Barbara and I drove a car in 1990 to Chicago. Barbara said, "I visited here in 1952. I stayed with my rich Aunt Elsie who lived in a mansion by Northwest University. While living with Aunt Elsie I went to visit my cousin Ruth who is twelve years older than me. She lived in a mixed black and white neighborhood, and my family knew she was a radical. Now she lives close to Lake Michigan in Evanston north of town Chicago."
Barbara searched the neighborhood where we expected to find Ruth, and we found the house where she lived. Ruth welcomed us into her small apartment where she lived with her husband an artist who painted portaits in their basement. Some of his paintings were six by eight feet canvases of struggling factory workers. We looked at the paintings, then we sat in the living room with the couple. Ruth began to talk, "Barbara, back in the days before your mother's family came from Russia, Jewish schtettles were small, and everyone was related to each other. The government did not allow Jews to travel, so there was incest. When a boy was born his parents arranged a marriage for him. He was sometimes smuggled to a distant village to live with a new family. He grew up with a girl who was like a sister to him. They lived as brother and sister until they were old enough to marry. There was still incest, and this may be why some Jews became hunchback when they got old. It has something to do with recessive genes handed down from mutations caused by incest. This practice was done in the old country before the revolution in 1900. There were people from our family who escaped Russia, came to the United States, saved money, and sent for relatives in Russia to come here. Our families settled in upper New York; cities like Utica, Schenectady, and Syracuse, and they were half cousins, half brothers, and somehow all related."
"My father was from Chicago and not interested in politics. He was as far right wing as you could imagine. As you know, most salesmen, especially top salesmen are often Republicans and right wing. But my father was pro-choice and a democrat. My mother was one of six children. When her mother died at a young age, our grandfather remarried. What else could a man do with so many children? After my grandfather died he left money to each of his children, and quite a bit of the money went to my mother who was three years old. no matter who my mom went to live with, they were given some of the money she had inherited. My mom had two older brothers and two older sisters and a younger sister, your mother Sylvia. Most of the family felt my mom was a snot because as a young child she would say, 'I don't have to obey you! I can go live with somebody else in the family. I can take my money and go.'"
"My mom bounced around between relatives, and she became a spoiled child. Your mother Sylvia was spoiled too, because she lived with her Aunt Rae as an only child. My mom always seemed to have a lot more money than her sisters and her brother. Saul had married a rich woman and my dad worked for them. Dad made good money and my mom spent loads of her money plus what my dad earned."
"In the early twenties my father had lots of money he had earned in the stock market. He had lots, and lots of money. My Uncle Saul needed money so start a coat factory, and my dad lent him money to get started in the coat business. Saul did not want to borrow from his wife so he asked his younger sister who just happened to be married to my dad. Anyway, the coat factory was successful and Saul paid back the loan to my dad and mom."
"When my mother died she had already spent her own money and all my dad's money. She was a gambler, you know. She was beautiful and flamboyant. When we lived in Hollywood sometimes my dad traveled to other states on business. This left my mom free to meet new lovers. She had a good time on her own."
"During the twenties in Hollywood everybody was ostentatious, and they had fancy gold water faucets in their kitchens and bathrooms. People spent their money on things that didn't matter. There was no income tax. I was only five years old when we moved from Chicago to California. When Dad was gone mom, as a beautiful vivacious woman, was often invited to stay at the Herst castle. She took me with her. She knew all the movie stars, and I got to know many of them myself. She knew people like Charley Chaplin the silent movie star, and she met others who were very popular."
"My dad was a traveling salesman, and we moved and lived in all the states in America. We moved back to Chicago in 1930 when I was about twelve. We lived in a fancy hotel as was usual with mom and dad. Then, the secretary and treasurer of my dad's company ran off with all the money. They left us broke because the business owed dad a lot of money, and he was not able to collect it. We moved into a cheap apartment and my mom told her brother Saul. He sent us winter coats, and he hired my dad. My dad became the top salesman for his large coat fasctory. Dad worked for my Uncle Saul for many years."
