“Better Living Through Chemistry” collage by Sally Edelstein

Who didn’t believe in better living through chemistry?

Post war Americans were eager to live out the dreams depicted in the color drenched ads that ran in all the magazines. Our romance with novelty blossomed as the world of plastics and chemicals was beginning to be revealed to the nation’s wondering eyes with each new miracle was awaited with bated breath.

It was expected that as natural resources became depleted synthetics would be ready to take over.

Detail of Better Living Through Chemistry” collage by Sally Edelstein. Composed of hundreds of appropriated images from vintage magazines, advertising, school books, etc.

Our pride in technology extended to the kitchen and the food chemists were wizards of altering emulating and improving upon Mother nature

Providing an artificial cornucopia to pour forth abundant substitutes for any shortage was a notion that made concern for conservation irrelevant to the promise of tomorrow.

We came to regard new products as the prime indicators of progress with little regard to consequences to our health or the environment.

My silent spring childhood memories would be chemically infused.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

Note

This work will be on view in October 2015 at The Nave Annex Gallery, Sommerville, MA as part of the exhibit “Visaural: Sight, Sound & Action

Conceived as I was in the warm afterglow of the Hydrogen bomb it was also in the dark shadow cast by Godzilla that radioactive mutated monster of mass destruction. Together they would send a collective shiver down my cold war spine.

On a hot summer morning on August 6, 70 years ago, the first Atomic Bomb blasted over Hiroshima ushering us into the Atomic Age.

In that great American tradition of forgive and forget, only ten years later in May of 1955, television audiences from coast to coast watching a popular TV program “This is Your Life,” witnessed first hand as a surprised survivor of Hiroshima nervously shook hands with the co pilot of the very plane that dropped the bomb.

Talk about a bombshell.

 May 11, 1955

Some things never change.

As the mother of a newborn, my harried Mom had very little free time.

Wednesday nights were the one hour of relaxation for her all week, so along with 40 million other TV viewers my exhausted Mother looked forward to watching “This is your Life.”

The catchy gimmick of this long running show which began its life on radio  was that the amiable host Ralph Edwards would surprise Mr. or Mrs. Average American by informing them they were on national television. Guests were surprised with a presentation of their past life in the form of a narrative read by Edwards and reminisces by relatives and friends. For that extra zip the same stunt could be pulled on celebrities too.

A perpetually smiling Edwards would reveal the subject’s life story with the assistance of a huge leather-bound This is Your Life scrapbook.

The absolute highlight of the show was the appearance of the “mystery guest” and the water works would begin giving credence to the shows nickname as the “weepiest show on TV.”

 Hiroshima Hits Home

Hiroshima Hits the Suburbs

Now with the dishes washed, laundry folded, and baby bottles sterilizing in the electric sterilizer patiently awaiting refill of tomorrow’s formula, Mom could sit back, relax and give me my evening feeding.

Mom warmed up the bottle and warmed up the TV.

With the skill of a safe cracker, Mom delicately adjusted the large knobs on the mammoth mahogany encased set- one for the snowy picture and the flip-flopping rollover, another for the sound.

She settled in with a soothing cigarette in one hand, my bottle in the other, and a box of tissues at the ready, just as the music for “This is Your Life” began.

According to the TV Guide tonight’s episode featured Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

We May have a little Surprise for You

Tick Tock (L) Doomsday Clock (R) Reverand Tanimoto

A strange ticking noise was heard, as the familiar theme music faded way… TICK… TICK…

Clutching a leather book, the congenial host, Ralph Edwards, beamed as he turned to the camera looking straight out at us, and said:

“Good Evening ladies and gentleman and welcome to This is Your Life. The ticking you hear in the background is a clock counting off the seconds to eight fifteen in the morning, August 6 1945”… TICK… TICK…  TICK …

My attention shifted from the bottle to the loud, regular, heart- beat- like sound, so familiar, so personal a sound …TICK… TICK… TICK… Mom tried to get me to resume drinking but I was fixated by the reassuring sound…. TICK… TICK …TICK ….

“And seated here with me”, Edwards continued “is a gentleman whose life was changed by the last tick of the clock as it reached 8:15. Good evening sir”, Edwards said turning to the gentleman, smiling as graciously as a maitre de, “Would you tell us your name?”.. TICK… TICK… TICK… TICK… TICK……

 “Kiyoshi Tanimoto:  answered the somewhat confused looking Asian gentleman, unsure of why he was there…. TICK… TICK… TICK… TICK… TICK…

 “And where is your home” Edwards asked, as  kindly as Santa Claus might ask a boy what he wants for Xmas.

…TICK… TICK… TICK… TICK…TICK

 “Hiroshima Japan”, the Japanese fellow answered, looking extremely uncomfortable, as small beads of perspiration appeared on his perplexed countenance.

 “And where,” our hospitable  host innocently inquired, “were you on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 in the morning?”

Poor Reverend Tanimoto had no chance to answer.

The    ticking   grew    LOUDER    and   LOUDER, and I began to cry, scared by the sound, now less familiar and more frightening …

TICK… TICK… TICK….

The cover of the August 5. 1950 issue of Colliers with the headline “Hiroshima USA:Can Anything Be Done About It?” featured an illustration by Chesley Bonestell imagining Manhattan following an atomic attack

As my  screams became louder Mom picked me up and walked me around when suddenly there was an uproar coming from the TV set with the sound of kettle drums… BOOM… BOOM… BOOM…….KABOOMMM……..  and I let out a piercing cry!

 “This is Hiroshima” Ralph Edwards said.

Mom’s gentle rocking presence was dwarfed by a phallic-looking-mushroom shaped cloud that grew on our TV screen and I was as fixated by that image as I was by the sounds.

“…and in that fateful second on August 6, 1945 a new concept of life and death was given its baptism,” Edwards concluded solemnly.

And at that moment I was baptized in a pool of fear that would be my constant companion for the rest of my life.

A mushroom cloud would hang over my dreams haunting my future.

More surprises would be in store for Reverend Tanimoto…

In that great American tradition of forgive and forget, in May of 1955, only 10 years after we dropped the Atom Bomb on Japan, television audiences watching the popular TV program “This is Your Life” witnessed as a surprised survivor of Hiroshima nervously shook hands with the co pilot of the very plane that dropped the bomb.

This  week Japan marked the somber anniversary of the worlds first Atomic bomb attack with a ceremony at Hiroshima Peace Park.

A few years back, among the 50,000 attending the memorial service near the epicenter of the blast was a grandson of former U.S. President Harry Truman , the very president who  ordered the Atomic bombings of Japan during WWII

Another much more awkward attempt at reconciliation occurred some 60 years earlier on an episode of the popular TV program “This is Your Life” that brought together surprised survivors of the Hiroshima blast with the co-pilot of  the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb.

 The image of that uneasy handshake was forever seared in my Mother’s memory who along with millions of other viewers watched that famous Wednesday  night episode in May of 1955 featuring the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto a survivor of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima.

The Japanese minister was in the states to raise money to help pay for plastic surgery for a group of Japanese women known as the Hiroshima Maidens who were badly burned and disfigured from the bombing.

The format of the sentimental “This is Your Life” was based on a simple principle – guests were surprised with a presentation of their past life in the form of a narrative read by host Ralph Edwards and reminisces by relatives and friends

Home Entertainment

Vintage Civil defense Booklet 1950s

 Wednesday nights were a rare night of relaxation for my mother.

She looked forward to  a favorite program “This is Your Life,” always tickled by the appearance of the show’s infamous “mystery guest” who would inevitably surprise the unsuspecting featured subject causing copious tears.

Civil Defense is Your Best Defense

Because it was a Wednesday, it also meant my father would be out for the evening at his weekly Civil Defense meeting.

Dad was Marshall of Civil Defense for all of Western Nassau County, NY,  and part of his job was conveying helpful information straight from the Department of Defense to groups of concerned citizens with a good case of atomic jitters.

Standing in for Uncle  Sam, the folksy talks were composed of neighborly suggestions on how to protect yourself and plan now for possible emergency action if the moment of Atomic attack came.

At home, Mom settled in with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of formula for me in the other and prepared to be entertained.

After the introduction of the featured guest Reverend  Tanimoto, the velvety voiced host Ralph Edwards walked him through the events leading up the Hiroshima bombings.

 Oh, You Shouldn’t Have!

L) Hiroshima after the Atom bomb Aug 1945 (R) Crew of the Enola Gay who dropped the bomb

 Returning from a commercial from their sponsor Hazel Bishop makers of long lasting nail polish, a loud disembodied voice was heard offstage:

“At zero six hundred on the morning of August 6 1945 I was in a B-29 flying over the Pacific. Destination Hiroshima”

Gently smiling, Edwards explained to the totally confused Tanimoto, it was a voice from the Reverends past that no one had ever heard before.

As Mom lit another soothing Parliament, the host was ready to reveal the surprise of the night.

“The voice again of a man whose second of eternity was woven up with yours, Reverend Tanimoto. Now you have never met him, you’ve never seen him but he’s here tonight to clasp your hand in friendship. Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Robert Lewis, United states air force who along with Paul Tibbets piloted the plane from which the first Atomic power was dropped over Hiroshima.”

With dramatic organ music worthy of the soap opera it had become, a nervous perspiring Lt Robert Lewis, the co pilot of the Enola Gay appeared from behind a sliding translucent screen door as the audience applauded wildly.

As my father spoke to a Kiwanis meeting hall full of people, peppering his speech with lots of of snappy phrases provided by the government like, “Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow!” our congenial host Ralph Edwards asked the former pilot to describe his experience that fateful day.

Wiping sweat from his face he spoke in a NY accent reciting words he had prepared earlier.

“Well Mr. Edwards,” he hesitated nervously.  “Just before 8:15 am Tokyo time…the bomb was dropped. We turned fast to get out of the way of the deadly radiation and bomb effects. First was the big flash that we got and then 2 concussion waves hit the ship. Shorly thereafter we turned back to see what had happened, and there, in front of our eyes,the city of Hiroshima disappeared.”

Choking on these last words he put his hand to his forehead to steady himself and repeated what he had written “My God what have we done.”

After the handshake, Mom sat stunned.

No stunt was as ridiculous or as in poor taste than that awkward handshake of victim and perpetrator. It’s tastelessness she felt  seemed more appropriate to “Truth or Consequences,” another Ralph Edwards vehicle.

Apparently the U.S. State Department agreed, but for other reasons, and took Lewis to task.

Truth and Consequences

Within days of his appearance on “This is Your Life,” the State Dept. contacted Lewis and reprimanded the former pilot for his lack of patriotism and for showing signs of reservation about the Enola Gay mission and its consequences.

The truth of what he had done sent a depressed and guilt ridden Lewis to be institutionalized by the late 1950s; the tragic consequence was his eventual suicide.

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This Is Your Life- Atomic Age

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Displaced child of 1947 or 2015 , the call for action is as urgent. According to UN figures the current global levels of displacement have not been matched since WWII. The vintage UJA ad on the left pleads for the displaced persons of WWII. ” These homeless Jews of Europe face another crisis in their bitter struggle to survive,” reads the copy.”Whether they live or die is squarely up to you…and your conscience.” The moral imperative must be there for the Syrian refugees today.

As the late great Yogi Berra might say, it’s Déjà vu all over again.

The heartbreaking stories and pictures of horror and loss experienced by the Syrian refugees, those 4 million men women and children fleeing a homeland riven by more than 4 years of violent civil war, desperate to seek a safe haven, has brought to mind an earlier generations suffering and our own similarly slow response to offer asylum.

The story of WWII’s displaced persons is well worth remembering.

Closed Borders or Open Hearts

Many Americans are uneasy with the idea of taking in Syrian Refugees and the mounting crisis has become yet another polarizing question in our country. One side says we are doing too little, issuing a call to action to accept more refugees and increase financial aid, while another side fearful of the risk to national security have issued their own call to action – pull up the welcome mat.

American history loves to celebrates our role as a land of asylum, humanity and opportunity for people across the globe. It’s a pillar of our cherished self-image as exceptional among nations.

It’s the American Way.

Vintage anti immigration political cartoon 1891 Where the Blame Lies

Whenever tragedy has struck, Americans put out their hands in compassion and help. This is indeed true of America but it is often not achieved without great resistance.

History books often overlook or minimize the contrasting truth – that along with setting out a friendly welcome mat there has always been opposition, reluctance and setbacks to that warm hospitality.

That too is the American Way.

But that America does eventually triumph over these obstacles is all the more powerful because it has been achieved.

It leaves me hopeful about the grave humanitarian crisis we face now, and reflective of what once was.

Displaced Persons

Liberated Jews suffering from illness and exhaustion emerged from concentration camps and hiding places to discover a world which had no place for them. Photo: Displaced Persons 1946

Well into the Post War years , thousands of European Jews remained locked in Displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria. For these ¼ million stateless, homeless Jewish survivors, prospects for resettlement in free democratic lands appeared uncertain.

The conventional wisdom that we immediately opened our shores with outstretched arms to these displaced persons has become a more romanticized version of the truth; the harsh edges of their struggle to enter the land of the free have softened over the past 70 years.

Not unlike today, many Americans were resistant to the idea of welcoming these refugees to our shores.

1945 No Where to Go

Strong national prejudices, procrastination in Congress and some less than dynamic leadership in White House combined to prolong the miseries of Jews who survived the Holocaust.

After World War II ended in May 1945, many of the people who were liberated had nowhere to go.

All over Europe like a great backwash to the tidal wave of war, almost 10,000,000 confused depleted and hungry human beings were wandering from place to place amidst the rubble of war. Some were newly liberated labor slaves, some civilians, some prisoners of war.

Trudging on foot, hitching rides on bicycles,  looted German cars, trucks, and hay wagons this stumbling mass of humanity moved steadily on urged on the idea to get home.

For many there was no longer a home.

Many survivors who went home faced hostility from their neighbors and found their homes, possessions and jobs gone.

Displaced persons camp Germany 1946. My future mother in law and her son, my future husband who would spend the first 4 years of his life in a DP camp. Photo: family collection

Braving the incertitude among history’s most jumbled mass of migration was a courageous young Jewish woman grown older than her 23 years through the unspeakable horrors that no one should ever bear witness to.

Her entire family lost at the hands of the Nazis, separated from her husband, she trudged on with her meager belongings tightly clutching her most valued possession, her precious newborn baby.

Lost Family 1937 Photo: family collection

This tiny baby boy, born without a home, who would never know what it was to grow up with grandparents, uncles or aunts would one day grow up to be my future all-American husband.

Bereft of home and family, tattered photos were the few remaining mementos many had. Polish Jews 1930s. Vintage photo from family collection

Unable to return to her now vanished hometown in Poland, reunited with her husband, they found their way to a displaced persons camp in Germany.

DP camps were made from abandoned German army barracks, factories and even concentration camps. Most of these camps were crowded and unsanitary with shortages of food and clothing

Before the end of 1945, more than 6 million of those uprooted by the war found a home leaving 1.5 to 2 million displaced persons. Most Jewish survivors were unable or unwilling to return home because of persistent anti-Semitism and the destruction of their communities during the Holocaust. Many of those who did return feared for their lives. In postwar Poland, for example, there were a number of violent riots that claimed scores of Jewish lives.

The big question was where to put the people who could not be repatriated?

Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor

“You’re a Cheap Bunch of Soreheads and You Can’t Land Here,” says a bloated Uncle Sam in cartoonist Art Young’s protest against discriminatory immigration laws. This editorial cartoon appeared in “The Masses” the radical, socialist magazine that attacked the status quo.

Restrictive immigration policies were still in effects in the U.S. and legislation to expedite the admission of Jewish DPs was slow. These constricting immigration policies had at least a partial basis in anti-Semitism and racist theories, thanks to immigration laws passed between 1882 and 1929 that were among the most discriminatory in the world, regulating immigration by race.

Despite loosening of some quota restrictions, by the end of the year opportunities for legal immigration to the United States remained extremely limited.

While the arguing went on, so did the suffering. Children in a DP camp in Germany 1947. Photo: family collection

Congressional action was needed before existing immigration quotas could be increased, so while Congress procrastinated and bickered, my husband would spend the first four of his life in a DP camp looking for a country that would accept him.

A Tarnished Golden Door

These Jews did not receive the welcome promised in the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty “I lift my lamp beside the Golden door.” In the years following the end of the war, the lamp was dimmed, the door too often closed.

But like today there were pockets of outrage.

