Disharmony in the Family - 1763 - Gay Lesbian Bi Trans News

In 1945 Pop came home from the War. Mom and I stood on NYC's Pennsylvania Station platform to wait for his train, which was running late. I paced for a while and then fixed my eyes on the pointing arrow which jerked around the face of the big clock, measuring the length of a second with each move. My 5-year-old brain locked in and ticked along, registering the duration. Even now that clock comes to mind when I count seconds. I gazed down the tracks into the darkness of the tunnel. Waiting seemed endless, but finally the train pulled in and there was Pop, safe and sound just as I'd knew he'd be. Merchant Marines didn't get killed in war, I knew without a doubt, because they didn't actually fight. Reading Marge Piercy's Gone to Soldiers nearly 50 years after the fact was a revelation. Merchant Marine casualties were proportionately higher than those of the U.S. Army, Navy or Air Force. The train finally arrived bringing Pop and a sackful of steaks, cigarettes and other hard-to-get items. When the train pulled in he grabbed his duffle bag but in the excitement, forgot the sack of rationed treasures. The duffle bag, however, contained tiny, ivory carvings made from walrus tusks Pop had traded for or purchased from the Eskimos. We inspected and admired them all, carefully turning the detailed figures over in our hands while he told us about exchanging jobs with some of the younger sailors and volunteering to be the ship's short-order cook so he wouldn't have to climb the rigging. He referred to them as �"kids�" or �"monkeys,�" and they called him �"Pop�" like we did. The Merchant Marines was a stronghold of the National Maritme Union and Pop had been able to continue his Communist political work without interruption. He remembers reading an Earl Browder book on his bunk. �"It was about �'good cartels' and �'bad cartels'. I couldn't understand it, but I accepted it,�" he laughed. Browder, then chief of the CPUSA, was mainstreaming the Party and justifying some capitalism. Forty five years later, my daughter Adrian and I sat in Pop's livingroom as strings of lights from the Brooklyn Bridge stretched across the East River outside the window. It was 1987 and I was taping his recollection of a bygone political culture. Party jargon was familiar to me, who had joined the Communist Party shortly after my parents had left it, disillusioned by Kruschev's 1956 revelations of Stalin's crimes. They had forbid me to join, but I had already been recruited along with my best girlfriends. How, I wondered as Adrian's mom, did this description sound to one generations and universes removed from those departed realities? Pop remembered being summoned by Naval intelligence and standing in front of the desk while an officer confronted him with a suspicious-looking piece of paper covered with colored markings. �"Dobkin,�" he had queried, �"can you explain this?�" Pop had grinned. �"Lieutenant, are you married?�" �"No, I'm not,�" was the reply. �"I didn't think so,�" Pop had laughed, explaining that a father would have recognized a 4-year-old's drawing. The Lieutenant, chagrined at mistaking my childish artwork for subversive code, had relaxed and laughed along with him. I remember lying on the livingroom floor, coloring those pictures for Pop, looking up at the ornate orange and gold clock high on the wall above me. I knew enough about �"time,�" to read six o'clock. �"When is Pop coming home?�" I had asked, but Mom didn't know. But now here he was, teaching me the Merchant Marine anthem: Heave ho, m'lads heave ho It's a long, long way to go It's a long, long, pull with the hatches full Braving the sea, braving the snow Braving the treacherous foe ... Pop eventually forgot the words, but I never did. I remember myself as a rowdy street kid, tough and ready for anything, leading with my chin, a perpetual scar just under the tip where I habitually fell on it. There's a snapshot from that time whose caption might read: �"Poor but Happy Street Urchin,�" referring to the knock-kneed, duck-footed 5-year-old in a ratty sun dress and sandals. It's me, a wide grin beaming out from under a loose, wavy lock of hair, my feet planted squarely by a piece of trash in front of a New York City stoop. Tough and subversive, I was, I believed, ready to take on the world, but I had no idea what that would mean.

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