposed to stop them from coming into the city, not leaving.” The young man, clearly thrilled to have been relieved of any responsibility in the matter, thanked the police officer . . . and then saluted him. Well, at least his basic training hadn’t been a total waste. Then the soldier signaled to one of the drivers to move his vehicle and let me through, and I was on my way. Somehow, that little Corvair had me back, not just across the bridge into Virginia, but all the way to my apartment by curfew time. She must have sprouted wings and flown home.
“Oh, you pretty Chitty Bang Bang”
*. *. *
As with all things, the riots eventually came to an end. And while Buzz Aldren was preparing for his historic moon landing, and Richard Nixon was settling into his first term in the White House, we found ourselves entering the ‘70s. What could we possibly have to look forward to that could eclipse the excitement of the ‘60s? Time would tell.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .”
Oh, sorry — that’s already been done, thanks to Mr. Dickens. But it’s such a great opener, and descriptive of so many periods in history, including the 1960s, that I couldn’t resist borrowing it. And there I was: a young, single woman in Washington, an eyewitness to history in the making. It was indeed the best of times . . . for a while.
Jack and Jackie
I was on the bus on my way to work one morning shortly before Christmas in 1960, stopped at a red light on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. I happened to look up from my book to glance out the window at an open convertible sitting next to us, which seemed rather odd since it was the middle of December. And there, hatless and smiling in the front passenger seat of the convertible, sat the newly-elected — but not-yet-inaugurated — 35th President of the United States: John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Young, handsome, spirited, full of hope for the future, he exemplified the era in which we were living; and I was staring straight at him, live and in person. How could you not love Washington, where such things were possible?!! Then the light changed, the convertible and my bus moved forward at different speeds, and the moment was broken. But I had seen the new President — the one I had voted for just a month earlier. It was a great day.
In fact, it had been a good year as a whole: a good job, lots of parties, dates, shows, shopping — a typical single girl’s life. Well, except for that one fainting incident . . . It was quite funny, actually. We — still the three of us, mother, sister and self — were now living in a nice eight-story apartment building in an excellent neighborhood known as Glover Park, just north of Georgetown in D.C. On the roof of the building was a sundeck where I enjoyed lounging from time to time. One summer afternoon, I had been suffering from a case of that bane of women everywhere — cramps — and decided the best cure was a shaker of whiskey sours and a little sunshine. So I mixed up my beverage of choice, grabbed a good book and some suntan lotion, and headed for the roof, where I stretched out on a chaise lounge and proceeded to bury myself in the latest John le Carre novel and lose track of time. After a couple of hours, when I finally realized how hot it was up there, I packed up my things and headed back to my air-conditioned apartment.
Of course, I was damp with sweat and suntan lotion, so I went directly to the bathroom for a nice cooling shower. As I stepped out of the shower a few minutes later, I began to feel dizzy and nauseous, so I put on my cotton robe and made a beeline for my bedroom to lie down. But I never made it to the bedroom. I did lie down, though — hard. Passed out cold, hitting the hardwood floor chin-first and splitting it (my chin, not the floor) wide open.
Now, as it happened, my sister Merna and I had had one of our classic arguments that morning and weren’t currently on speaking terms. When I took my swan dive into the hardwood, she was downstairs in the laundry room. My mother was in the living room with a friend, who happened to be legally blind and was therefore of no use whatsoever in an emergency. When my mother heard me crash, she came running. I regained consciousness after just a minute or so, and found her kneeling next to me, rocking back and forth on her heels and wailing, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! She’s got a hole in her chin! Oh, my God!” How that woman ever managed to raise two children is still beyond my comprehension.
Just then Merna returned, took in the sight of her passed-out sister and her freaked-out mother and the blind lady in the living room calling out “What’s happening? What’s happening?” and, forgetting about our earlier tiff, instantly dove into action. She put a pillow under my head, got a cold compress for my chin, and called for an ambulance. And off we went to the Emergency Room at Georgetown Hospital, where I was given a tetanus shot and a local anesthetic, stitched up, and sent on my way, by now feeling just fine.
But how to get home? I was barefoot and wearing a light cotton robe over . . . well . . . nothing. So we called for a taxi, and when we walked into the lobby of our building — where a few people were still buzzing around the desk trying to find out who had been taken out in the ambulance — I held my head high, pointed to the big white dressing on my chin, and said, “You should see the other guy,” as I sashayed toward the elevator leaving them still wondering why I was barefoot and barely covered. I might have a scar on my chin for the rest of my life; but I saw no reason to sacrifice my dignity . . . or my sense of humor.
A Little Drama
But enough about me. Washington in the ‘60s was a visually wondrous place: a city of monuments, museums, restored Colonial townhomes, mansions, parks, tree-lined streets, and wide avenues. And it still is.
But about those avenues . . .
When French engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant created the plan for the layout of the City of Washington, he designed the streets in a grid pattern, with north-south streets being numbered and east-west streets named alphabetically. So far, so good. But then he criss-crossed those squares with diagonal avenues, and further added circles where all of those streets and avenues intersected, thus creating spaces for his vision of park-like areas for the enjoyment of the city’s residents. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Sort of a miniature Paris. But Monsieur L’Enfant could not, in the late 18th Century, have foreseen the invention of the motor vehicle, or the volume of 20th Century traffic that would follow.
