Month: August 2019

Kerosene Power

This story has no moral, no lessons for the ages, no value unless it succeeds in amusing you. Read it at your peril. It also happens to be true.

It’s July, 1942. We have been officially at war since December 11 of 1941. Eight months. Patriotism is still very big. Various forms of rationing, some of it self-imposed, are becoming normal. Among the most annoying is the shortage of gasoline. Official rationing is accepted as necessary to the war effort and additional voluntary rationing is a matter of personal pride. Giant balls of tinfoil, which are somehow believed to be convertible into bombs or surgical instruments, are popular. There is also admiration for women who are taking jobs to free up men for the armed services. I am one of those men being freed up. I am not all that happy about it. I am 19 and my girlfriend (who sometimes seems less convinced of the appropriateness of that description than I could wish) is working as a waitress at a resort hotel in Bellport on Long Island. That’s a long haul from Brooklyn, where I live, and Yonkers, where she lives. We met in the middle, in Manhattan, at college, where we had originally been slated to be sophomores in the upcoming semester. For me, that won’t happen. Uncle Sam will take care of that. I am employed in a meaningless job, one that is one that is teaching me nothing, offers me no chance of advancement or a pay raise to a living wage — that is, a typical teen-age summer job since my draft status cannot be kept a secret from potential employers. In an effort to ensure that our romance at least survives the summer I am making it a priority to make the trip on weekends from Brooklyn to Bellport, where her schedule is such that we can enjoy a few hours together before I have to head back. This is further complicated by an acute lack of funds on my part for either reliable transportation or joint amusement. The Long Island Railroad is not a charitable institution, although it does offer reduced fares to uniformed servicemen. So far, luckily, I have not qualified for that. The prospect of a future one does not qualify.

Some parts of this scene are encouraging, some are discouraging. One of the discouraging aspects is the very short time available each weekend for holding hands and pledging undying faithfulness. We haven’t yet got much beyond that — remember this is 1942, war, testosterone, Ava Gardner, the age of the pin-up — all more exciting in imagination than reality. My girl seemed to me to be becoming increasingly antsy when it’s nearing time for me to start my trip back. She and her fellow waitresses (luckily, I have for potential competition only one waiter, possibly gay, and one teen-aged busboy, whose gardener father got him the job and keeps closer watch over him than I could), but the gang seems to be sharing an increasing number of in-group punch lines that serve to confuse and exclude me. They do, however, spend a lot of their off time on the beach in bathing suits, which requires changing into and out of the bathing suits. And I am admitted to their dormitory while they change, behind a curtain of bathrobes and towels. That’s a reassuring privilege.

One of the encouraging aspects is the eagerness of ordinary citizens to try to be nice to each other in the face of the Japanese and German menace. (Not, of course, to individual Japanese, or Germans, just to “safe” obviously white hyphenated Americans. Blacks and Latinos, as always, are seen more as potential muggers than as fellow citizens.)

This newfound patriotic solidarity does, however, extend to a solitary hiker, trudging along and waving a not-very-optimistic thumb beside the Montauk Highway : east on Saturday mornings, west on Sunday afternoons. Hitchhiking was generally considered patriotic in those days, if somewhat risky. The risks were on both sides. The hiker might always turn out to be a mugger; the smiling driver might actually be a pervert (often pronounced ‘prevert’ in my Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood) looking for a victim. But on balance this only added some spice. We were in a war. A sense of adventure and risk helped with the boredom and the sore feet. And the heat, or the rain, or the cold, according to the luck of the draw provided a sense of shared sacrifice with “the troops” those clean-cut, stouthearted boys marching on to victory. At least for the lucky driver with a ration card and a functioning vehicle.

So we have now set the set and peopled the stage. Action!

This will be the Sunday evening scene. Hardly any cars on the road, as usual. The drivers of those that pass the hitchhiker going in his direction pantomime as they pass him by the various reasons they can’t offer him a ride. They are only going a short distance (classic thumb and forefinger), they are terribly late (showing wristwatch), the car is already full of bundles (thumb over shoulder). But one slows nearly to the walker’s pace and the driver shouts something unintelligible as he goes by. This is not that unusual. Some warped people just get their jollies that way — slowing down enough to rouse the hopes of the thumb-waver and then speeding up after he has broken into a catch-up run. The only face-saving response for the hitchhiker is to display no disappointment, just convert his trot into a casual pace as though he had intended all along to indulge in a brief sprint — as nonchalant as possible on a boiling hot cement strip, midway between nowhere and noplace, sweating like a pig (although on second thought I have never to my knowledge seen a pig sweat). But lo, this car is actually coming almost to a stop as few moments later it passes again going even slower, in fact is going so slowly the hiker can walk and keep up with it.