Even conservative Henry Luce publisher of Life Magazine took Uncle Sam to task a full year after the ending of the war in an editorial with the headline “Send Them Here.”

“The most shocking fact about the plight of these displaced persons is not that they are interned. It is the fact that the US Government and people have the means to open the door for many of them but have not done so.”….

“Europe’s refugees need a place to go And America needs to set a world example.

More than a year after the crushing of the Nazis there are still some 850,000 people in concentration camps in Germany Austria and Italy. The crime of the inmates is a lack of passport or another place to go

“We have a deep moral obligation not to be too exclusive. The constitution of the UN proclaims the universality of human rights and freedom a clause the US has often invoked. How can we be so complacent in our immigration policy?

“Above all, in Gods name can we go on doing nothing about those DP’s?”

The Jewish Question

“The shadow of war and oppression is deep and hard to erase. The wounds are far greater than anticipated and much slower to heal. These homeless Jews of Europe face another crisis in their bitter struggle to survive,” reads the copy in this Vintage 1947 ad UJA. ” Stretch out your hand in brotherhood, open your heart in compassion.”

While Congress cooled their heels, charitable organizations stepped up, none more so than the United Jewish Appeal.

In the late 1940’s anti-semitism was a prevalent attitude in the US.

In Congress antisemitism was an explaining factor in the common hostility towards refugee immigration and anti-semitism explains Congress action that blocked all likely havens of refugee for the Jews before the War.

Part of that hostility was fueled – as some grievances are now- by stereotypes of the refugees as harbingers of a dangerous ideology, in this case communism.

United Jewish Appeal – Call to Action

The UJA appeal was unprecedented.

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration that had started helping DPs in 1945 was saddled with limited resources and inadequate to cope with the tremendous need.

A major campaign by the United Jewish Appeal organized in 1946 to help the Jewish Displaced Persons set in motion the most massive reconstruction and immigration program in Jewish history.

It was a challenge to American Jews to help survivors.

Words spoken at a UJA meeting nearly 70 years ago by Bernard Baruch could just as easily be applied to the Syrian refugees today.

“Added to their physical suffering is their mental anguish for they have become the unwanted – driven from place to place- welcome nowhere.”

Along with thousands of others who answered the humanitarian call, my own family opened their hearts in compassion to help, never knowing that in decades to come this saga would touch their own family.

A Moral Obligation – It’s a Family Affair

Winter 1946. (L) While my mothers Manhattan family vacationed in Miami Beach , (R) my husband and his family spent the winter in a DP Camp in Germany.

On a snowy February afternoon in 1946 while my future in-laws scrounged for food in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany, bartering cigarettes and chocolate for fresh meat and milk my own beloved grandmother Sadie sat in the warm comfort of the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, one of a several hundred women attending the opening rally of The Woman’s Division of the UJA of Greater NY.

Seated at snowy white linen covered tables festooned with silver plated urns filled with Herbert Tareyton cigarettes, they waited silently, somberly sipping tea and nibbling lighter than air angel food cake in anticipation of the featured speaker Mrs Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We…You…Are  Their Only Hope

These ladies had gathered together to embark on the greatest drive to raise money for the Jewish Refugees , part of The UJA’s recently launched $100,000,000 nation wide drive.

Eleanor Roosevelt the guest speaker had just recently come from visiting 4 DP camps and movingly shared her experience of the indescribable pain and suffering she witnessed.

Looking out at the packed ballroom of that grand hotel filled with well-heeled and well-intentioned ladies, a veritable sea of bobbing Lilly Dache chapeau, a profusion of ranch mink and Persian Lamb coats redolent of Shalimar and Joy, the former First lady firmly implored : We cannot live in an island of prosperity in a sea of human misery,

These smartly dressed ladies in their Hattie Carnegie dresses who now lived in large limestone apartments that lined the grand Avenues  of the Upper West Side of N.Y. gave her a standing ovation.

“These are Your Brothers and Sister Who Speak…”

Nearly all these women were once Eastern Europeans themselves, or had come from those who had made the odyssey, suffered from dislocation, confusion, fear, loss of what they knew.

All looking for a better life.

Many of these same women knew first hand the Cossack’s on horseback that had driven their people from their homes, the laws that had prevented them from owning land, living where they wanted, getting an education.

They knew that even here, in this new land where they had prospered because prosperity was what America had to offer, they were still despised for being themselves, for being Jews. So they knew the only way to survive was with your people and to care for them.

That it was the obligation of American Jews to contribute generously to relieve the suffering of the surviving Jews of Europe was never in question.

The UJA ran a series of emotion laden ads asking for help, such as the one above.

“Give them Life and Make it Worth Living”

These are your sister and brothers who speak.
Praying that their liberation from Nazi tyranny shall not be turned into a mockery by the worlds indifference. Praying that now, after years of torture and death and a miserable existence in displaced persons camps they be helped to rebuild their lives.

By 1947 the need was greater.

The Jewish population of the DP camps has tripled in one year. From 85,000 at the beginning of 1946 to 250,00 in 1947.

Resources were depleted.

Not only were US Quotas  still in place against the Jews there was an organized campaign against permitting the entrance of displaced persons into the U.S. with President Truman’s mail 7 to 1 against admission.

Many nations shared the shame of the US in having refused sanctuary to stateless Jewish survivors following WWII.

Efforts to get them into Palestine faced great odds. Great Britain continued to strictly limit the number of Jews allowed in Palestine. Jews already living in British-controlled Palestine organized “illegal” immigration by ship. In 1947 the British forced the ship Exodus 47 which was carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors headed for Palestine, to return to Germany where the passengers were again imprisoned in camps.

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration set to expire that June placed greater burdens on the agencies of the UJA.

The  massive campaign continued running ad campaigns in the popular magazines.

Could You Refuse Them If They Stood Before You?

The plaintive question asked in  this 1947 UJA ad went straight to the heart:

“Could you look into the sad proud eyes of this girl and say, No child I will not help you?

Could you bear to hear the sobs of this frightened boy without wanting to draw him into the warm shelter of your s arms?
There are thousands more like these 2…children who have survived Hitlers plan for their extermination. Sad, hungry terrified children who need your help.

They have seen sights no child should ever see. They have known terror we in America cannot even imagine. Before they had a chance to be young, their hearts grew old. Their souls are wounded in a way that only understanding people like you can heal.

They need everything. Food clothes and medicine just to keep them alive. The need homes and guidance. They need education and training for useful lives in Palestine the US or some other hospitable land.

But most of all they need what all people need…faith in their fellow beings, hope for the future.

We in America…you in your comfortable living room..it is us they look for help. We…you…are their only hope.

It was a moral obligation then, it is a moral obligation now.

Next:  Syrian Refugee Crisis:Deja Vu All Over Again PT II: The Fear Factor

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Steeped in fear, some Americans have a nasty habit of marking an entire people as pre-disposed to disloyalty. After WWII, as my future husband and his family of Holocaust survivors lingered in an overcrowded Displaced Persons Camp in Germany  waiting for a country that would accept them, politicians and a fear mongering media debated the loyalty of Eastern Europeans and the fear of Communist infiltration. Many were convinced that Communists had infiltrated DP camps posing as refugees in order to enter the country where they would soon overthrow the government. All were suspect including this homeless little boy on the left who would one day grow up to be my husband. Did I  marry a communist ? Not in the least. (L) My 3-year-old husband in a DP Camp 1948 photo family collection (R) 1949 movie poster “I Married a Communist”

A Threat to America

Fear mongering media and xenophobic politicians cry out in protest at the possible influx of refugees seeking a safe haven.

Squawking like Chicken Little, they ominously warn of the dire consequences and threat to America if we allow “these tired, these poor, these huddled masses” of refugees ‘yearning to breathe free” into our homeland.

The Other

These particular refugees they assert “are supporters of terrorism, violence and the abrogation of American laws and ideals…they will take over the country and subvert our constitution.”,

“Taking in these refugees would be suicide for the US because anti-American terrorists may be disguising themselves as refugees.”

A lawmaker opposing these immigrants claims they are “imbued with political ideologies wholly at variance with our constitutional system!”

Testimony before Congress offered grave warnings that these refugees were “important carriers of the kind of ideological germs with which it is their aim to infect the public opinion of the US.”

Now that certainly sounds like a diagnosis from the good doctor, Ben Carson.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

“Is this Tommorrow?” A panel from the 1947 anti communist comic book designed to teach people about the subversive nature of communism.

Only the speaker here was not directing his paranoia at the fear of a Muslim terrorist sneaking into the U.S. along with the Syrian refugees.

These remarks were uttered over 65 years ago about another group of refugees seeking asylum, East European refugees.

This fear mongering that sounds straight out of the right-wing playbook on Anti-Muslim refugees is actually a page from the cold war anti-communist rhetoric directed at the displaced persons of WWII.

The current resistance to the 4 million Syrian refugees fleeing a violent homeland desperate to seek a safe haven, mirrors the deep freeze experienced by displaced placed Eastern European Jews  during the cold war whose efforts to get to a safe haven were met by a cold shoulder.

The cold war cast a particularly chilly response to the desperate plight of the displaced person of Europe due to our heightened fear of Communist infiltration.

Thanks to the peddling of irrational fears to a panicked and paranoid public, many post war Americans were resistant to the idea of welcoming these poor souls to our shores.

Displaced Fears

Displaced Persons in a DP Camp, Germany 1947

Well into the post war years, thousands of European Jews remained locked in displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria. Without a home, many were afraid to be repatriated because their countries were now police states under Soviet occupation.

For these ¼ million stateless, homeless Jewish survivors, prospects for resettlement in free democratic lands appeared uncertain.

These huddled masses yearning to be free had nowhere to go.

It is a story that hits close to home.

My future in-laws were Holocaust survivors.

A Cold war Chill

Displaced persons camp, Germany 1946. My future mother in law and her son, my future husband who would spend the first 4 years of his life in a DP camp. Photo: family collection. With a broad brush many have painted all Muslims as terrorists, so it was with the Eastern Europeans and the assumption of being communists sympathizers.

While my childhood was a sugar frosted world of frost-free fun living out the post war suburban dream, my husband would spend the first four years of his life in a displaced persons camp, while Congress bickered unwilling to change existing restrictive immigration laws that severely limited the number of Eastern European allowed.

Cast in a cold war light, these refugees became in even less desirable.

Part of that opposition was fueled, as it is now, by stereotypes of the refugees as harbingers of a dangerous ideology, in this case Communism.

By the beginning of 1947, the composition of the DP camps had changed.

The camps were very overcrowded due to the daily influx of Jews from Eastern Europe fleeing oppressive Soviet occupation. 250,000 Eastern European Jews including large numbers of families and children from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Soviet Union joined the other displaced persons of the Holocaust.

As my husband and his family lingered in an overcrowded DP camp waiting for a country that would accept them, politicians and a fear mongering media debated the loyalty of Eastern Europeans and the fear of communist infiltration.

Warning! Danger Ahead

An ant-communist comic book warning young readers of the dangers ahead should Uncle Sam steer clear of the Rd Iceberg

By 1947 relations between the Soviet Union and U.S. were in the deep freeze; the cold war was frozen solid.

In the black and white cold war world war of good vs evil, America was certain that the communists were waging an aggressive campaign of hatred against us embarking upon an aggressive campaign to destroy free government and American way of life.

from the 1947 anti communist comic book “Is This Tomorrow?” warning people of the subversive nature of Communist infiltration

Uncle Sam was convinced that Russia was hell-bent on destroying the traditional American way of Life and had their cunning communist eyes set on infiltrating America with whatever means they could.

Germ War Fare

American feared being infected with a good case of communism. (R) Is This Tomorrow a 1947 comic book designed to teach people about the subversive nature of communist infiltration.

The very health of democracy was at stake, unless these morally corrupting influences were wiped out and banned from our shores.

More frightening than polio was the spread of that ideological virus communism.

And the displaced persons camps were prime breeding grounds for this subversive cunning germ.

The president of the National Economic Council testified in Congress that the DPs were “important carriers of the kind of ideological germs with which it is their aim to infect the public opinion of the U.S. ”

It was a virulent strain of ideology that once exposed, there was no cure. We needed to quarantine the public from the spread of this dangerous virus.

Crafty subversive plotters training for their roles as peddlers of Soviet propaganda, skillfully disguise themselves as refugees in a DP camp 1947 . Photo family collection

Just as germs entered the bloodstream undetected so Communists could infiltrate and attack. “Skillfully disguising themselves as refugees,” one article warned, “carrying out their mission these communists spend years in training for their subversive roles, poised to slip in a neat hypodermic needle full of Moscow virus.”

In a DP camp in Germany a group of Junior revolutionaries plotting for seizure and power in the USA. Photo- family collection

Many were convinced Communists had infiltrated the DP camps, posing as refugees in order to enter the country where they would soon overthrow the government.

People testified in Congress that the Soviets had placed “trained terrorists’ ( trained at terrorists institutions in Moscow) in the DP camps .

Is that a concealed weapon in that snow ball? A 2 year old displaced child in DP camp Germany. Photo Family collection

It was  therefore likely that many DP camps admitted from Europe would include a number of these terrorists. Alarmists feared that DPs were Soviet “Trojan Horses bent on the nations destruction.”

Natural Tendencies

As a reflection of their “natural tendencies” the perceived politics of the DPs thus posed a threat to American nation.

Many Congressmen opposed DP immigration equating these “New Immigrants” with anarchism, communism and Bolshevism, recklessly claiming the DPs were “imbued with political ideologies wholly at variance with our constitutional system of government.”

Who Can You Trust

What it boiled down to was loyalty and trust calling in to question the loyalty of immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Marking an entire people as pre disposed to disloyalty is a familiar refrain.

Once here, the DPs ( from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe) would be “peculiarly susceptible to the absorption of socialistic propaganda” and naturally gravitate into “left wing unions” and the immigrant slums which were “mothers of revolution.”

Opponents of DP immigration often spoke of how the DPs and the “ideological germs” that they carried would weaken the nation from within, echoing fears of “race suicide” that had been so prevalent in debates about immigration earlier in the century.

1948 Displaced Persons Act

However as time went on President Harry Truman stood up against the public opinion and Congress in his battle to open the door of the U.S. to Jewish DPs. He urged Congress to enact legislation that would admit thousands of homeless and suffering refugees of all faiths to the U.S.

After pressure, Congress passed the less than magnanimous 1948 Displaced Person Act ( an act to authorize for a limited time the admission into the U.S. 200,00 of certain European displaced persons) which was highly selective using date restrictions designed to limit the number of Jewish refugees eligible for entry.

President Truman when he signed it, grudgingly admitted it was better than nothing, but called it “flagrantly discriminatory” against Jews and Catholics. 1

Change of Heart

Many began seeing the propaganda potential of DPs that could be exploited and that they be touted through the U.S. as “Victims of Communism.”

As more refuges were being admitted, a cold war re-branding of the DPs began to take hold. In the war against communism they could use their plight to our advantage.

One document  suggested a technique for fighting Communism in the USA strongly recommending “that the propaganda potential of DPs be exploited and that they be touted through the U.S. as Victims of Communism.”

The obvious fact that the DPs who might technically be able to return to their East European homelands refused to do so because of feared Communist rule, had somehow previously eluded them.

Many folks began to realize that far from destroying the nation from within, the politics of the DPs especially their anti-communist feelings could strengthen the nation in its conflict with the Soviet Union.

For many of the proponents of DP immigration, the DPs did not represent the communist contagion but rather the anti-communism inoculation.

They would be living proof of the terrors and horrors of Communist rule.

In its final report the USDPC urged the resettlement of refugees from communist tyranny should become part of Cold War U.S. Strategy.

These displaced persons served to remind us of the dangers of totalitarian communism!

Post Script

Coming to America 1949 Photo family collection

In the fall of 1949 a few months before a relatively unknown senator from Wisconsin began his 4 year witch hunt for Communists, my future husband and what remained of his family arrived in the states from their DP camp in Germany.

After a ten-day crossing from Bremerhaven, Germany, the ship steamed into NY Harbor. On board were other displaced persons some were survivors of concentration camps others refugees from Russian persecution.

Some were so old that they had little to look forward to except burial at last in American earth; others like my husband, so young that soon they would have no recollection at all of Europe. But all of them felt grateful to the country that had finally given them a safe haven.

Only 4 years old, Hersh who had spent almost all his life behind barbed wire was able to adjust quickly, learning phrases that would take his parents months to learn.