And I haven’t yet mentioned the fact that he divided the city into four quadrants: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, Southeast, each with its own grid of numbered and lettered streets . . . and its share of those diagonal avenues. So that the same address can appear in four different parts of the city, and when giving someone an address, you have to remember to specify which quadrant you’re talking about. So there might be, for example, a 300 K Street, N.W., N.E., S.W. and S.E. The eastern and western halves of the city are divided by the U.S. Capitol Building complex, as are the northern and southern halves; so to the east of the Capitol are First Street, N.E. and First Street, S.E.; to the north are “A” Street, N.E. and “A” Street, N.W.; to the west of the Capitol . . . Oh, what the hell! Just look at a map.
And lest I forget: some of the longer of those avenues — which, by the way, are named after the 50 U.S. states — extend from one quadrant into another, such as Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. and Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E., which just seems to skip right over the Capitol along the way. Now, add to all of this confusion the amount of rush-hour traffic on a normal weekday, and what have you got? I’ll tell you what you’ve got . . . you’ve got TOTAL FREAKIN’ CHAOS!!!
L’Enfant’s Folly
The invention of the traffic light was supposed to have mitigated the problem of the circles, and in most cases it did. But there are exceptions, due in large part to the fact that the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT ) is solely comprised of human beings — who by their very nature are fallible, and sometimes apparently also a little bit crazy. My favorite example is the light located where northbound 23rd Street, N.W. is stopped short by Washington Circle, N.W., which is also the meeting place of K Street, N.W., New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., and the infamous Pennsylvania Avenue — also N.W. at this point. That particular light mostly stays red for 23rd Street, and only turns to a flashing green right-turn arrow when — now here’s the fun part — the traffic on the circle, which always has the right of way, also has a green light at that point; so the 23rd Street traffic is trying to feed into the onrush of cars from the left, while at the same time trying to ease into the proper lane for their right turns onto Pennsylvania Avenue, or K Street, or New Hampshire Avenue, or the other half of 23rd Street northbound, or all the way around to the other side of K Street, or 23rd Street southbound, or . . .
Whew! Get my point?
But wait — I’m not finished. Take that mental image of the city streets as a whole, and superimpose on it a snow storm — not a little storm, but a nor’easter of biblical proportions. And have that storm hit the city on January 19, 1961 — the day before the scheduled Inauguration of John F. Kennedy, when half of the political, social, industrial, and financial elite of America are set to converge upon the city en masse to attend that inaugural event and the formal balls and parties that go with it. Now picture people trying to get home from work in that mess, with thousands — literally, thousands — of them having to abandon their cars when they couldn’t make it up an icy hill, or had managed to slide into a telephone pole, or each other. Can you say “total gridlock”? I can — because I was stuck in it, along with those thousands of others.
“Move It or Lose It”
The usual ride from my office to my apartment building was about 15 to 20 minutes. My boss — my very first boss, Alvin — lived in the same direction but a little farther out, and my mother’s office was just a block from ours. So when the snow started to pile up, he offered to drive both of us home. We could have walked faster — and I actually knew someone in our apartment building who did. We left the parking garage around 5:00 p.m. By 8:00 p.m., we had made it roughly halfway home and were sitting at a dead stop in a lovely residential area (in the Northwest quadrant, if you’re interested), when Alvin suddenly realized that we were just around the corner from the home of some friends of his. Never one to be hindered by rules, he pulled out of the line of traffic onto the wrong side of the road where there were no cars, drove up the street and around the next corner and into his friends’ freshly cleared driveway. There were no cell phones in those days, so we couldn’t call ahead; instead, we simply rang the doorbell and invited ourselves in, where we spent a very pleasant couple of hours eating, drinking, laughing, and using the facilities, not necessarily in that order. When the traffic had finally cleared, we headed home, arriving around 10:30 p.m. — just 5-1/2 hours after we’d started out. And we were among the lucky ones.
*. *. *
As for the Inauguration, it took 1,000 D.C. employees, together with a contingent from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working through the night to clear the inaugural parade route — first having towed more than 1,400 abandoned cars. But the job had to be done in order for the Constitutionally-mandated passing of the proverbial torch to take place as scheduled on the morning of January 20th, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy — the youngest person ever to have been elected to the Presidency of the United States, and the first Catholic in that office — did famously swear that oath . . . standing, once again hatless, outside the U.S. Capitol on that bitter cold January day. God bless America!
“Ask not what your country can do for you . . .”
And thus began three years of exhilarating highs and demoralizing lows: the continuing fight for equal rights; the space race; the Bay of Pigs disaster; the Cuban Missile Crisis when Nikita Khrushchev finally “blinked”; Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hats; little Caroline and John-John playing at their father’s feet in the Oval Office; a brother who became Attorney General and stood up to organized crime; a brother-in-law who founded the Peace Corps; Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy birthday, Mister President” in the White House (I’m still not sure whether that was a high or a low); a wall going up across Berlin . . .
*. *. *
And, on November 22, 1963, the assassination that brought an end to Camelot.
A Time to Mourn
And for a moment the world joined hands, and wept . . .
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