"My grade school years were spent traveling from place to place with my dad and mom. I attended many schools briefly, but my education came from visiting libraries, reading the inscription on statues, and reading books. My mom said, 'Get out of my sight, go to the library.' She didn't care what I read. I remember, getting thrown out of the sixth grade. They were having a spelling bee. This I remember. They were going up and down the aisles having students spell, and I was bored to death. I had a book and I was it reading in my lap. The teacher took the book away from me. She looked in the book and it had words like ass in it, and it was not a child's book. She wrote a note and told me to give it to my mom. Mom came and the teacher said, 'Why are you letting your daughter read books like this about sex?' My mom said, 'I let her read whatever she wants to read. I don't care if the book is about sex.'"
"My mom was brought up when whole families lived in one room. Sex was part of living and everyone in the family knew about it. It wasn't like it is now. Sex was a part of life. In my mom's life, children slept in the same room with their parents. So nobody told my mom about sex. She knew only that you were not supposed to have it until you got married. That's all she knew."
"My mom would see me reading a Gideon bible in the hotel room, and she would pack the bible and carry it with us to the next hotel where we went to stay. She would keep my place in the bible so I wouldn't have to hunt for it. I read the bible as a book. I was not religious because my father was an atheist and mom didn't send us to a temple or any place to learn."
"My mom gave me money and let my brother and me pay for breakfasts and pay for the car gas. She let us learn to make change and learn how to use money. It was part of our education. Of course we learned about where the state capitals were located and city streets in many cities. We read about who fought in what wars. We learned a lot on the road without going to school. We visited all the museums without mom. She sent us there to get rid of us so she could gamble or do whatever she wanted. Anyway, we got a better education than most kids did. When I got to high school I was a whiz at history because I had been in all those places we read about. My brother and I knew geography because of all the traveling we did."
"I became a radical in 1937 on Memorial day. Until that time I was a well fed, well dressed sheltered young Jewish girl. I was in college, taking a course in labor relations taught by Paul Douglas who later became a senator. I took the course because this gorgeous red headed boy named Barney was in my lab class. It was a seminar class. The boy was taking the class because he was going to become a lawyer. His father was a circuit judge in Connecticut. The boy was serious and he was old. He was nineteen and I was only seventeen or eighteen. Professor Douglas announced that on May 31 on Memorial Day there was going to be an open meeting for the strikers at Public Steel. It was a holiday, and they would be making speeches, and we would learn what the issues were all about. This was not a sit down strike. The steel workers had been locked out. That was when Roosevelt was beginning to realize that if he didn't do something, there was going to be a revolution in this country. He was doing things that made the far right people get up tight. They were gonna break Roosevelt's back and break the union. People in the union had been struggling for forty years. Now they had no jobs, and they were being locked out of Public Steel."
"Our teacher Douglas told us that any of us who went down to the meeting would not have to write a term Paper. So Barney came up to my mothers house for dinner. And I'm all dressed up with high heeled shoes. I was the despair of my mother because I never got dressed up and was always wearing flat shoes, and my hair was usually uncombed. So, to make my mother like Barney, I got all gussied up and wore a long dress, and I had on hose and high heeled shoes."
"My mom called a cab to take us to 105th street south to the loop where we could catch the tram south. My aunt was with us and she got out down town and gave the cab driver ten extra dollars to take us all the way. The cab driver was very happy because ten dollars was worth more than one hundred dollars is now. The cab driver got us there late. Most of the meeting was over. The meeting had started around noon, and it was now about three in the afternoon. So we heard some speeches, and this was the first time I ever heard union songs. Speakers stood on a platform in the parking lot facing the crowd away from the steel factory. And, I looked at all these people, and they looked just like regular people who were dressed up for Sunday. The newspaper had cartoons making union workers look like ghouls or something. They were men and women well dressed, and they had children with them. They were all standing. Some were raising their fists saying that they would never give in to the bosses at the factory. They were meeting at the steel factory parking lot, and across the street was a bar where the workers went to drink beer and visit."