His first experience here was watching Hop Along Cassidy on TV. This little 4 year boy who could only speak Yiddish donned a cowboy hat and learned the language watching good old American westerns.

As his parents watched him change from a displaced person with a number into an American, they beamed with happiness.

Today this former unwanted refugee is an attorney defending those most in need of help, whose eloquence owed a lot to those 1950s cowboy and the generosity of America for welcoming him.

1. Note: So much criticism was heaped on the 1948 Act that Congress later passed amendments extending allotment of US immigration visas for DPs to approximately 500,000.
The 1950 revision succeeded including treating all European refugees “equally as members of the human race” as the NY Times said in an editorial at the time.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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“Every citizen must read this as it tells what you and every American can do to save our constitutional freedom and competitive economic system from destruction.”
“The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution” by John T. Flynn 1949 is a  vintage propaganda booklet distributed by the Fighters of Freedom,  a right-wing reactionary group in post war America

 A chilly thought has begun to haunt some right-wing Americans to the core. Could a socialist actually be president?

As democratic socialist Bernie “I am no Capitalist” Sanders grows in the polls, the fear of getting berned has many alarmist tea partiers in a frazzle.

Taking a page straight out of the cold war playbook, Senator Rand Paul has stoked their fears warning that Americans should steer clear of an ideology ( socialism) that killed millions under dictators like Joseph Stalin.

Never mind that Sanders brand of socialism embraces the democratic socialism of Scandinavia for example, where government guarantees paid sick leave, universal health care and free higher education.

The sheer terror that the word socialism elicits in some Americans is eerily familiar. It is the same panic that ran rampant during cold war America.

Post War propaganda.Vintage ad 1950

The Coming Socialist Revolution – Duck N’ Cover

Post war patriot George Washington Small’s biggest bugaboo was big government.

It was, he felt, the duty of every American to build down Washington’s bloated bureaucratic government.

Alarmed that the expansion of the government to regulate almost every aspect of American life meant only one thing- Socialism, George was convinced that Moscow-directed Marxists dressed in Robert Hall suits were infiltrating our government!

America was traveling on a road to its own destruction.

Freedom Caucus or Fighters For Freedom

Mr. Small feared the country was turning into something foreign and frankly un-American. He understood all too well that the “welfare state” was  politicians gobbledygook for socialism.

In 1949, he was certain the American way of life was under siege.

Was George W. Small a member of the Tea Party? Hardly, since that movement wouldn’t evolve for another 60 years. But this post-war patriot was a member in good standing of the Fighters For Freedom, a branch of a larger right-wing group called The Committee for Constitutional Government.

Everything Old is New Again

Taxes, taxes, taxes-What Our Government Takes From Us
(L) Illustration of Boston Tea Party -Taxation without representation is tyranny. 1773 The nation fought for a principle and won! Illustration from James Pepper Whiskey Ad 1940 (R) Illustration of US Taxpayer by Artzybasheff for Time magazine 3/10/52

Today’s conspiracy-loving, big federal government despising, climate change denying, Glenn Beck-watching, true believers of the Tea Party may well be the progeny of George W. Small.

The unhinged right-wing ideas we hear today were generated generations ago. The Tea Party is merely the new kid on the block.

The Tea Party is clearly a descendant  not of the original first American fighters for freedom who created the American Republic, but of a right-wing reactionary group formed in the 1940’s called Fighters for Freedom. Exploiting people’s fears, its members were convinced that there was a conspiracy  in the highest places of government to get rid of American Constitutional rule and replace it with a Marxist dictatorship.

On The Fringes of Freedom

In 1949 the N.Y.C. group published The Road Ahead:  America’s Creeping Revolution written by  conservative American journalist John T. Flynn and distributed by The Committee for Constitutional Government.

The purpose in writing this book he explained, “is to describe the road along which this country is traveling to its destruction. The American government has in recent years changed its character. It has become an overwhelming  and omnipresent machine of controls and compulsions.”

The book had at least 3 printings totaling over 500,000 copies. The National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government (also known as the Committee for the Constitutional Government) was founded in 1937 in opposition to many of FDR’s “socialist” New Deal Legislation. John T. Flynn wrote extensively opposing FDR and interventionist foreign policies, shifting his focus to fight  Communism. During his last years some of Flynn’s books were promoted by and reprinted by the right-wing reactionary group John Birch Society.

“The door opener to socialism is ‘FEDERAL AID’ for services which citizens can as well or better perform for themselves and for which, in the long run, they themselves must pay. Federal Aid aids mostly the politicians to extend, centralize and firmly fasten their controls on the lives of its citizens.” Quote from: The Road Ahead: Americas Creeping Revolution By John T. Flynn 1949
Vintage Illustration from Men’s Lee Work Clothes Ad 1953

The hope of the book was “ to dispel the mass delusions that have been fastened upon national consciousness by decades of propaganda portraying the welfare state as something desirable.”

“Fighters for Freedom realize that those who have lost their freedom have not the strength to regain it,” the book explained, “and those who have it seldom realize until too late how easily their freedom can be lost beyond recall.”

They were there to heal a sick America.

What Ails America

“The American Government has in recent years changed its character. It has become an overwhelming and omnipresent machine of controls and compulsions”-
from “The Road Ahead America’s Creeping Revolution” by John T Flynn

Like today’s freedom worshiping Republicans who are desperate to rescue the mistreated public who are being enslaved by Obamacare, the Freedom Fighters wanted to protect the poor American citizen from the evils of socialized medicine.

Then as now both groups excelled in spreading misinformation.

Not limited to the fringes of political life,  groups with these beliefs  had close ties to members of Congress.

A reprint of a speech given in the hallowed halls of Congress by the Honorable Ralph W. Gwinn of NY. was printed in The Road Ahead. After espousing on the perils of government control of minimum wages and hours, education, housing, etc. the  Republican Congressman tackled socialized medicine:

Socialized Medicine

Health Care as we know it will vanish under Socialized medicine. Under Socialized medicine“There will be no more need to excel in skill and devotion to patients; there will be no more competitive effort for public favor.”
“The Road Ahead :Americas Creeping Revolution” by John T. Flynn
Vintage illustration from Wyeth Drugs Advertisement 1944

“Our Socialists propose to continue the march down the road to Marxist serfdom by bribing our doctors to socialize health and medicine from Washington just as the British Marxist government  has done.”

“The procedures are almost identical. 750,000 doctors nurses and hospital personnel would enter our government employment and cease free practice of medicine.”

“Washington would guide and control it all, drying up the voluntary source of skill, mercy, health and hospitalization.

There will be no more need to excel in skill and devotion to patients; there will be no more competitive effort for public favor.

Payments by government will be for quantity, not quality of service.

Yet as a doctor in Nashville said recently, ‘Socialism is the syphilis of medicine. It is easy to take but rots the body to death.’

Government medicine is sterile. It never invents or discovers new cures.

It can but appropriate and try to take by force what the individual alone can give as a voluntary free servant of the people. He alone can have the heart of sacrifice and devotion and love of service. Without freedom in medicine, the art of healing itself disappears.

Evangelist

“Politicians who ask you to turn over to them more of your paycheck and to let them be the guardian of your children in what they tell you will be a “social welfare state’ are only forging “new instruments of power’ which in the end will shackle the liberties of the people.” From “The Road Ahead: Americas Creeping Revolution” by John T. Flynn
Vintage illustration from Imperial Whiskey Ad 1949

A true believer, George Washington Small worked tirelessly spreading the word, distributing pamphlets, booklets wherever he went.

Fighters For Freedom believed “it was imperative that millions of copies of  The Road Ahead must be distributed quickly, every citizen must read this as it tells what you and every American can do to save our constitutional freedom and competitive economic system from destruction.”

In a final burst of self-importance, the book declared: “Timely informative books like this have swayed the destiny of nations- as did “Uncle Toms Cabin” before the Civil War. Use the Road Ahead to project and multiply many fold your citizens influence to save our form of government for yourself and your children.”

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Questioning whether a woman can be President is as dated and ludicrous a notion today, as this vintage 1956 Maidenform ad of a woman on the campaign trail with the tag line “I Dreamed I Went Whistle Stopping in my Maidenform Bra!”

An Article From our Archives: 

What would JFK think of Hillary’s bid for the Presidency?

As Hillary Clinton begins her run for President  some Republican pundits are still debating whether a woman is worthy of sitting in the oval office. During another presidential election nearly 60 years ago, a brash young senator named John F. Kennedy asked and answered the prescient question “Can a woman be President?

His answer may surprise you. It didn’t Hillary.

Hillary Rodham for President

“Would You Want Your Daughter to be President?” inquired the bold black headline. “Before becoming too deeply involved in the merits of the question we ought to first ask ourselves: What are the chances of a woman becoming President?”

It was late October 1956, election day was a few weeks out and the Presidency was on everyone’s mind.

Including a 9 year old Hillary Rodham.

Proudly sporting an “I Like Ike” campaign button pinned to her brownie uniform, her sash bedecked with patches and pins attesting to her many achievements, the studious Park Ridge, Illinois schoolgirl had her bookish nose buried in an unlikely magazine.

Reading with the same diligence and enthusiasm she normally gave her studies, an article in Everywoman’s Magazine – penned by a handsome Junior Senator from Massachusetts – had riveted the earnest young girl who all but ignored the birthday celebration that awaited her.

Neither the lure of a luscious birthday cake or the pile of fanciful wrapped presents festooned with satin ribbons and bows could distract the determined young Hillary from this engrossing feature that posed the question “Can a Woman Ever Be President?”

A Lot of Moxie

The 1956 “Book Profiles in Courage” by Senator John F Kennedy profiled U.S. Senators ( all male) who defied the opinions of others to do what they felt was right despite great criticism. The lack of any women featured in this book is no surprise. In post war America, women who had dutifully served their country with courage during WWII were now dutifully serving their husbands at home.

The provocative article written by John F. Kennedy, the author of the years best-selling book Profiles in Courage, displayed a different sort of courage to ask such a question in 1956.

This was, after all, the era of the happy homemaker a time when women were celebrated for their domestic prowess’. It was the same year that Life magazine proudly declared “ Of all the accomplishments of the American Woman, the one she brings off with the most spectacular success is having babies.”

Estrogen and ambition seemed a dangerous cocktail to some.

Kitchen Ambitions

From the cheery suburban kitchen, Hillary’s mother Dorothy tenderly eyed her only daughter deeply engrossed in the magazine article. Smiling in satisfaction, Mrs. Rodham expertly spread the angel pink frosting on the 7 layer devils food birthday cake.

It was an ambitious undertaking but she had promised to make Hillary’s favorite cake, carefully following the recipe from the well-worn United Methodist Women’s First Church Cookbook of Park Ridge. Chuckling to herself, Mrs Rodham knew the frosting was the only thing “pink” in this fervently anticommunist home that her prickly husband Hugh would tolerate.

Recipes For Success

Vintage magazine cover Everywoman’s Nov. 1956

Earlier in the week the happy homemaker had been thumbing through the latest issue of Everywoman’s Magazine when she spied an article that fairly jumped out at her.

There nestled between features for fanciful new bathroom curtains and cook-to-please casseroles was an item that she was sure would interest her brainy, motivated daughter.

“Could Your Daughter be President?” the article asked its readers.

Imagine that, Dorothy thought in amazement. But what were the chances of a woman actually becoming President? With the Middle East in an uproar, Russia flexing their formidable muscles, and the  civil rights crisis brewing at home,  the highest office in the land required formidable skills.

On the other hand Dorothy thought to herself, she would never have imagined in her wildest dreams that her own United Methodist church would decide to grant women full ordained clergy status just this past May.

But a woman President!

However, if any daughter could be President it could be Dorothy’s.

She was certain her little girl would find the article captivating.

This was no Grimm’s fairy tale (though the prospects seemed rather grim.) The story spun by the idealistic senator would hold more appeal for young Hillary than any Cinderella story. Gorgeous Grace Kelly may have married her prince that year, but Hillary had her eye on a bigger prize.

All the Way with JFK

The 1956 Democratic convention turned out to be a national showcase for the young Massachusetts Senator who only a year earlier had been little known across the country. Chosen by Governor Stevenson s camp to place Adlai’s name in nomination for the Presidency, Kennedy also narrated a film about the Democratic Party. JFK had thrown his hat in the ring for Vice Presidency but was defeated narrowly by Senator Estes Kefauver.

It was no accident that the magazine had asked the ambitious Senator Kennedy to write the article. The telegenic politician’s star was rising, and some thought he had his eyes set for the 1960 presidential run.

Only a year earlier  the fresh-faced Junior Senator had been little known across the country. But the recent 1956 Democratic Convention held in Chicago turned out to be a national showcase for the young Senator where he had been narrowly defeated as a vice president.

By the end of summer, Chicago was buzzing about the 39-year-old Kennedy after his stirring nomination speech for Adlai Stevenson, none more so than the ladies who swooned at his movie star good looks.

Father Knows Best

Basking in Eisenhower post war peace and prosperity, the Rodhams were die hard Republicans

Everyone in Chicago it seemed was taken with Kennedy.

But not Hugh Rodham.

Hillary’s father was unimpressed with the young upstart.

Looking up from his newspaper, Hugh sourly sniffed at the very sound of JFK’s name when the die-hard Republican  inquired about the article that had so fascinated his daughter..

The Chicago businessman had had his fill of his town being run over by Democrats that August. If there was one thing Hugh  held more in disdain than Democrats it was the Chicago Democratic machine.

It was all meaningless anyway.

No Democrat could drive Ike out of office despite his advanced age of 66. The Eisenhower post war prosperity assured his reelection was inevitable, eventually passing the Presidential  baton to his capable Vice President, Richard Nixon in 1960.

Compared to a real hero like Dick Nixon, Hugh thought Kennedy was  a lightweight coasting on his good looks and privilege.

While her father groused on about JFK, Hillary ignored him focusing on the future of the Presidency.

It wasn’t the author’s movie star good looks that drew her to the article.

It was the sense of possibility.

A Woman For President? by John F. Kennedy

The permanence of a patriarchal presidency still seems written in stone for some. The question of whether is America ready for a female president, is still a favorite among the pundits on Fox news who seem to enjoy rehashing this old nugget.

Kennedy’s  article in Everywoman’s Magazine opens in the far distant future. Taking on the tone of an episode straight out of the Twilight Zone, the reader is presented with a fantastical daily schedule for an imaginary female President detailing the overwhelming challenges a Commander-in-Chief would have to face. Surely it would seem unimaginable for a mere mortal woman to handle.

“Today’s Appointment Schedule for President Lucy R Jones as released by the White House Press Secretary, is as follows:
10 A.M.- Review troops at Andrews Air Force base as Commander-in-Chief of all US Armed Forces
12 Noon– Address US Chamber of Commerce on her Administrations Tax, Fiscal and Tariff Policies
2P.M.– Confer with her party chairman and national committeemen on this years political prospects.
3P.M.– Press Conference.
4P.M.- Confer with British and French Prime Ministers on current threats to peace.

“Ridiculous, some will say; why not?, say others. It will never happen, say still others.

Parents react differently too. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if my daughter grew up to be President?”, some mothers are thinking. “I certainly wouldn’t want any daughter of mine in that job,” say others.

Before becoming too deeply involved in the merits of the question as to whether a woman should ever become president, we ought first to ask ourselves: What are the chances of a woman becoming president? Is the above hypothetical press release on an imaginary woman President of the future a complete fantasy, a fictional dream impossible of realization in the foreseeable future?

The answer to this question may throw considerable light on the question of how desirable it would be to have a woman President.

Hillary’s eyes grew wider as she carefully underlined key passages.

“After all, little more than a generation ago both men and women scoffed at the idea of women generally running for office at any level or being appointed to any government or position of real responsibility. Women might eventually be permitted to vote it was said and a few would be given honorary positions here and there to attract the “female vote”; but surely it would go no further than that.

Speaker of the House?

“These prophecies were proven mistaken in rapid order- 51 women have served in the House of Representatives and 9 have served in the Senate.

But, some will say, naturally women can be elected to Congress because they possess the one necessary qualification – they can talk.

This is, of course, not an accurate picture of the difficult requirements for Congressional service today; but further answer to these skeptics ( who apparently shudder at the awful possibilities of a female filibuster) is found in the many responsible executive and administrative posts which women have filled in the last generation.