“Hop in, Buddy. I don’t dare stop her. I’m running on kerosene. She’ll stall out if I go any slower.”

The hitchhiker fumbles for the rear door handle.

“That’s busted. Doesn’t work. Sit up here with me.”

The walker takes notice of the vehicle — a down and almost out Ford Model A. A bit rattly, but still intact and ready for some more miles so long as they aren’t too rapid. Rusty right front fender. Cracked back window. By the sound of it a muffler not in the best of shape, but still in the battle. Upholstery on the seats more memory than an actuality.

The driver is a large beefy man with large beefy hands as he reaches across the steering wheel for a handshake. Blond, thinning hair. Welcoming smile. Hairy chest. Shirt unbottoned to the navel, sweat running across it. The hand is sweaty, too. Now that a steady speed has been re-achieved, there is a slight lifesaving breeze. They come to an intersection with a red light and the Model A starts a set of stately circles across two lanes. No other cars in sight to worry about.

“Don’t dare stop,” says the driver. Might never get going again. But I don’t dare run the light either. Cops hide their bikes behind the billboards and by the time we explained we’d be done for.” The light goes green and we straighten out and move on. This will happen several times as we get closer to the city.

“Brooklyn? I can do that. It’s not necessarily on the way for me but not out of the way either. I’m headed for Times Square. Gonna get myself laid. Haven’t had a good lay in a while.”

At this point in the narration we are going to change pronouns. It will make things easier. Trust me.

For the first time I noticed that the aroma of kerosene that pervaded the car was mixed with another odor, just as pungent. My driver reached into the glove compartment and produced a flask, which he proffered me. I declined, but not without noticing a flash of a silver in the shape of an automatic pistol as the flask was restored to its spot. The driver noticed that I had noticed.

“Oh, yeah. It’s loaded. You can’t go on faith alone these days. Most people are nice, but not necessarily all people are nice. Now you look like a peaceable sort.”

The Model A had got into her rhythm, punctuated by an occasional kerosene burp, and we started reeling in the towns : Freeport, Rockville Center, Lynbrook, Valley Stream. The heat and the rhythm were starting to make me sleepy. When I suddenly realized that we were having a problem we were already on the wrong side of the highway, going against what would have been traffic had there been any.

My driver’s fat hands were on the steering wheel as a cushion for his cheek and he was sound asleep. After a moment of panic I managed to kick his foot off the gas pedal and get control of the wheel. I bounced us onto the median, then, mindful of his warning about the unreliability of kerosene, back over the road to the right shoulder, letting the Model A keep minimum momentum.

“Hey!” produced no reaction.

A shake of the elbow and a “Hey, wake up!” didn’t either.

My chauffeur was sleeping peacefully. While dodging telephone poles I considered my options. What to do? I could stop and leave him and the Model A by the side of the road, booze and pistol and all, shut off the ignition and walk away, pretending I knew nothing about it. I could park and get out and try flagging down a passing car for help. But what kind of help? Who would want to get involved, once they smelled that moonshine. And what would “get involved” mean, anyway? Or I could steer off the highway at the next opportunity, look for a bus stop or a railroad station parking lot in which to leave it. Or I could do what I finally actually did — nurse the Model A along in the slow lane to the next convenience store parking lot, where I kept her going in a tight circle with his shirt tied to the steering wheel, and the weight of the pistol on the gas pedal providing just enough pressure to keep her from stalling, while I jumped out and ran around to the driver’s side and shoved my inert companion onto the passenger end of the seat (no bucket seats yet in 1942). Luckily no one interrupted these maneuvers. Once I had established command and control I was faced with the question of “OK; Now what?”

I finally decided that Times Square would be the best place to head for. There would be little problem finding a parking place on a Sunday evening. All the good and law abiding and henpecked citizens were at Sunday services in the suburbs and the others were enjoying themselves in one of the bars or peep shows on Eighth Avenue. Fat-hands would be able to sleep it off, while the Model A cooled down at the curb.

So that’s what I did. What about the pistol? I checked. It was loaded. I removed the bullets and replaced it in the glove compartment, tossing the bullets into a storm drain. Now I had to figure out a way to lock the car with my chauffeur inside it, since he and it would otherwise be such obvious targets. The keys? How to lock the Model A and provide him with the keys when he woke up? I finally decided to leave the passenger window open just enough to slide the key through, lock the door, and flick the key in as far as I could, hoping he would be able to find it when he came to. I saw with relief that it had landed on his bare belly.