"There were armed policemen standing between the strikers and the factory, and at one side the Red Squad police stood. At the end of the meeting someone on the platform said to turn around and quietly walk away to disperse. We were in the back standing on grass that was muddy. When we turned my high heeled shoes sunk in the mud, and one came off. As I tried to take off my shoes, most of the crowd carrying banners headed toward the street. They passed by me. As we walked there was The Red Squad of Chicago police standing by. None of the crowd had weapons not even rocks. Some men stopped to talk to the police. Then the police threw tear gas at us. Then the Red Squad started shooting at us. Women and children ran toward safety, but many of the brave men stayed behind to be shot at in the back to save the women and children. We were in the middle, but the shooting was going on from behind the crowd. My new friend and another man grabbed my shoes, took hold under my arms, and helped me run as fast as I could. I turned and saw people falling from gun fire. Men women and children fell. Twenty seven of our people were killed, and one hundred twenty or more were wounded, all shot in the back. We were crying to see these people being shot. We could see them and it was not like in the movies. This was real, and it changed my life."
"From that day on I became a radical and a cynic. I stayed that way all my life. The newspaper in Chicago printed the story on the forty sixth page. They did not think the story newsworthy. It was on the back burner in Chicago, but the story made headlines in other cities throughout the country."
"In the thirties and forties I was popular with the radicals, and people paid attention to my liberal voice. I was labeled prematurely anti fascist. They couldn't make me a Communist. I never changed my views. In nineteen fifty, no one listened to me, but in the sixties my views were popular again."
"For the past twenty years or so, I have been earning money as a bookkeeper mostly helping artists, writers, teachers, and musicians. I hire people to help me, and we figure how to help people save on income taxes. We work here in my apartment."
"There are still people who listen to me as a critic of government especially here in Chicago. The mayor knows who I am. I am now becoming involved with a national movement to encourage people to vote out the incumbents. We want new voices in government. We are also interested in getting congress to pass an amendment to limit terms of government employment for senators, representatives, judges, and others."
"Back in the thirties we had the depression. The country was about ready to have a revolution. Roosevelt came along and prevented the revolution by starting the W.P.A. putting poor people to work building roads, bridges, and dams. California Conservation Camps were set up to give young men work. They cleared brush in the forests and mountains. The right wing people in government hated Roosevelt. He started programs like social security to help the poor, the sick, and the elderly. Republicans didn't want to give anything to these people. But by throwing help to the masses, Roosevelt saved the country for the rich. He was helping the poor and also helping the rich keep their money by preventing a revolution."
"Back in the sixties we were marching around Mayor Daly's house protesting about something, I forget what. After the marching some of the people came to my house for dinner, and my television showed that people were going to march for civil rights in Selma, Alabama. Some of us decided to go."
"We had to make arrangements to take care of things at home, and so we were late getting to Montgomery were sixty thousand people would demonstrate in a march. On the way there we were in my old car, we got a flat tire, and we pulled into a service station that had a black man working as an attendant. He opened up the trunk and my spare tire has a big bubble in it, and it isn't gonna last very long. My car is an English make and the station would have to send for a tire. We don't know this, but the man who owns the station is the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in that area. During the march the Federal Beaural of Investigation had warned the service station owner not to molest the freedom marchers. After we stopped, Mary and I went to the ladies room while our two male friends stayed by the car with Illinois license plates. A black man stopped us and said, 'You finish in there, and then you better get back in your car and leave back to where you came from, because they will burn your car or worse. They might even kill you. Those are bad men in this station. I work for them.'"
"We went back to the car and our tall friend was arguing with the station man. We tried to pull him away to get out of there, but he kept arguing. Fortunately for us, the F.B. I. drove in. The Federal Beaural of Investigation leader told the attendant, 'You are going to order a tire. You will get the tire and put it on, or else!'"
"We were taken to a coffee shop and bar where we were protected by men with government badges. When the car was fixed, we got out of there. The next day a woman was shot in the head as she drove on that road. People I know who have lived in New Orleans and other down south states tell me that it is difficult for them to believe that we drove down there without guns. They think everybody down there has a gun even today in the nineties. Right now it is worse than it's ever been before. There are more gangs and more prejudice and racism than before in New Orleans. Right now Louisiana is the most crooked state in America. There are very few jobs especially since the oil industry stopped down there. The state does absolutely nothing for anybody. It is worse than Mississippi."
Barbara and I enjoyed that one visit we had with cousin Ruth. Not long after, she died. Since that visit, Barbara and I think about Ruth and what she had to say.