Blonde Ambition

Despite their many accomplishments women in politics are still trivialized by sexist stereotypes Would you trust Barbie to have her hand on the nuclear button?

The article goes on to outline the history of women’s accomplishment in government.

“…Women have been appointed to courts to represent us as “ambassadresses” in diplomatic negotiations abroad and to be Treasurer of the United States ( This last appointment, when first sent to the Senate for confirmation, was received with considerable suspicion by Senators whose wives had difficulty balancing a bank account)

Another woman ( Mrs Anna Rosenberg) was even appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of manpower!

In short, the past generation has sen a revolution in the old concepts of woman’s role in public life.

Unlikely as the possibilities of there being a female President seem today, it would be a foolhardy prophet indeed who would predict that event would never occur, once he had reviewed the changes wrought in the last three decades.

The Park Ridge baby boomer’s ears perked up.

Who Counts

“Public opinion to the surprise of many has kept pace with this trend. In 1937 the Gallup Poll first asked a cross-section of the American public: “Would you vote for a woman for President?” Only 33% said “yes” while 63% said no with 4% having no opinion.

But in 1955 less than 20 years later, 52% said “yes” and those replying in the negative had declined to 44%.

Interestingly enough, according to the polls, women are about as prejudiced against sending a member of their sex to the White House as men are. On this I have no comment.

That prejudice remains today. In 2014 Michelle Bachman famously said “I don’t think there is a lot of pent-up desire for a woman president.”

Diversity

Hillary Clinton and President Barrack Obama Photo courtesy of AP

“This gradual decline in the prejudice against women in politics and the Presidency is I believe part of a general decline in the perpetuation of unfounded political barriers and prejudices.

Catholics, Jews and Negroes are among those elected today to high offices in states where such occurrences would have been considered unbelievable only a few years ago.

Majority Rules

“But even further cause for the rise of women in high office is their status as a “majority “ group.

Approximately 2 million more women than men are eligible to vote this year, and this year women are expected to outnumber men at the polls on November 6.

Sixty years later this “majority” still earns less than men and don’t occupy top executive positions.

The Woman Thing

Sure Peggy’s dismal. Women in politics have long been stigmatized as being “ruled by their emotions.” A guest on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News Show lamented not long ago that a female President would be undermined by “PMS and mood swings.” Just this past week a Dallas woman’s post on social media went viral when she stated that “A Female Shouldn’t be President” because of hormones despite the fact she herself was a successful businesswoman. Vintage ad for Midol 1966

“The ability of women to direct rugged political campaigns, administer vast executive departments display brilliant legislative leadership and handle difficult foreign military and domestic problems has shattered the old concepts of political inferiority and executive weakness.

Appearances Matter

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle”- Hillary Clinton

“The possibilities of there being a woman in the white house should thus be considered neither unlikely nor disastrous. The more important question is when this will occur, and how and under what conditions it might be brought about.

And no doubt some parents will ask what steps they should take to prepare their daughters for the Presidency.

In answer to these questions it seems to me that it is important first of all to stress that a woman will enter the White House only when she is not looked upon as a woman. By that, I do not mean that her sex should be concealed or ignored; but it would have to be considered irrelevant to her qualifications for the office as her religion, maiden name or shoe size.

Don’t Drown Me in Estrogen

Sound familiar Only last week on CNN’s  State of the Union broadcast, Republican strategist Ana Navarro advised Clinton to stop emphasizing the “woman thing” because voters did not want to be drowned in estrogen.

And following Hillary’s strong performance at the Democratic debate, rapper TI said Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be president because women make rash decisions emotionally.

Made For a Broad

A future president according to Kennedy would “require the charm and wisdom of an Eleanor Roosevelt, the leadership and military prowess of a Joan of Arc, and the pluck – to keep going under almost overwhelming odds- of a Helen Keller.” Since it has long been rumored that Hillary held imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt while First Lady in the White House, she may have been on to something. Images L-R, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1948 Movie Poster “Joan of Arc” and Helen Keller

 “For the Presidency, above all, requires broad representation of, and outstanding leadership for, all elements in our society.

It requires an outlook which does not emphasize only the “traditional “women’s issues”- equal rights, world peace, education and child health and welfare – but is equally at home with foreign and military affairs, labor relations, the needs of agriculture, governmental administration and other issues.”

There is every indication that more and more American daughters are acquiring this kind of broad political outlook and interests.

The fashion police are in full force when it comes to female politicians. Now that Hillary’s in the race, pundits can start talking about important things that mater to the voters like pantsuits and hairstyles.

Recent surveys moreover have indicated that women are concerned about the same important issues as men.

Finally, I would remind young women aspiring to the Presidency- or their parents who aspire for them – that the first woman president, because of the fact that she is a woman, will have to be an extraordinarily capable chief executive. ”

She will require the charm and wisdom of an Eleanor Roosevelt, the leadership and military prowess of a Joan of Arc, the stately compassion of a Queen Victoria, the political sagacity of a Clare Boothe Luce, the courageous determination of a Sister Kenny, the pluck – to keep going under almost overwhelming odds- of a Helen Keller, and, in addition, all of the best qualities and skills of the Republican and Democratic lady officials mentioned earlier in this article.

“No doubt beauty and grace will also be important to her nomination and her election.”

“Is there such a woman, or is there a chance that their ever will be? Of course there is- and if the Democrats nominate her, she will receive my vote!”

Birthday Wish

Dorothy called out to her daughter – they were ready for Hillary . In the distance the joyous singing of her family gathered around the dining room table, broke her reverie. Sporting a coonskin hat, her younger brother Hugh boisterously singing “Happy Birthday” nudged his sister into the celebration.

The bright orange glow from the candles on her birthday cake lit her smiling face.

Closing her eyes little Hillary blew out her birthday candles and made a big wish!

Sixty years later, do you think her wish will come true?

Note:

At the first Democratic debate,  a strong and poised Hillary Clinton exclaimed that “yes, finally fathers can say to their daughters, you too, can  grow up to be president” inspiring confidence in young girls everywhere.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

On Oct 24, 1945 nearly 2 months after WWII ended the United Nations was born. Fifty One nations pledge themselves “to keep international peace and security; to develop friendly relations with all nations; to cooperate in solving all nations problems and respect human rights and freedoms.” Has its record kept up with its glorious beginnings?

The United Nations just turned 70 and the once revered institution has not aged well.

This post war promise of peace has been plagued by paralysis, morphing into a dyspeptic dowager suffering from an interminable succession of stalemates.

It all points to its irrelevance.

First Issue of US Stamp United Nations 1951

That the UN should seem irrelevant now at a time of trouble when indeed it should be very relevant, is sad indeed.

The current jaundiced view of the United Nations stands in such contrasts with the utopian notion of the United Nations of my childhood.

A Marvel of Mankind’s Achievement

Along with the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the UN was considered as one of mans most remarkable achievements. Vintage illustrations from “A Child’s Book of Mankind Through the Ages” by E.Joseph Dreany 1955

Growing up, the UN was presented to schoolchildren as a shining beacon of hope, a visionary example mankind’s great achievements.

United Nations Stamp

Conceived during the horrors of WWII in a “never again” spirit it took its first steps during the deep freeze of the cold war where it teetered and tottered never quite developing its firm footing as world’s peacekeeper.

But it was faithfully cheered on, optimistically held up to the high goals of its conception.

The UN was formed in a glorious Kumbaya moment and it wasn’t hard to imagine multicultural members of the UN joining hands around a campfire singing the righteous folk song led by Pete Seeger.

Great Expectations

During the war the freedom loving nations of the world decided that as soon as WWII was over they would form an organization which would try to settle disputes between countries in a peaceful way. Membership in the UN is open to all peace-loving nations that agree to live up to the UN charter The General Assembly make recommendations on cooperation between countries, on keeping peace and security on disarmament. Vintage illustration “Children’s Guide to Knowledge- Marvel of Science and Man” 1962

The UN was mythologized in schoolbooks at the time.

The great  expectations fairly leaped off the pages of the textbooks, boasting that this new institution “composed of freedom loving nations would act to prevent conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible.”

It was, it turns out, an impossible task.

Vintage illustration “Children’s Guide to Knowledge- Marvel of Science and Man” 1962

“The UN was trying to help the world keep peace. The idea that through talking to each other we can settle problems instead of using force is such a new one that we have to grow accustomed to it.”

It would seem it is a concept we have never grown accustomed to.

 Plays Well With Others

The United Nations was popularized and mythologized to children not only in schoolbooks, but in popular culture from activity books, comics and coloring books .

Make sure to use all the colors in your crayola box when coloring the Unites Nations, Page from a vintage coloring book 1957

Vintage children’s magazine celebrating the birthday of the new UN building October 1952. The United Nations was originally located in Lake Success, N.Y. until Mrs. John D. Rockefeller donated some land along the East River in NYC to serve as permanent headquarters. By 1952 the UN settled into its permanent home.s.

Even Betsy McCall got to the visit the UN in 1959.

Betsy McCall, the popular paper doll featured in  Mcalls Magazine since 1951,  regularly went to birthday parties , visited relatives, and played at the beach.  But by  1959 , Betsy’s activities took a more patriotic tone as we followed her on her visits to the White House, West Point and in September the United Nations

Vintage Betsy McCall Paper Doll September 1959 McCalls Magazine

For her special visit to N.Y.C. and the UN,  little girls could dress Betsy  in a black velvet topped  cotton plaid dress clutching a Hi Neighbor book and  a beautiful red coat that was “belted just like a movie stars.”

Driving into NYC with her parents from her all American “little white house with a porch and a backyard to play in” Betsy was understandably all keyed up to be at the United Nations..

“Isn’t it just like a holiday?” Betsy cried,

And it was, the reader is assured, “with the enormous flags of all nations fluttering from a long row of flagpoles and a zillion windows sparkling in the sun.”

Vintage Illustration from “Childrens Guide to Knowledge Marvels of Science and Man” ” Parents Institute 1962

Inside, Betsy and her joined other visitors on a guided tour who we learn  “was an Indian lady…She wore a beautiful long scarf called a sari, wrapped around her..she showed them great meeting rooms where delegates would come from 82 countries to settle their problems without war.”

In one room  Betsy visited  there was a lovely statue of a little girl reaching for a huge bird. “That child is like a young nation reaching for independence,” said the guide. The UN protects young nations until they can care for themselves.”

“The way my parents look after me?” Betsy asks.

“Exactly!” said the guide.

One can only hope poor Betsy parents weren’t as dysfunctional as the UN would eventually become.

 Post Script:

Vintage childrens schoolbook illustration 1962

Though the UNs brand has often been tarnished, it  undermines the heroic and remarkable humanitarian work it has achieved. It would be unfair not to cite examples of the UN’s remarkable achievements over the past 70 years – the defeat of small pox, the millions saved by vaccines , refugees workers and food aid  and of course the great efforts of UNICEF.

Next: Trick or Treat For UNICEF

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

On most mid-century days, the suburban streets of my childhood were filled by a legion of door to door salesmen trafficking in fantasy.

The pavement belonged to this endless parade of post war peddlers, their sample cases bulging with promises for a brighter, cleaner, more attractive future for you and your family.

But on the last day of October the flock of high brow-invest-in-your-child’s-future encyclopedia hustlers, along with the Fuller Brush Man and the Avon Lady ceded their hard-earned territory to a motley crew of pirates and hobos.

“Here Kiddie Kiddie” Vintage Halloween Ad Milky Way Candy Bars 1955

From afternoon to evening on October 31 the peddler’s turf belonged to the trick or treaters who marched en masse from splanch to ranch in pursuit of Milky Way dreams.

Thanks to the baby boom, the concrete sidewalks of these newly built developments were as congested as rush hour traffic as they morphed into a magical world of make-believe filled with devils, gypsys, and Indian chiefs.

Halloween Costumes

Vintage article for Halloween Costumes by Singer Sewing Centers 1955. From Davy Crockett to Little Red Riding Hood, Moms could create Halloween costumes for the kiddies following EZ directions offered in the women’s magazines.

Costumes were the key to successful trick or treating and mothers were often enlisted in the effort.

Some sewing challenged moms, or those on a budget,  simply cut holes in their freshly laundered percale pillowcases sending Jr. out as Casper the Friendly Ghost. Other moms who were a whiz on their Singer sewing machine could whip up a believable costume from Pinocchio to Peter Pan,

Five and Dime Dreams

Vintage Ad Halloween at Woolworths

But for most kids when it came to Halloween costumes, the wizardry of Woolworths was unsurpassed.

“Only a broomstick ride away” the colorful five and dime store ads beckoned, and for a few dollars an ordinary suburban kid could easily be transformed into a black cat, a scary witch or Bugs Bunny, with the help of some plastic and polyester courtesy of Ben Cooper the king of costumes.

A Ben Cooper Costume for Sleeping Beauty. Early on the company secured the licensing rights to Disney characters

Sure the rubber band in the cheap, easily cracked mask often snapped and the plastic smocks were highly flammable, but for inexpensive costumes from Minnie Mouse to Snow White, the only question every year for my brother and I was which Ben Cooper costume we would choose.

A Cold War Halloween

However for Halloween 1962 my parents took our getups into their own hands.

There would be no glittering fairy princess with a magic wand for me. No ghosts or goblins for my brother.

No, my parents had something more ghoulish in mind.

Halloween 1962 would take on a chillier tone. There would be no glittering fairy princess masks for me. (L) Vintage Fidel Castro Mask (R) Vintage Sleeping Beauty Mask

Less than a week after the crisis that brought the world to the very brink of nuclear destruction, my parents thought it a hoot to masquerade their children as the culprits of that Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev and Cuba’s very own Fidel Castro.

What better way to keep a cold war chill in the air than to dress my brother and I as those two  lovable cold war communist cut ups.

Mask Appeal

With the promise that these two true-to-life masks would elicit plenty o’cold war chuckles ( nothing says funny like a pair of ruthless dictators) Andy and I agreed.

My older brother had first dibs on choosing masks and he immediately claimed the swashbuckling, bearded Castro as his own. Because the charismatic Cuban was always dressed in army fatigues, my brother’s choice entitled him to wear my fathers moth ball scented WWII army uniform and a White Owl cigar clenched between his teeth.

Cold War Cowboy

(L) Vintage child’s costume for “Have Gun Will Travel” the popular CBS Western that followed the adventure of Paladin a gentleman gunfighter who traveled the Old West as a mercenary gunfighter (R) Nikita Khruschev

Though disappointed to be relegated to the balding, wrinkled Khrushchev, my parents gave me free rein in how to accessorize the Soviet Premiere.

Best known for his off-the-Russian-racks suits, I decided to opt for the cold war cowboy look.

Because I was still deep in my “gunslinger stage” picking my official “Have Gun Will Travel” togs was an obvious choice. Dressed in black, sanforized cotton from head to toe, my Khrushchev would look quite cunning in his regulation “Paladin” black felt hat.

Strapping on the leatherette holster set with two caps guns was the final touch. Short and pudgy Khrushchev wasn’t coy about his ample arsenal of missiles, nor was I.

Trick or Treat For UNICEF

(L) Vintage paper Halloween trick or treat bag (R) The famous orange UNICEF box would come later, for now we made our own.

After a hurried dinner, I was raring to go trick or treating, so I quickly grabbed my paper shopping bag not forgetting my UNICEF box.

For one day of the year,  schoolkids across the country could proudly show their latent philanthropic side, spurred on by a United Nations filmstrip shown in classrooms explaining that “One little penny for UNICEF buys 5 glasses of milk for hungry children around the world!”

Sure, charitable boxes were a dime a dozen in the suburban landscape.

Literally.

The ubiquitous March of Dimes tin canister with the heart breaking picture of little girls with steel braces on their legs was found on shop counters everywhere from butchers to TV repair shops, and the blue and white Jewish National Fund box with its Hebrew letters and map of Israel, graced most Jewish homes and establishments.

But the UNICEF box was for kids only.

Lovingly hand-made from wax milk cartons decorated with orange construction paper, we were pint-sized door to door UN Ambassadors for one night, proudly shouting in unison Trick or Treat For UNICEF!”

A Haunting We Will Go

Vintage Halloween ad for Necco candy 1951

With my brother illuminating the way with his plastic, light up jack o’ lantern, cleverly lit by an Eveready flashlight we stepped out into the chilly fall night.

