"I sing my song by the fire like an old shell murmuring on the beach" — Virginia Woolf, The Waves.
Like everyone else I love, Grandma was a character! The first Jewish woman in her New Rochelle, NY community to get a divorce, she went out and found a job as a legal secretary. Her son ( my namesake ) recruited Grandma and my parents into the Communist Party in 1934 when it seemed as if every decent, conscious person was either a Party member or a "fellow traveler," as redbaiters of the time dubbed progressives. Grandma considered herself a true patriot, often declaring, "I love my country, so I want to change it for the better." This made perfect sense to me, and I wondered why everyone else didn't get it. Grandma believed that education was the remedy, and our job. She passed to me the torch of Truth, Justice and Freedom and taught me the best way—her way—to carry it forward. I was her special project: an empty vessel of fresh clay to fill with positive philosophy.
Always be courteous and friendly, she asserted, teaching me not to fear strangers whom she loved to chat up. Although acquainted with their ugly and cruel aspects she believed in the fundamental goodness of people, even the FBI agent assigned to monitor her. Grandma genuinely liked this agent, befriended him and set about furthering his political schooling. He accepted her annual invitation for an afternoon of tea and conversation, and in turn remembered her birthday every year with a card. "My agent," she called him, fully convinced that during these social occasions she revealed no information and he gathered none. Pop didn't buy it and neither do I, but there was no arguing with her.
She loved taking me places, dragging me along to visit her friends to show me off. During the early 1940s New York City still ran double-decker buses on Riverside Drive. Naturally we rode on top. I can't ever recall seeing a child on the lower deck. One day the bus was crowded and some passengers were standing. I was sitting next to Grandma not far from where a woman stood at the top of the stairs. The driver asked her to move back. She refused "I'll be fine!" she insisted. He rose from his seat and hollered up that he wouldn't continue driving unless she moved away from the steps. I listened, fascinated by the confrontation.
"Lady, you'll fall"
"No I won't"
"Yes you will"
"No I won't"
"Yes you will," I chimed in to her embarrassment and the amusement of the upper deck passengers. She found a seat and sat down.
Grandma would cackle as she told friends the story, following it with the one about another trip we took with a male friend of hers. The bus was crowded so I sat on his lap. A woman stood in the aisle. I hopped to my feet and announced, "You can have my seat." The laugh and applause from an audience of strangers was my payoff, and Grandma racked up another good tale.
But as much as I adored buses, the subway was my true passion. Mom and Pop grew accustomed to my disappearances down subway entrances whenever we walked on Broadway. They got quite a scare the first time I took off to vanish into one, but after that whenever I went missing they knew to check the bottom of the nearest entrance and there I'd be with my face pressed between the bars, ogling the action, hypnotized by the noise, the sight, and smell of the 7th Avenue IRT. Mesmerized, I pleaded to stay there while they completed their errands above ground.
One of life's big thrills was to ride at the very front of the train, especially the Express, flashing through mazes of tunnels beneath the city, passing the people waiting for the Local on the outside platform. Coolly I'd observe from the elite center track. We had important places to go and couldn't bother to stop for them. Like the price of a comic book or an ice cream cone, the fare was a nickel until 1948 when it doubled, beginning the end of an era. That's how long ago it was.
It's the details that carry the flavor of a disappeared time, and I am a lucky girl for being alive to span the ages and carry into this millennium some charming traces of the old.
XXAlix@aol.com