Then it was home to Brooklyn on the subway with my last nickel. (Yes, you read that right. In 1942 you could ride from the Times Square station in Manhattan to the Franklin Avenue stop on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn for a nickel. It required two changes of line, and knowing the routes well enough to know where double back, but it was doable.

Of course I never found out what happened to Fat-hands or the Model A, but there was no mention on Monday morning in the Daily News about any mugging or stolen car so I hoped for the best. But the next time I went to Bellport I made sure I had some folding money and an emergency round-trip LIRR ticket in my pocket.

P.S. In the end I married the girl.

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Who We Are

“That’s not who we are.”

Barack Obama used that phrase no less than 46 times in November of 2018 alone — the first days of the Era of Trump. He used it many times thereafter, and no one was in any doubt as to its meaning. There was a general understanding that America basically stood for something other than bullying, bullshit, racism, and hate. We thought we stood for an idea, and an ideal — a country where everyone got a fair shot at happiness, where one had a right to justice (if not always right away), and one’s character and abilities and behavior counted for more than the size of one’s bank account or the inherited advantages conferred by one’s social heritage. Obama could use it so confidently only because everyone understood it. He didn’t have to cite chapter and verse with each new outrage. It was a pithy useful shorthand to convey a pithy and indignant message : ‘Have hope. This presidency is an aberration, and it, too, will pass.’

I fear its very pithiness is becoming embarrassing as the evidence piles up that Mr Trump IS in fact what we are. We (or at least a voting majority of us) have long secretly nurtured a wish that the good old days would come back, that the white majority could regain its conviction that an unreliable and undisciplined citizenry would once again become docile and allow itself to be screwed by the elite as their status is diminished and their money is stolen, unhindered by Rooseveltian conscience twinges or common sense, and that future historians may have to dig deep to figure out what he meant. Because today it is becoming more and more obvious that that is exactly who we are. And presumably have been, under a thin skin of pretense at better, for most of these two and a half centuries since the Founders tried to codify ‘decent’ behavior for us in a Constitution. Bullies, bullshitters, racists, and haters.

We enjoy standing in the sunshine in our red baseball caps with our hot dogs askew and mustard dripping into our sleeves chanting “Lock her up!” and “Build That Wall” far more than we enjoy paying attention when an aspiring young leader proposes an actual solution to an actual problem. ‘Actual’ carries no weight against ‘Fake’ if fake promises that with just one more megaphone-inspired yell you, too, will be entitled to screw your neighbor and evade the common sense of regulation to protect us all.

This is not a new revelation, of course. There has always been a minority nursing this conviction, but it has generally found it wise to keep the worst offenders safely hidden under their cone-headed sheets or in their evangelical pulpits where the misapplied quotes of long-dead and mythological figures can be freely misinterpreted to one’s heart’s content without repercussions (thanks mostly to the Founders’ respect for free speech and their confidence in its power). The minority’s numbers have, however, generally been kept within bounds by the restraining attitudes of the ‘Establishment’ — a combination of the public school system, the church, and the hopes of a political reversal giving the dissenters access to the public trough before their own opportunity slips away. This time we have found ourselves with a leader with a foghorn voice and a fogged brain willing to voice the worst of our prejudices and make them ‘mainstream’. And we are thronging to acclaim him as our Pied Piper while the exhilaration of freedom from restraint and responsibility lasts. It’s a party, and you’re all invited. The way we laugh and cheer and jostle on our way to the cliff’s edge you might think that we had all gone mad, but for the little side drams and subplots of the Wells Fargos and the Sacklers and the calculated infiltration of political water-carrier judges to where the Supreme Court is today merely a reliable a 5-4agency of the administration’s policies, probably soon to become 6-3 and then 7-2 and then — quite possibly : think about it for a moment — just another patronage job to be awarded by the Leader for loyalty and faithful service..

Is there anything to be done about it? Yes, but only one thing suggests itself : throw the bum out, and his whole filthy crew after him. Is such a thing possible? Again, yes, but on one condition : that his opponents decide to act in unison and accept the fact that it will take a whole village — not just half a village. Your most precious project may have to be put aside — or even be abandoned for this generation — to create a united front. that will sometimes seem to be caving in, but think of the alternative : Ivanka and Jared and more tanks and bombs and planes and invective and the disrespect of every civilized county on the planet.

We might contemplate using Joseph Welsh’s “At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency?” as our ultimate test. Each of us can think about it separately and come to his or her own conclusion. If we do that carefully, there is still plenty of time to clean the house and send the creeps back under their cone caps and guilty anonymity.

For how long? Who knows? But I’d rather take my chances about that than go down divided, leaving Mr. Trump ‘s divide and conquer strategy the winner.

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