Up and down the block as far as the eye could see the narrow sidewalks were filled with a spooky mass of taffeta, rayon, vinyl and cheap flammable plastic, most glowing eerily with “glitter glo” the blue glitter glued to the front of the costumes which would reflect headlights of passing cars, Ben Cooper’s contribution to Halloween safety.

Excitedly we joined the mass of cowboys and clowns, robots and princesses in all shapes and sizes, all of whom were far outnumbered by the  ragged packs of hoboes.

Vintage Halloween Hobo Mask Ben Cooper Costumes INC.

In the midst of post war plenty, suburban kids delighted in dressing up as depression era tramps – those tragic transients who had fallen from the once upon a time security of middle class.

Even without a Ben Cooper certified hoboe costume, the look of a downtrodden vagabond was easily and authentically achieved simply by raiding father’s closets for oversize clothes, smudging dirt on their Ivory fresh faces and carrying a handkerchief tied around the end of a stick.

The fact that many trick or treaters were but one generation removed from the fate of those forlorn, hungry hoboes, could now, in the flush of the soaring sixties,  transform these tragic icons of the 1930’s economic disaster into lovable begging imps, was quite the trick.

The neighborhood homes were all lit up in anticipation of the crowds descending on their stoops, a single carved pumpkin the only holiday decoration save for a stray skeleton scotch taped to the front aluminum door. Holiday decorations were still best left to school bulletin boards.

Vintage Halloween Costumes from Sears Catalog

Traipsing from house to house, we fell in with a coterie of trick or treaters consisting of Zorro, Frankenstein, an army nurse and a Spaceman toting a white pillowcase bulging with candy corn, tootsie pops and pixies, who insisted on ringing the bell on every front door.

Double Trouble

Vintage Halloween ad for Fleers Dubble Bubble Gum 1953

At every house, suburban moms with Jackie Kennedy boufants greeted my brother and I with bemused smiles.

In this mid-century mélange we were the only cold warriors in sight.

After a long parade of repetitious, predictable princesses, witches and creepy skeletons, a pair of suburban socialists begging for money for the UN caused gales of laughter.

As the housewives opened their front door wiping their soapy hands on their flowery aprons, manicured hands still damp from washing the dinner dishes, they tossed in fistfuls of  Mary Janes and  tootsie rolls.

Even unfamiliar, normally unfriendly neighbors winked at my brother and me, making sure to add a few extra shiny pennys for UNICEF.

The more we drew laughter – me in my gun slingin’ black-hatted Khrushchev disguise and my brother camouflaged  as a cigar chompin, khaki Communist – the heavier my UNICEF box seemed to grow.

In this make-believe night I could almost believe in the UN’s hope for friendly relations with all nations. For a few hours on that frosty night in 1962 my brother and I were doing our part in defrosting the cold war.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The mushroom cloud of the Ivy Mike Hydrogen Bomb Test by US, November 1952

Say It Ain’t So

Did North Korea really just conduct a hydrogen bomb test?

Despite Kim Jong Un’s boastful declaration that it detonated a hydrogen bomb, there now seem to be some doubts. The fact that the explosion might be just have been a plain old-fashioned atom bomb is of little comfort to this former child who grew up with a bad case of nuclear jitters.

The idea of an unpredictable nation with a thermonuclear device sends a cold war shiver down my spine.

As the U.S. joined other nuclear armed nations in condemning this recent action calling the test “totally unacceptable,” I couldn’t help but be reminded of those good old cold war days when we proudly broadcast our own thermonuclear tests, available for viewing coast to coast.

March of Progress

Nuclear jitters would chase me throughout my childhood.

1954 stared off with a real blast.

By March of that year America  had exploded our second hydrogen bomb and the next month we watched the broadcast of the first explosion from 2 years earlier.

In April 1954 “Operation Ivy,” a once top-secret film that had been shot in The Marshall Islands in 1952, offered viewers ring side seats of the first full-scale test of a thermal nuclear device, all in the comfort of their own living rooms!

Super-Sizing the Bomb

“Fat Man” the name of the implosion-model plutonium atom bomb detonated over Nagasaki, 3 days after Hiroshima, was mere child’s play compared to the devastation of the Hydrogen Bomb. (L) Vintage children’s book Little Golden Book “Mother Goose” (R) Nagasaki Atomic Bomb blast

The recently developed Super-Bomb was thousands more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, making it seem as innocent as its Mother Goose sounding nick name of Little Boy.

This, Uncle Sam believed was the new kind of power that today’s American wants. A new kind of power for a new kind of people: the growing, restless people of mid-century America.

A thermonuclear device was still a novelty and was on everybody’s mind, sparked by patriotic fervor and fanned to fascination by the impressionable pictures of the glowing skies and mushroom-shaped clouds presented in Life Magazine.

April Fools

Talk about a jolt with your morning Joe! Those angel wings might soon come in handy. (L) Vintage illustration Chase and Sandborn Coffee ad (R) US Nuclear test

On the morning of April first, my bleary-eyed mother got a real jolt with her morning coffee as she was treated to a bird’s-eye view of a nuclear explosion right there on the family Philco. How about a rasher of radioactive bacon to go with those sunny-side up eggs?

Walter Cronkite, congenial host of The CBS Morning Show jumped the gun on the competition, teasing the early riser with sampling of clips from the “Operation Ivy” film scheduled to be broadcast on all 3 channels later in the day.

The press was allowed an exclusive preview of the film along with Congress, but placed under an “embargo” halting any published reviews until the film was released to the general public a week later.

Your Show of Shows

Nuclear family watch the nuclear blast on their TV that promised an image so life-like its almost like being their!

That evening, as TV sets warmed up all across the nation, an ominous soundtrack of music could be heard emanating from their sets. As the music built to a crescendo , my parents along with millions of other captivated TV viewers heard a metronomic voice counting down – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 and then got an eyeful when an awesome blast filled their TV screen with a gigantic billowing fireball.

The announcer triumphantly proclaimed “the Hydrogen Age is upon us!”

The film showed the sensational atomic fireball rising out of the sea, the shock waves rushing across the ocean surface searing away sands and coral beneath it, as an enormous mushroom cloud darkens the sky.

Afterwards a disbelieving audience witnessed as an entire atoll disappeared from the face of the earth.

A Baked Big Apple

Effects of Hydrogen Bomb . Illustration Life Magazine 1961

Just to make sure the viewer understood the magnitude of the power wielded by this nuclear device they superimposed the explosion on the skyline of Manhattan, transmuting the devastation of the Marshal Islands into visions of American cities in smoldering ruins.

“The fireball alone,” the film narrates “would engulf about ¼ mile of the island of Manhattan.”

The film also included a lengthy speech by F.C.D.A. director Val Peterson stressing a need for calm acceptance of the new weapon hoping “it didn’t scare people into hopelessness.”

The spectacle, as theatrical as anything on Playhouse 90 was no hoax, no Orson Welles War of the Worlds Halloween prank. My mother, anxiously hoping for Walter Cronkite to utter the words “April Fools”, was cruelly disappointed!

Upping the ante with a Neutron Bomb and its possible effects. Vintage Illustration Life Magazine 1961

Does She or Doesn’t She

The Atomic Energy Commission uniformly denied there was danger from these tests; in fact the danger lay in not doing the tests. Most folks agreed that the ultimate benefit of peace and security that the H-bomb would bring us was more than enough for the potential slight risk.

In Living Color

Life Magazine April 19, 1954 . Describing the awesome fireball they wrote: “The nation’s awareness grew in intensity last week as civil defense workers and other groups saw a different version of the televised film Operation Ivy. This was in color. Instead of a black and white shadow of the explosion, viewers saw in glaring redness the bulging fireball of the hydrogen device which vaporized Elugelab Island at Eniwetok on Nov, 1 1952.”

Three weeks later Life magazine brought us pictures of the explosion in living color.

As a patriotic gesture to the American public,  Life presented scenes from the Ivy Color film “ in the spirit of President Eisenhower’s address” the previous week on the subject of the fears raised by threatening aspects of the world today including the hydrogen bomb.

“The greater any of these apprehensions, the greater is the need that we look at then clearly face to face without fear, like honest straightforward Americans…”the President reassured a jittery nation.

Man’s harnessing of nature for our purposes has been man’s great triumph! The march of progress continues.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A touch of Mink

In the chilly postwar climate of conformity and concealment captured to perfection in the movie Carol, same-sex desires constricted by conflict often went unexpressed.

If compliance to the heterosexual norm was compulsory, it was all a game of charades.

A stunning portrait of sexual angst, repression and ultimately confidence, the chemistry in Carol is palpable.

The story of a strong attraction between Carol, an older moneyed suburban housewife and a younger shop girl Therese is filled with slow burning ardor, erupting into deep passion. But because it was a time when desire walked hand in hand with discretion and denial, curiosities and carnal desires were best consummated in the shadows of what was referred to as twilight love.

By necessity, clandestine encounters were conducted with great caution, covert meetings arranged with the honed skills of a cold war secret agent. Gaydar had to be finely tuned or face the consequences.

But unlike other cautionary tales of the time, this one had a surprising happy ending.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

1952 romance novel by Patricia Highsmith first published under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan.” The movie Carol starring Cate Blanchett is adapted from the book.

When Patricia Highbrow’s book Price of Salt ( from which the movie is adapted ) was published in 1952 it was revolutionary.

Unlike most cautionary tales of its day, it’s portrayal of female desire was decidedly different from lesbian pulp fiction of the time because it was a love story between two women neither of which end up crazy or dead.

In most lesbian pulp fiction of the time, the casualty of non conformity could be catastrophic.

vintage Lesbian Fiction

There was always a price to pay for not toeing the line.

As Highsmith herself wrote about other lesbian pulp fiction : “Homosexual male and female in American novels had to pay for their deviation by cutting their throat, drowning themselves in a swimming pool, or switching to heterosexuality.”

“There’s was a passion no man could share. The novel that dares to tell the truth about a perverse love.” 1954 Lesbian pulp fiction thrived at the time but the failure to conform led to dire consequences

“Dr. Nora Caine was shaken by the fervor and passion of the other girls kiss.” Vintage Lesbian Fiction

Ordinary People

(L) Vintage Lesbian Pulp Fiction (R) Little Golden Book “The Happy Family”

Never was the insistence that everyone fit into heterosexual model more powerful than in mid-century America, The media was obsessed with defining and exaggerating codes of gender.

Images of the nuclear family and happy homosexuals as the norm exploded in advertising books and magazines scattering its potent assumptions of family and marriage and who we should love deep into our collective psyches.

In a country long priding itself on endless choices of toothpaste and shampoo there was really only one choice who you could love.

You stuck with the brand you knew.

Heterosexuality was the right brand. Time tested. AMA approved.

Failure to conform to these confining roles had devastating consequences.

Deviant Disordered

Abnormals Anonymous by Stella Gray

The American dream of reinventing yourself took on a more disturbing quality when many homosexuals reinvented themselves into happy heterosexuals in order to fit in.

When Carol and Therese’s relationship is revealed, Carol is quickly chastened and sent to a psychiatrist who chalks up her homosexual adventures to a temporary lapse in sanity, the conventional wisdom of the time.

Buyers Remorse

Pray for the sexual deviants – You needed to repent and change. Today there are still those who “pray” that homosexuals can be saved at “Christian Conversion Therapy Camps”

Homosexuality was part of the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual listed under “Sexual Deviation.”

Gay and lesbians were thought to be inherently heterosexual suffering from a psychic disorder on par with borderline personality or schizophrenia.

Therefore there was a cure. A few sessions on the couch with a Viennese trained psychiatrist and their disordered thinking would be set straight.

Literally.

Despite risking losing her custody battle with her estranged husband, Carol in a statement of affirmation decides to quit therapy refusing to capitulate.

It’s easy to forget how terrifying it once was and still is for many people in parts of the world to live openly as LGBT . As long as the connection between two people are hampered by censure and condemnation we are still living in a 1950’s shadow of Carol.

Tomorrow :  I Am Curious

Vintage ad Schlitz Beer I am Curious 1949

During the same time period as Carol takes place, Madison Avenue perfectly captured that culture of concealment and curiosity with a series of ambiguous, winking ads called “I am Curious.”

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Fact or Fiction

It may sound like a fairy tale but once upon a time the GOP really were…well, pretty Grand!

Today when the phrase “moderate Republican” is fast becoming an oxymoron, it seems like fiction  to imagine a  time when there really were progressive, liberal Republicans who roamed the political landscape and were actually in the vanguard of the civil rights movement.

Such as  liberal Republicans from the northeast like Jacob Javits who by all rights should have been a democrat.

Having watched his father work N.Y.’s Tammany Hall and saw the corruption and graft associated with that N.Y. Machine, Javits joined the Republicans in the 1930’s supporting the Progressive Republicans for Mayor Fiorella La Guardia. After a stint in the House of Representatives, and then as N.Y. Attorney General, he ran for senator in 1956.

The longtime senator from New York was a leader of Progressive Republicanism for more than 3 decades, and was one of the most liberal voices in the senate.

His was also  my second  kiss from a politician.

The politician and the bald-headed baby were made for one another.

A baby’s first kiss from a politician is always remembered…and mine in 1955 was no exception.

A Campaign Kiss

Declaration of Independence (L) Illustration from Vintage ad Franfort Distilleries (R) Vintage Baby Book 1955

On my first Independence Day  in the summer of 1955, my parents believed it was time for its littlest citizen to be introduced to her Uncle Sam and “My America.” And what better place to be inculcated with truth, justice and the American way than at an honest to goodness fourth of July campaign rally.

July fourth was the official campaign kickoff , which seemed natural enough since the right to vote was as American as the hot dog.

The hot weather seemed to have little effect on the swarm of soggy seersucker suited town-clerk-district-court-judge-town-supervisor-hopefuls  buzzing and circulating around the rally in suburban Long Island.  Displaying high beam campaign poster smiles with their  Arthur Murray-toned wives in tow, they glad-handled handing out emery boards and plastic rain bonnets with their names emblazoned on them, scanning the crowd for a baby to kiss.

Nothing said the America Way of Life more than that age-old kiss from a politicians and it didn’t take long before some Nassau county comptroller-wannabee’s radar had me in his sights.

Mopping his brow, and peeling off his jacket,  a well upholstered Sicilian-American with a melting pot belly and unruly eyebrows  waddled over towards us, clumsily clutching a hot dog in one hand.

He savored fully the juices that trickled down his chin, licked a spot of mustard off his cheek, and bent over to kiss me on the top of my head while with a greasy hand, presented Mom with a wink and a green plastic comb with his name emblazoned on it, hoping to win her vote.

The tangy residue of French’s yellow mustard and the sandpaper sensation of the heavy stubble on his chin lingered on my forehead longer than his name lingered with my parents.

A Javit’s Republican Puckers Up

The politician and the bald-headed baby were made for one another.
L) Vintage photo from 1950s ad (R) Senator Jacob K. Javits

 But when a balding gentleman, the charismatic N.Y.State Attorney General, who despite the heat was crisp and cheerful in a brown suit and purple hued tie, chose my own bald little head to kiss, Mom was ecstatic.

“That should be good for a few dozen votes when he runs for the senate next year,” Dad chuckled.

There was talk of the Attorney General running for senate next year, which explained why Jacob Javits was out in full force helping local campaigns in our small suburban town.

The Jews claimed Jack Javits as one of their own which was why he was the first and only  Republican my Roosevelt-nik-New Deal Democrat mother every voted for.  The fact that Javits had run against FDR Jr  made the choice even more agonizing for Mom, but being Jewish trumped everything.

As Javits bent down to kiss me, his breath fruity from a constant consumption of cough suppressing cherry flavored cough drops, a skinny young photographer  from The Long Island Press  fortuitously  captured the moment forever.

The yellowing photo from the newspaper would lay pressed in my baby book pages for the next 50 years, right next to my inoculations records

I shudder to think what Jake Javits would think of the racist and xenephobic virus that has now infected his once grand party.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Now and Then. Cuba prepares for historic visit to Cuba 2016  Photo: LA Times (R) Life Magazine -The Cuban Missile Crisis Nov 2, 1962 U.S. prepares f0r possible historic invasion of Cuba.

The deep freeze between Cuba and the U.S is thawing.

It’s hard to overrate the significance of President Obama’s historic trip to Cuba because as recently as 18 months ago the very idea of a sitting U.S. president stepping foot on Cuban soil would have been unthinkable…as unlikely and improbable a prospect as the idea of Donald Trump being a presidential nominee.

Now Obama is making history by holding talks with President Raul Castro opening a new chapter in the affairs of our two  nations.

Let’s raise a Cuba Libre in praise of normalizing relations between Cuba and the US, and revisit a post from the vault.

Havana Holidays

Right now sipping a rum and coke on glistening white sand basking in warm Caribbean sun sounds about right. Vintage illustration Coca Cola ad 1958 “Enjoying a Coke on Cuba’s famous Varadero Beach,” a 13 mile long peninsula with powder soft sands.

Bracing for one last  chilling winter storm, dreams of languishing on a white sandy beach soaking up the warm Caribbean sun are never far from my winter-weary mind.

And now a new dream vacation spot may open up… and it’s no dream.

Over half a century of waiting, my long-delayed Havana holiday might actually happen despite the all too predictable political backlash. The outrage by some Republicans about this development feels overblown and as wildly outdated as the vintage Chevy’s that fill Havanas streets. Having grown up during the cold war with Cuba as a sworn enemy it is quite clear that the tiger has been de-clawed.

Cuba  Where Yesterday Meets Tomorrow

Vintage tourism ad that touted “Havana Where Yesterday Meets Tomorrow” has never rung truer.

The frozen-in-time feeling in Cuba fits perfectly with childhood memories of stories shared by my parents of their mid-century Havana holidays.

Dinner time in the suburbs sometimes took on a fiesta feeling when my parents wanted to reminisce about their travels.

Over a festive dinner of arroz con pollo – a dish first enjoyed by Mom in Havana and now in the suburbs  made the authentic Ladies Home Journal way with a can of Hunt’s tomato sauce and EZ Minute Rice – Mom and Dad would regale us with their adventures in Cuba, casting a spell as intoxicating as the island itself.

The glitter and glamor of pre-revolution Cuba, that tropical Technicolor paradise of palm fronds and turquoise water, a sultry cocktail of casinos, corruption and the Caribbean Sea would fill their Kodacolor memories for decades …and fuel mine.

On the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959 the representatives of American company’s that operated the Havanas world-renowned Hotel National de Cuba departed. The glamorous hotel was the setting for the formation of the 26th July Movement revolutionary cell led by Castro. (L) Vintage travel ad Hotel Nacional de Cuba 1955 (R) Vintage Life Magazine cover Fidel Castro 1961

But New Years 1959 shattered any hopes of my own Cuban getaway. Along with ringing in the New Year with Guy Lombardo, Fidel Castro took over Cuba forever shuttering this Garden of Eden to American revelers.

Any dreams of rum-soaked nights dancing the rumba till dawn would have to marinate for well over 50 years.

For the  balance of my childhood, Cuba remained a mysterious and forbidden place; the romance and allure of pre-Castro Cuba now melded with a menacing bearded man, the specter of Communism looming so close to our borders  became a hot button issue in the cold war.

Honeymoon in Havana

My Havana honeymoon parents catch the rays on the Playa del Este a string of white beaches and brilliant aquamarine waters 12 miles west of Havana 1950

My parents had a romanticized sense of Cuba, and for good reason. It was after all where they had honeymooned in 1950.

As the years passed, the paradise would almost grow lusher, conjured by an imagination infused with nostalgia.

Did my PTA Mom and Republican Dad really linger an entire afternoon at La Floridita nursing daiquiris poured by highly skilled cantineros in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Ernest Hemingway at his favorite watering hole, which in their multiple tellings they had.

Hotel Nacional de Cuba

“In Havana at the famed Hotel Nacional de Cuba Roma Sherry precedes a happy dinner party.” Vintage illustration from 1947 ad for Roma Sherry

Like so many they were drawn to the fiesta that was Havana, the most exciting city in the Western hemisphere, the Caribbean playground to American socialites, politicians and movie stars.

Of course  the Honeymooners stayed at the world-renowned Hotel Nacional de Cuba , the iconic hotel filled with flowering gardens, sumptuous sun clubs and swimming pools where these newlyweds from NY could rendezvous with the smart Cosmopolitan set.

Tropical Adventure Awaits You in Sunny Havana

Gay Days in the Cuban Sun .The iconic hotel with its eclectic architectural style blending Art deco, Moorish with Spanish colonial was built in 1930 through an agreement with Cuba and US backed banks. Vintage ad Hotel de National Cuba 1947

This was the very same hotel that only 4 years earlier had turned my father away, during a winter school break.

It seems Lucky Luciano beat him to it, booking the entire hotel that Christmas week of 1946 for a big mafia summit at which the carving up of Havana among the crime families was on the agenda.

Undeterred, Dad found refuge in a little hotel on Obispo Street The Ambos Mundos Hotel, a place that Hemingway himself had stayed in during the 1930s

For a war-weary soldier 6 months out of the service and a few months into law school, Cuba with its tropical beauty and tropical beauties beckoned him.

It was a post war paradise

The streets of Old Havana, pulsating with African and Caribbean rhythms, were lined with architectural marvels of Spanish colonial architecture evoking tales of Cuba’s colonial past

A tourism magazine had described Havana as, “a mistress of pleasure, the lush and opulent goddess of delights.” It didn’t disappoint.

Havana was a paradise living up to its reputation as a tropical playground, a blend of glittering nightclubs, outrageous cabarets, all night bars with exotic drinks and backstreet brothels.

This young man from Astoria Queens was livin’ la vida loca!

Mama Loves to Mambo But Papa Likes to Cha Cha Cha

But the best stories were about the mythic Tropicana nightclub, the brightest jewel in Cuban nightlife.

“Havana’s glamorous Tropicana,” Dad never failed to point out between bites of Mom’s take-a-can-and-take it-easy arroz con pollo, “bore no resemblance to the one portrayed on TV!”

As much as Mom loved Lucy she would always smirk at the fictional Tropicana Club run by Lucy’s bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo ( famously played by Cuban Desi Arnez) a sanitized version of the sizzling club in Havana.

Billed as “a world of pleasure within a paradise of Magic,” the Tropicana, set in bucolic surroundings was a lush paradise of rumba and roulette, dazzling lights and equally dazzling “goddesses of the flesh” as the scantily clad showgirls were called, who pranced on catwalks set among tall royal palms rising above the tables through the roof.

Tropicana in the Sky

Taking off every Thursday from Miami International Airport , the flying party sets its happier patrons down in the balmy air of the land of daiquiris and sex at Havana’s Aeropuerto Jose Martin an hour later In between you are treated to excellent drinks, top-notch Latin Music and a floor show. Brainchild of Antonio Mintero, the promotional manager of Cubana Airlines, the flying saloon took 2 months to prepare before it was unveiled in 1956. Operated in a package deal with the fabulous Tropicana night club, revelers who want to try the thrills of a night spot in the air pay $68 for a ticket. Vintage ad 1957

Heralded as a “paradise under the stars” my parents took the nightclub’s slogan literally.

In 1958 they booked a flight on the famous Tropicana Special the first flight in the world with a live show aboard.

Offered by Cubana Airlines, the extravaganza was billed as The Greatest Show on Air!

“Treat yourself to an evening beyond your fanciest dreams Havanas Tropicana “The Monte Carlo of the Americas. Flying from Miami to Havana the 1 hour flight had a live show featuring Mambo, Rhumba, Cha Cha Cha and drinks on top of the clouds.”

Why wait until you got to sunny Havana to start the fiesta?

Whisking patrons 10,000 feet into the air, plying them with unlimited pink daiquiris and vibrating music  it wasn’t long before Conga lines of passengers and performers would be snaking down the aisles in the plane,  as the diamond chain of lights that were the Florida Keys move slowly behind.

Complete with miniature stage installed at the front of the cabin, decorated with a glowing arch like that at the Tropicana night club, musicians decked out in fiesta outfits played sizzling music on the piano trumpet, maracas and bongos.
Cha cha Cha’ing up and down the aisles were 2 saucy performers from the club, Gloria and Rolando encouraging passenger to sing along supplying them with Spanish lyrics printed on a card.

”As the torrid Cuban music poured over you would lose consciousness of the plane and its 4 huge engines and that 1 hour flight would fly by literally!” Dad would remember.

Of course lubricated by unlimited pink daiquiris didn’t hurt.

Breezing through the airport  in Havana  since Americans didn’t have to bother with customs thanks to a special arrangement through the airline and the Tropicana,  they were whisked to the real Tropicana Night Club, put up at the Hotel de Nacional for a few winks and flown back to Miami the next day with a complementary champagne toast.

Only 4/1/2 hours non stop from NY by air from Miami, American tourists flocked to Cuba in the winter. With the advent of cheap flights and hotels deals, the once exclusive hotspot became accessible to American masses.”Blend the glitter of Miami Beach with the romance and chance of the Riviera, spice of the West Indies and the rhythm of Havana.” vintage travel ads National Airlines

The best part was, this paradise was only 90 miles from Miami, my parents would remember wistfully.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The proximity of Cuba being so close to Florida would take on a very different meaning especially in October 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis .

But while tourists eagerly spun the roulette wheel in sexy Havana, a revolution brewed in the less glamorous countryside.

This playground to American’s was abruptly shut down when Fidel Castro took over. The Tropicana that had opened to such fanfare on New Years Eve 1939, would close on another New Years Eve twenty years later, one which would ring the death knell of Cuba. Cuban revolution brought the curtain down on that era.

Soon the proximity of Cuba being so close to Florida would take on a very different meaning to me especially in October 1962 when Armageddon was narrowly avoided.

After that it was as if Moms famous arroz con pollo was seasoned with communism and its Spanish origins were emphasized as the chilly cold war came closer to home.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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“Get em outta here,” growls Trump at one of his rallies.

Sucker punched in the name of loving this country, anti-Trump protesters are taunted, manhandled by zealous Trump supporters wanting to make America Great again. As brawling and bullying become the norm at Trump rallies, demonstrators along with civil pubic discourse and freedom of speech have been K.O.’d.

Freedom of speech has been bandied about lately by Trump  supporters and protesters alike.

In today’s overheated campaign climate it’s instructive taking a look at a vintage ad extolling our First Amendment rights, that ran during that cherished, mythical time that Mr. Trump wants to restore America to. This patriotic post war ad from Republic Steel is enlightening on the true meaning of freedom of speech.

Let Him Talk

Vintage ad 1948 Republic Steel. Republic Steel the advertiser reminds us they became strong in a strong and free America. Republic can REMAIN strong only in an America that remains strong and free.

Patriotic advertisements abounded in the cold war, touting among other freedoms,  freedom of speech.

In this 1948 ad titled “Let Him Talk,” we are reminded how Americans are a tolerant people, blessed with opportunity and freedoms as compared to the enslaved people of Soviet Union.

And our First Amendment rights are one of our most cherished freedom.

And who better to present the American Way than the Steel Industry.

Talk To Me

The friendly cop talks directly to the reader about the assortment of public speakers he encounters on his beat.

“Get a load of him!” he begins, pointing to an image of a somewhat disheveled fellow railing on a soapbox.

In the ten years I’ve been patrolling this park, I’ve seen and heard all sots of crackpots. One guy said the only good food for people was…grass! Imagine me turning down a steak dinner for grass!

“And only last week” the cop continues “some wild eyed old coot was warning people that the world would pos-i-tive-ly come to an end today.”

“Now take that bird over there” Officer Joe says nodding to the apparent Socialist on the soapbox, who oddly enough bears some resemblance to Bernie Sanders

He’s telling everybody to quit work and let the government support them for the rest of their lives. Pretty soon everybody in the crowd’ll ask him where the governments going to get the money to do it…and the answer ought to be a honey.

“Why listening to answers like that keeps me laughing hard enough to forget my feet are killing me!” chuckles the Officer.

Get ‘Em Outta Here!

(L) AP Photo. #SaferThanATrumpRally has been trending on twitter. Christopher Morris was choked at a Trump rally by a member of the secret Service.

Some Republican candidates today might share a laugh with our patriotic Officer, guffawing at this kook who’s advocating an entitlement state.

But Trump supporters might not chuckle as much as sucker punch the offending view. In fact, unlike our good-natured Officer Joe, Trump might suggest “beating the crap outta him!”

But being a patriotic American, our police officer suppresses his feelings and continues:

Run ‘em in? Nah!…let ‘em have their say. This is one country where a guy can speak up without getting beat up for it.

Really?

As one demonstrator was escorted out of a Trump event last month, the bullying billionaire sneered “I’d like to punch him in the face!”

Trump’s entire campaign has been built on stoking anger and resentment against people of other races, religions, beliefs and nationalities.

You know…The American Way.

The Out of Towner

(Credit AP Photo) R.)Trump Rally (L) Vintage illustration Republic Steel Ad 1948

The copy of the ad continues, as he recalls an immigrant.

“Which reminds me of the foreign lad who stood on that same bench yesterday telling people how lucky they were to be living here in America.”

“Where he came from, there wasn’t any Free Speech.”

“He couldn’t go to the church he wanted. Couldn’t own property. Had his own business but they took that away and made him work in a slave camp.

“But in this country he picked out his own job…at the Republic Steel plant here in town…and he’s never been happier, helping to make steel for his adopted country.”

Of course that was at a time when there were still jobs to be had and plants weren’t being shuttered.

Matter of fact, he pointed right at me and told the crowd I was there to serve and protect them. In his country, he said everybody ducked when a cop showed up.

Kinda like what protesters do now at a Trump rally.

“Funny thing.” Officer Joe muses, “I didn’t mind him speaking about me. Me…part of Freedom!”

Y’ know, I listened to him so long, I was a good ten minutes late ringing in and the Sergeant gave me what for. But I’m glad I did listen to that foreigner. He’d brushed up my memory about a lot of things I’d been taking for granted.

 

WWII Poster

Freedom of speech is not something to take for granted.

Trump urges violence against protesters at his rallies while claiming that those protesters have violated his own First Amendment rights,

As Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune puts it remarking about Donald Trump “he treasures his right to free expression, but yours is negotiable.”

This is not what America is all about. It’s not the American way.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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It was spring 1954.

While the Cold War was frozen solid, thanks to a temporary thaw in my parents own chilly clashes, I would be conceived on a sweltering hot night that June.

I would be conceived in the warm afterglow of the Hydrogen Bomb in 1954 (L) Cover Time Magazine April 1954- H Bomb Over the Pacific

The year had started with a bang and a boom.

Our arsenal of missiles was becoming as bloated as the ever-expanding bellies of the prodigious legion of pregnant women. Along with the birth of a boatload of baby boomers, a bouncing new U.S. Policy was born, and they would grow up together. The proud Papa, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles named his progeny Massive Retaliation.  Under the watchful eye of his rich Uncle Sam the policy would grow up big and strong.

Conceived, as was I, in the warm afterglow of the Hydrogen Bomb, it was also in the dark shadow cast by Godzilla, that radioactive mutated monster of mass destruction. Together they would send a collective shiver down our Cold War spine. What a brave new world awaited me, a world, thanks to science, of unsurpassed comfort, health and security. Lucky for us the words “Under God” would be added to our Pledge of Allegiance providing that extra protection we would need.

A Special Night – Music Martinis and Memories

Atomic Passion collage by Sally Edelstein

Spring turned out to be a real scorcher that year.

The night of June 5th was an unusually sultry one and Mom never remembered being so hot.

New York was in the grips of a deadly heat wave; the headlines of the New York Mirror said it all: “Heat Wave Blasts Scorched City.”  Despite the oppressive heat my parents were leaving their apartment in Queens to head into the sweltering inferno that was Manhattan. That evening they had dinner reservations at, a swanky supper club called ironically enough The Embers.

Embers Restaurant and Night Club, NYC 1950’s

My mother Betty knew it was a big night.

Dad was wearing his good Wallach Bannister Wing tips, donned his Silver Masonic tie bar and matching cuff links, and had splashed on Old Spice- “spiced with excitement and speaking of love” – with a generosity reserved for special occasions. Not only that, but earlier Dad had Turtle-waxed the Chevy in the blistering heat ensuring the car had a show off shine for the city.

Putting on Her Face

collage Sally Edelstein

The noisy oscillating fan in the bedroom only seemed to move the muggy air around the small room offering little relief as Mom prepared for the evening. Putting her face on in the heat was no easy task as beads of perspiration kept a perpetual shine that no amount of  face powder would subdue.

After powdering her nose for the umpteenth time, Betty had carefully applied her new lipstick ‘See Red’…the maddening new lipstick color. “Looking for Trouble?” the ad posed provocatively, warning the wearer: “And be careful- don’t start anything you can’t finish…!”

She deftly arranged her new Warner Wonderful Merry Widow Corset- the one that’s taken the nation by storm – the one you wear when you “want to look a little wanton.”

“It’s so simple to be sure of figure success, as it coaxes you into new fashion containment, you’ll barely be able to contain your excitement.”

“And neither will he!”

Imagine, taking two whole inches from your waist! My father Marvin never failed to notice the bewitching curves the cinch corset produces. “You look so naughty, feel so nice!”Mom  hummed to herself!

The Nearness Of You

Vintage illustration Phillip Morris Cigarettes ad 1955

Mom struggled with her zipper until Dad came to the rescue. Morphing into  Renzo Cesana, TV’s “The Continental” complete with  a sex-laden Charles Boyer-esque voice Marvin murmured: “Don’t be afraid darling, it’s only a mans apartment” followed by some well turned compliments, sly innuendos and intimate laughs, causing Mom to blush. He often fancied himself “the Continental” the suave Italian gigolo from the short-lived television show of the same name, whose job it was to woo the bored housewife.

Hot Date

Her incendiary figure was  smartly showcased in  five alarm cherry blossom red, ravishing cone-shaped, cotton shantung two piece dress, cool as a breeze, and gay as the fourth of July.

Because smart gals never go outdoors without it, she lavishly spritzed herself with some Helene Curtis Hairspray Net, careful not to spray any on her white stretch cotton gloves – M’lady’s loveliest accessory – frosting for that delectable spring fashion ensemble.

1954 Album. Romantic instrumentals by Jackie Gleason an accomplished musician as well as an actor and comedian

While Mom arranged her hat on her newly lacquered hair, carefully adjusting the feather capulet, Dad went to fix himself a drink for the road. Pouring a drink marked the moment of change over from the everyday world to one just a little bit warmer.

Sipping the Cutty Sark he soberly assessed the evening ahead.

Their marriage could run hot and cold, but it wasn’t like they were at each others throat like the mismatched Hickenloopers on Your Show of Shows. But Dad was sure tonight he would reignite the flame of romance. Casually slipping a little mood music on the phonograph, his selection of Jackie Gleason’s new album, “Music, Martinis and Memories”  sounded about right.

Knowing that my 2-year-old brother Andy would be spending the night with Betty’s Mother Sadie in the city, he put a bottle of Taylor Pink Champagne in the Frigidaire for later.

The Embers

Arriving at the Embers resplendent with its blinding bursts of gilded chairs, crystal chandeliers, and ornate mirrors, my parents were greeted  by a welcome blast of arctic air. The hum of the bulky Carrier Air Conditioner competed with the soft melodic music – easy on the ears, courtesy of the muted trumpet sounds of Jonah Jones and his quartet playing softly in the background.

However, the real show was in the main dining room which was ablaze with a dazzling display of pyrotechnics.

Dad knew no first-rate restaurant could even be considered sophisticated unless it flambéed tableside.

A true gourmand would never dream of allowing a lobster Newberg or Crepe Suzette, the sin qua non-of chic deserts, to be served in his dining room except from a chafing dish, always lit in front of guests. Fleets of wagons bearing gleaming flambé equipment, stood in a state of readiness.

The maitre d hotel was like a general and his well orchestrated waiters members of a well-trained rapid response force skilled in handling incendiary devices.

Surveying the room, they noticed anything and everything could be flambéed.

Nothing was safe from this barrage of fire – fruity cocktails set ablaze, meats incinerated, even iceberg lettuce as indestructible as the Titanic was smoldering in a blue haze of fire. A cease-fire was declared only upon closing.

Dueling waiters as dashing as Errol Flynn brandished swords of shish kebab engulfed in flames glowing vibrantly.

The shining copper pans reflecting the flickering blue flame beneath and the candle light on the table said “savoir faire. Her face aglow, Mom squealed with delight. This was real glamour, she thought, sinking softly in the sumptuous red leather banquettes.

Settling in with a simple but gratifyingly sizeable scotch served in a graceful etched glass, they pursued the large menu card. The room captains carefully maintained accent was as urbane and suave as The Continental himself.

Handsomely turned out in an elegant tuxedo, he approached the table bowing as Dad ordered two Steak Diane’s and a garlic studded he-man Caesar salad for himself. The order attentively taken, the captain and his escort backed off bowing in retreat as if Dad were Caesar himself.

As a white linen covered cart was wheeled tableside, great prowess was displayed as the serious rituals of mixing and measuring, sautéing and sizzling, began. With dramatic gestures, Theodore, the maitre d hotel personally saw to the finishing of the Caesar salad, wielding a two foot pepper mill, presented with much pageantry and flourish.

The high moment of drama was the skillful use of firepower within a restricted space. Using a long match  to ignite the accelerant, Theodore  tipped the copper sauté pan slightly to set the brandy on fire producing that amazing flambé.

As the burst of flame shot up, it created a whoosh, engulfing the whole table in a searing bluish white flash visible for more than five banquettes, nearly obliterating everyone from view.  The proximity of the skyrocketing red-orange fireball leaping capriciously close almost singed poor Betty.

With the room brashly ablaze, it occurred to Dad that although t he French may have originated flambeing, it was pure 100% proof American in its high-octane flamboyance.A Thermonuclear device was still a novelty and was on everybody’s mind, sparked by patriotic fervor and fanned to fascination by the impressionable pictures of the glowing skies and mushroom shaped clouds presented in Life Magazine.

Through the warm haze of his Dewar’s on the rocks, Dad sat transfixed by the flame’s blue haze enveloping the table.

With the room brashly ablaze, it occurred to him that although the French may have originated flambeing, it was pure 100% proof American in its high-octane flamboyance.

It took American know – how and showmanship to take these burnt offerings to such soaring heights of spectacle.

Not unlike the Hydrogen Bomb, he thought. The recently developed Super-Bomb was thousands more powerful than the Atom Bomb dropped on Hiroshima, making it seem as innocent as its Mother Goose sounding nick name of Little Boy.  This, Uncle Sam believed was the new kind of power that today’s American wants.

A new kind of power for a new kind of people: the growing, restless people of mid-century America.

Nuclear Family

The Happy Family — A Little Golden Book

My parents supported anything nuclear-especially the nuclear family.

The family’s outlook had never been brighter. It was no accident that there was a rocketing birthrate. That afternoon, while thumbing through the April issue of McCall’s, my mother came across a series of articles celebrating the American family.

“Is this a good time to have another baby you ask? You betchum! The latest news from science, industry and government says yes, it’s a fine time to be born! And to be parents! Parents have centered their lives almost completely around their children and their home.

American families are creating this new warmer way of life not as women alone or men alone, isolated from one another but as a family sharing a common experience.

McCall’s Magazine even cooked up a name for this spirit – togetherness, launching a thousand nuclear families.

It Could happen To You

Nowadays every magazine you flipped through painted the same glowing picture of the American family, emphatic in their belief that the family was the center of your living, and if it isn’t, you’ve gone astray- or you’re a Communist!

Like Mother like daughter. Vintage Reynolds Aluminum Foil ad 1954

As the waiter quietly replaced the full ashtray by cupping it with an empty one, Betty gave voice to her burning desire. Another child preferably a girl, would fill out their family just fine, she mused.  After all you couldn’t be a true nuclear family without at least two children.

As all the womens magazines pointed out it was no longer ‘Baby makes three’ for the American family.

“More second and third babies are born each year…Such behavior confounds the pessimists who say that we are living in the shadow of doom, under the constant threat of war and the H Bomb. To these gloomy Gus’s, young parents merely shrug them off coolly and tell them to go back to Russia where they belong…”

Cheered on by America’s manufacturers, an  ad filled, bloated McCalls enthused:

“Yes Mr. and Mrs. America have all the babies you want!”

Jubilation

The cherry jubilees that Mom ordered, matched her cherry blossom dress to a tee. Though steeply priced, at $1.50 a portion, the blazing brandy floating over the glistening fruit, was well worth it. Lighting Mom’s after dinner cigarette, with his Ronson Windsor lighter, its lustrous finish of black onyx gleaming in the candlelight, Dad leaned closer to her.

“How’s about creating some atomic fusion of our own,” Dad winked to Mom after draining the last of his scotch on the rocks.

Her scarlet blush was no match for his florid complexion.

Her crimson cheeks glowed as she cheekily replied: “Have you no decency sir. At long last have you no decency?”

Sounding mockingly shocked, she bore not the slightest resemblance in tone to the patrician coolness of Joseph Welch, questioning Joe McCarthy. Dad looked at her for an interminable moment, as warmth more exhilarating than her Jack Rose cocktail stole through her.

Tipping the hat check girl a dime, Dad donned his hat, puffed on his after dinner white owl cigar and slipped Mom’s Best and Company Mink stole over her shoulders as they walked to their car.

Blast Off

Vintage ad Oldsmobile Cars

With the car radio pre-set to WNEW, the Milkman’s Matinee played softly in the background. Snuggling in the Chevy, Mom kicked off her breezy little strap shoes as she moved over closely so that her shoulder touched the soft material of Dads suit jacket. As she glided over, the back of her thighs stuck rudely to the hot plastic seat, causing her to wonder why she had ever ordered the darn protective seat covers in the first place. Though she had to admit, the patterned plastic with gold fleur-de-lis design added an extra sparkle to the car upholstery.

Dads cigars tip glowed an iridescent red in the dark, as the car descended into the deep of the East River speeding with an abundance of extra power through the Queens Midtown Tunnel as he stepped on the gas, getting the extra thrust he needed.

The Nearness of You

He put his hand momentarily on hers and then returned it carefully to the wheel, but she knew what the gesture meant, that he was there to take care of her, to take her where she was going and to bring her back safely.

She was radiant.

Mom reapplied her “See Red” lipstick reminding herself what the lipstick ads had warned… “don’t start anything you can’t finish!”

Smiling to herself, she knew they would be a nuclear family at last.

A Birthday Blog ‘ specially for you….

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A hot dog can make you lose control

Hot dogs, that very symbol of culinary democracy took on a special meaning during the cold war, especially in the summer of 1961.

The fate of Nathans Hot Dogs hung in the balance.

Barbecue Brigade

Backyard barbecues

Summer barbecues were a family staple in my childhood suburban backyard, and they often took on the precision of a military exercise.

With the precision used to plan a bombing mission in the south pacific, Dad calculated the wind velocity, temperature and cloud coverage when making the perfect fire, skills learned as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corp while serving in New Guinea.

While wives stayed safely behind the lines, the men folk were recruited and deployed to the front, where Dad was CO in charge of the Barbecue Brigade.

Well fortified to do battle with gin and tonics firmly in hand, they mobilized around the Weber grill in a primal huddle of their own as they anxiously awaited orders.

Like the infantry sent to do battle, these buttoned down bar-b-que enthusiasts, combat ready in their comfort-in- action-perma- press Bermuda shorts, gathered on all sides of the roaring fire.

The torch had indeed been passed to a new generation, our war hero President Kennedy had  informed us, and passed directly into the hands of these bespectacled men in clingy ban-lon, all of whom had served our country in the Second World War.

Strategically wielding the Big Boy barbecue tongs, Dad was ready for any BBQ maneuver. A king size cigarette dangling from his lips, barbecue apron round his regulation plaid Bermuda shorts, his smart masculine styling rated a fashion 21 gun salute.

GI Joe in Suburbia

That summer as the melodic sound of Connie Francis longingly asking “Where the Boys Are” drifted over the lilacs from a neighbor’s transistor radio, the men at my family barbecue could be found shvitzing over the red-hot coals of the grill, shooting the breeze.

When tired of arguing the un likelihood of  N.Y.C Mayor Robert Wagner running for  a third term successfully without the backing of Tammany Hall, libations were replenished as  the men brooded over the storm gathering in Berlin.

As the world poised for a showdown between those two cold warriors the USA and the Soviet Union, the risk of military conflict between them heated up that summer of 1961 over the crisis in Berlin. The city divided up between the victors of WWII was located deep in the Soviet occupied parts of Germany and now the Soviets were threatening to drag it behind the iron curtain.

Only sixteen years ago these sunburned suburban schmoozers had all been soldiers who had happily helped defeat Der Fuehrer in that greatest of all wars WWII.

Now with their missions done, their tooth-notched stainless steel rectangular dog tags with the letter H embossed on them safely tucked away, the roar of guns and bombs a dim memory now displaced by the whirl of a Lawn Boy mower and the effervescent bubbling of Canada Dry quinine water, they seemed willing to risk nuclear war to protect the former capital of that former enemy country from the evil clutches of our former comrades in arms, the Russians.

As if shifting gears between enemy and ally was as effortless as the automatic transmission in your Chevrolet, the considerable fury and fear that had fueled our hatred of those bloodless Nazi  had been seamlessly and swiftly re-routed to those God-less Russian Commies.

A Hot Dog Makes You Lose Control

Eagerly biting into a tongue scalding frankfurter hot off the grill, Mom’s cousin Milton, a short and stubby man, his GI regulation washboard abs having long gone AWOL leaving his ever-expanding belly stretching the outer limits of his Acrylan shirt, offered up a compelling reason why we needed to step up and protect West Berlin from the clutches of the soulless Russians.

“I have just one word for you-Nathan’s!” he stated firmly, gobbling his hot dog with as much gusto as he perceived the Soviets would gobble up Berlin.

The men nodded knowingly.

Vintage Schlitz Beer Ad

A Wonderland of Wieners

Ignoring the fact that the former Wehrmacht was a wonderland of wieners and wursts, its rowdy, German beer gardens filled with boisterous, red-faced patrons washing down their bratwurst with thirst quenching weizen glasses of dark amber Dinkel Acker, if Berlin got dragged behind the iron curtain, he argued, the poor Berliners would be deprived of one of life’s great pleasures – noshing on a Nathan’s hot dog.

No one needed reminding of that near-international incident a few years back when Assistant Secretary of State Averill Harriman went to the Soviet Union and was denied a simple request.

N.Y.’s  patrician former governor had asked the hot dog mavens at Nathans to airmail their specialty to him in Soviet Union, but the heartless Russians stopped the shipment of juicy franks at the border, fearful perhaps that if they let the poor Soviet people get even a whiff of good American hot dogs they’d revolt.

Nathans  was banned behind the Iron Curtain.

Nathan’s of Coney Island

That  was ironic considering those same Nathan franks  had once catered the big “Carving up the Post War World” party hosted by FDR at Yalta where along with Churchill and Stalin, the 3 big powers greedily chowed down on some red hots while redrawing the map. Only a few years earlier, Roosevelt had successfully served those “Kings of Coney Island” to British royalty, the King and Queen of England at his home in Hyde Park.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev enjoying a hot dog in Iowa when visited in September 1959.

The poor Russians may have been deprived of  a good American dog, but that didn’t stop Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev from enjoying a hot dog on U.S. soil when he visited in the fall of 1959. During the same trip in which he promised to “bury us” pounding his shoe on a podium of the UN, the rotund premier devoured his first American hot dog in Iowa declaring it “excellent.”

Tear Down That wall.

Thirty years later as the Cold War began to thaw in 1989, not only did the Berlin Wall finally come down, but Muscovites could finally chow down on some genuine Nathans hot dogs. That same year as the wall fell, the cry of  “Get your red hots comrades” could be heard when Nathan’s began selling their famous dogs in the heart of Red Square. Credit Perestroika for helping to  bring the King of Dogs to the Soviet Union.

 © Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Exactly 56 years ago a fresh faced democratic Senator won his party’s nomination for president and beckoned us into the New Frontier.

The 1960 Democratic Convention was a high-steppin, wild west of a  good time, and my family and myself had front row seats in front of our Philco. It was as rip roarin, rip snortin a time as any western on TV.

I wasn’t but knee-high to a lamb when Walter Cronkite shepherded me into the New Frontier that hot summer of 1960.

A trustworthy thoroughbred if ever there was one, Walter “Curly” Cronkite safely steered me and my family through the rough and tumble, wild west that was the 1960 Democratic Convention.

Life Magazine Cover July 25, 1960 Democratic Convention

That July was as hot as a whorehouse on a nickel night.

As the blazing sun set in the East, TV turned to the West for the coverage of the Final Showdown at the OK Corral Convention Arena in Los Angeles.

A Score Card For the Democratic Nomination 1960. The cart indicates the 4 top runners and votes committed to them, along with votes uncommitted or pledged to others. John Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, Stuart Symington are classed as liberals. Johnson is middle of the road.

In those days, the nominee for President wasn’t a done deal. And the Vice President sure as  shootin’ hadn’t already been picked earlier like today.

The whole purpose of the convention was for persuading them there delegates still on the fence, to take a shine to your candidate. Then all fired up, they’d choose their party’s nominee for president.

It had the makins’ of  rootin-tootin, good-time.

Giddy Up to the Convention

(L) Kennedy sisters and sister in laws at the Democratic convention (R) Chuck Connors as Lucas McCainin ABC’s “The Rifleman”

Mom was fixin’ to get us cowpokes some cool ice cream, as the TV set warmed up.

My brother and I sure were hankering to watch The Rifleman on channel seven, but we were outnumbered.

“Hold your horses,” Dad calmly said.

He explained that the Presidential convention that only came around every four years  was as rip-roarin’, rip-snortin’ a time as any western on TV.

Last minute horse trading and fighting at the convention could rival that of the wild west

There’d be a lot of whoopin’ an’ hollerin’, fightin’ and cussin’; plenty of folks dickerin’ and goin’ at it hammer and tongs,” described Dad as his eyes lit up.

“It would be chock full of scalawags and boot lickers, pow wows and Indian Givers, and a whole lotta last-minute horse-trading, gambling, and  bellyaching; there’d be stallions and geldings a courting and a wooin’, and plenty of filly’s, fine as cream gravy, prancing around.”

“There were curmudgeon Congressmen who were mean enough to steal a fly from a blind spider, and Senators ornery enough to eat off the same plate as a snake. Some fellers were as crazy as popcorn on a hot stove, and so dumb they couldn’t track an elephant in snow,” he continued.

The main stars of this ultimate rodeo show filled with hope and a lot of gumption were a   young cowpoke from Massachusetts Senator Jack “Fandango” Kennedy, and Texas’s favorite cowboy and master of the Senate Lyndon “Longhorn” Johnson. Pulling up the rear was smiling Senator Stuart Symington and long shot Adlai Stevenson the Democrats favorite egghead.

“Mark my words,” Dad promised, “at the end of the convention one of ‘em will be grinning like a weasel in a hen-house and as pleased as a pup with two tails when he becomes the new Sheriff in town., and more than one of ‘em will be hurtin’ like the dickens, and high tailin’ it outta Dodge madder than an old wet hen.”

L) Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in television covered the raucous presidential convention 1960

The convention  was crawling  with glitter, a continuous blaze of color with Kennedy cuties bedecked in red white and blue sundresses, sporting JFK buttons, banners and bows, snake dancing through the delegates.

This fandango of frenzy, flashbulb- popping fiddle- faddle, glad-handing gadabouts trading guffaws and favors, with party brass a huddlin’, and scalawags a scamperin’ was brought to you in  basic black and white, with the color enhancement courtesy of Walter Cronkite and his well honed ear to the ground.

The dense, smoke-filled hall full of scuttlebutt, was a bedlam of balderdash, brass bands and brass balls.

With scouts sent boldly  onto the convention floor to ambush any delegates willing to spill the beans, a vigilant Cronkite listened to every sound.

“Kennedy went through a heap of trouble to get that nomination,” Cronkite commented. “His high falutin’ Harvard friends did a bang up job. And his daddy who was powerful rich didn’t hurt none. And now by gum, he was the biggest toad in the pond.”

Photo Life magazine- 1960 Democratic Convention

Dad was dumbfounded; he thought anyone was plumb crazy to support a tenderfoot like Jack Kennedy.

“Criminy! He ain’t worth a hill of beans!” Dad snorted. “He’ll have a hard row to hoe if he runs against Vice President Nixon.”

Jack Kennedy 43 the youthful front runner taps Lyndon Johnson, 51, the Senate Master for his vice president 1960. Photo Life Magazine 7/4/60

Later when the new sheriff chose his deputy, a tall Texan who sounded just like Deputy Dawg, Dad was incredulous.

“What in Sam Hill are they doing,” Dad cried out. “They got the wrong pig by the tail choosing Lyndon “I-don’t-play-second-fiddle-to-anyone” Johnson!”

New Frontier

Photos by Jacques Lowe (L) Kennedy addressing Connecticut voters (R) Jan. 2, 1960 Senator Kennedy declares his candidacy for Democratic nomination for President

Just before it was time for me to skedaddle off to bed, the victor climbed to the top of the podium and looked out at the wilderness spread out below him.

Just like Dad said he would , JFK was grinning like a weasel in a hen-house.

John Kennedy was one of the best woodsman in the frontier.

He was a hard livin’, hard lovin’, hard fightin’ believer in freedom, who like Lariat Sam couldn’t see anything but good in anybody.

After weeks of hard travel through every one horse town, he had reached the last Mountain in Los Angeles by the skin of his teeth.

He knew he would face many dangers.

But he had a mind to face them. Political life was not for the lily livered, or yellow-bellied, but John Fitzgerald Kennedy was tall hog at the trough.

Under skies that were not cloudy all day, a young, hell-fired up John Kennedy was fixin’ to accept his party’s nomination that blazing summer in 1960, inviting us all to “Saddle up Pardner,” hitch our wagon to his train and be pioneers in a New Frontier.

Boomer cowpokes and cowboys ready to enter the New Frontier. Wards catalogue 1959

With my Matt Dillon gen-u-ine leather holster embellished with bright metal jewels hugging my hips for fast draws, my matching pair of shootin’ irons with the big hammer-head for quick fanning action – A-RAT-TA-TA TAT and A RING A DING DING – I was ready to be a pioneer in that New Frontier that Kennedy beckoned us to.

Copyright (©) 2016 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Who’s Committing Treason?

In November 1963 a few short days before President John Kennedy visited Dallas where he would be tragically assassinated, thousands of handbills like these were distributed by supporters of the right-wing group the John Birch Society, a conservative reactionary group who were fiercely anti communist, and were for limited government.

The flyers riddled with  total disregard for accuracy, truth, or coherence,  accuse JFK of many wrongdoings from being “lax” on Communism, telling “fantastic LIES to the American people”  to claims of his “betraying the constitution.”

In the 1960’s John Birchers, skilled at exploiting fears, and spreading misinformation under the guise of patriotism, thought the American way of life was under siege. They feared the country was turning into something foreign and frankly Un-American. Their constitutional rights they were convinced, were under siege.

Update the talking points and they sound eerily familiar today.

Dangerous Donald is at it Again

Especially in light of Dangerous Donald Trump’s latest unhinged comment.

Claiming that Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the second amendment, he suggested to a group of voters that “Second Amendment  people”  had a way to stop Hillary appointing anti gun Supreme Court judges if she became president; a not so subtle reference to gun violence.

These comments today are not from the mouths of a fringe group but from a Republican nominee for the highest office in the land. His dangerous rhetoric intended or not, is a dog whistle heard loud and clear to some of his more extreme supporters.

This only adds fuel to the already incendiary chanting  directed at Clinton to “lock her up,” “hang the bitch”and calling for her to be “tried for treason, murder and crimes against the U.S. Constitution.”

Today’s Danger

The 5,000  flyers distributed by Birchers connected to Texas-son retired Major general Edwin Walker a prominent Dallas Bircher were distributed only in Dallas which was at the time the regional capital of the far right.

The big difference between the 1960’s paranoia and today,  is we have 24/7 Fox News, the internet, and Twitter so that this kind of irresponsible talk can be magnified and instantly transmitted to be played over and over again.

And it only takes one mad man to act.

What more do we need to hear to see that Mr. Trump presents a clear and present danger to the U.S.?

JFK in the swim. Photo by Bill Beebe/Los Angeles Times Archives?UCLA

A Favorite From the Vault

The sizzling summer of 1960 was dominated by the equally hot Presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Earlier in the summer Kennedy had boldly beckoned us to hitch our wagon to his train and be pioneers in a New Frontier. After the seemingly stillness of the Eisenhower years, Americans were anxious to get moving again.

The  Presidential race – a spectacle of pure showmanship filled with hoopla and chutzpah, showboating and glad handling – paled in comparison to my grandmother’s beach club, itself crawling with glitter and glamor.

Beach Club Ballyhoo

Vintage ad Avon 1962

In the years before I went to day camp, my days were spent at The El Flamingo Beach Club on Long Island NY.

The entire day was a step up and in to the good life, living proof that the American Dream was alive and well in mid-century America.

It was a world where your every need seemed to be anticipated and taken care of.

Immediately upon arrival at the club, handsome valets with exotic name like Silvio and Lorenzo sporting  hi-rise pompadours lovingly lavished with Vitalis, would briskly park your car.

Not far behind, eager-to-please cabana boys with Big Man on Campus crew cuts and smiles, would rush to set up your chairs and umbrellas, later to appear at your beck and call to fetch you another ice tea or diet cottage cheese plate.

It was a rarefied world where the open skies at the beach always seemed Kodacolor perfect, not a mushroom cloud or the nose of a submarine on the horizon.

Like the other Beach Clubs that dotted the narrow spit of Long island, the club was always overrun with sun worshiping, jewelry glittering, deeply tanned women, their middle-aged matronly bodies newly trim from a week at the milk farm pummeled and pounded by a host of masseurs,  squeezed into this seasons-must-have figure flattering swimsuit.

They teetered and tottered about on perilously high raffia straw wedgies slides, sun-loving fun-loving play shoes studded with colorful sea shells or a gay spray of red plastic posies to brighten their footsteps, a cold Pepsi in one well manicured hand and a glowing Kool in the other.

High Hopes

The scents and sounds of that summer would sizzle together creating the perfect summer cocktail.

Offsetting  the slightly musty earthy dampness of the cabanas, was the tropical smell of Sea and Ski blending seamlessly with the bracing briny sea air already choked  with the roasted woodsy leathery smell of cigar smoke, pungent chlorine, and the greasy snack bar burgers and fries, making  my eyes tear and my mouth water .

While mindlessly singing along to a Rheingold commercial playing on a Zenith portable radio “my beer is Rheingold the dry beer” a new upbeat commercial came over the radio as high-apple-pie-in-the-sky-high-hopeful as any beer ad jingle.

It even caught my Mothers ear when she recognized that unmistakable voice of  Swoonatra, Ol’ Blue Eyes himself belting out a swingin’ campaign jingle for JFK.

With unadulterated optimism dripping from every note, a swaggering  Frank Sinatra plugged his pal with special lyrics sung to the hit song “High Hopes:”

Everyone wants to back….Jack

Jack is on the right track

Cause he’s got high hopes/he’s got high hopes

Nineteen Sixty’s the year for his high hopes.

Come on and vote for Kennedy

Keep America strong!

Come Alive You’re in the Pepsi Generation

The grinning cabana boys had an extra glow of enthusiasm about them that summer-their beaming faces echoing JFK’s own confidently smiling countenance blazoned on the flashy campaign buttons they proudly sported on their white polo shirts.

K–E–Double N–D–Y with his jet propelled, as-fine-tuned-as-a sporty-Corvette campaign machine, had just snared the democratic presidential nomination despite his being dismissed as more poseur than performer, and despite the “Catholic Issue.”

For these college boys, stylish JFK had the fresh air of progress.

His energy as effervescent as a bottle of Pepsi, his  sleek, fresh, follow me flare had  the mark of tomorrow stamped all over him.

The 1960 television debate between Kennedy and Nixon was the presidential debate that proved a picture is worth a thousand words.

The 1960 presidential debate was an unprecedented event.

For the first time ever, the American voter,  in the comfort of his own living room could watch a presidential campaign debate staged specifically for the viewer. It was the debate that proved a picture is worth a thousand words.

Families from coast to coast tuned into this first televised Presidential debate. Image Credit -Time Life Pictures National Archives/The Life Picture collection

Monday September 26, 1960 was anything but an ordinary Monday, in my home and millions of others.

At 9:30 that evening my parents  joined the 70 million viewers who  would tune into CBS to watch the first ever  in a series of televised debates  between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John Kennedy. The debates were a nod to the growing importance of television, which by then already reached nine out of ten households in the United States.

“Never before have so many people seen the major candidates for President of the United States at the same time,” NBC newsman Frank McGee put it when he introduced the second debate on October 7, “and never until this series have Americans seen the candidates in face-to-face exchange.”

My parents would be watching history in the making.

More precisely, my father would be watching.

Kitchen Debate

Vintage ad Lux for dishes

My poor mother was stuck in the kitchen, even at that late hour doing the dinner dishes.

Earlier that evening, Mom had been called away to an emergency PTA meeting to settle a brouhaha over a bake sale debating the merits of a bundt cake over 7 layer, so she  had yet to finish her kitchen chores. But with the TV volume turned up loudly from the set in the living room she could hear every word the candidates said.

As Mom tackled the dinner dishes,and Brillo’d the pots,  Dad settled in to his easy chair with a pipe and a bowl of ice cream ready to watch these two cold war warriors debate.

The evening began like most Monday evenings with To Tell the Truth, the popular CBS show  where a team of celebrity panelists try to correctly identify which person who has an unusual job or achievement  against an imposter.

It’s 8 o’clock ending sadly signaled bedtime for me.

Nixon Kennedy Debate Ad

I was disappointed to be missing out on the upcoming  highly publicized debate so important an event  that it would be preempting Sheriff Andy Taylor and the good folks in Mayberry.

But in the end,  the loud volume of the Philco filtered into my bedroom keeping me awake.

What is Your Name Please?

Howard K. Smith of CBS was the moderator of the debate, and there would be time for 2 questions from each of the 4 newsmen: Robert Fleming of ABC, Stuart Novins of CBS, Charles Warren of Mutual Radio and Sander Vanocur of NBC.

Truthfully, to me  the presidential debates sounded like a variation of To Tell the Truth. Instead of three contestants there were just two and it was up to the TV audience to determine who was telling the truth with both candidates claiming to be the next President Elect of the United States. One was telling the truth the, other was not.

Instead of congenial Bud Collyer,  Howard K. Smith was the moderator host, and replacing lovely Kitty Carlisle and Tom Poston were a distinguished group of newscasters asking the questions.

Perhaps I wasn’t missing much after all.

A staunch republican, Dad was sure Nixon would be the winner. Not only was the Vice President a skillful debater but  his success after his 1952 Checkers speech that had saved him the 1952 Vice Presidential candidacy  proved Richard Nixon had mastered the art of television.

Besides which, while watching Kennedy’s acceptance speech on television at the summer convention, Dad had thought the inexperienced senator spoke too rapidly, that his voice was too high-pitched and his concepts too complicated for the average American. Nixon’s the the one, he was certain.

Mom, a Kennedy supporter wouldn’t need to be swayed.

So it came as a shock to poor Dad at how poorly Nixon looked at the debates.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

At 47 Richard Nixon was only 4 years older than John Kennedy, but he seemed tired and worn compared to the vigorous, sun burnished JFK.

JFK just looked better.

The senator  was tanned and fit, and  combined with his dark blue suit, he crisply stood out  from the neutral gray background of the studio.

In comparison, a hapless Richard Nixon was haggard and his shirt collar appeared a half a size too large for him. He slouched, his expression was grim,  and sweat just beaded from his face.  He didn’t do himself any favors  by choosing a light gray suit which not only faded into the backdrop of the set, but seemed to match his ashen skin tone.

Dad noticed that Kennedy stared directly into the camera directing his answers to Americans watching at home. Nixon on the other hand with his beady eyes darting back and forth, looked off to the side to address the various reporters. Along with his 5 o’clock shadow, his shifty eyes gave him a sinister appearance.

Sick Dick

The sweat just beaded from Richard Nixon’s face at the debate.

What Dad and most Americans didn’t know was that Nixon had fallen on some bad luck.

He had been very sick.

Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only candidate to be felled by illness so close to a debate. Fortunately Hillary has rebounded. Richard Nixon was not as lucky.

While campaigning in Greensboro North Carolina Nixon had hit his  right knee cap on a car door. The injury lingered. At Walter Reed Hospital he was told that he had a serious staph infection. Unless he remained  at Walter Reed for two weeks of intensive antibiotic treatment, the cartilage of the joint would be destroyed.

Reluctantly, he remained hospitalized, laying   flat on his back from August 29 to September 9 with his leg in traction, distressed  at the thought of the lost time. Later back on the campaign trail, he suffered a bout of flu in St. Louis. His voice grew hoarse.

His bad luck continued.

When Nixon arrived at the Chicago studio for the first debate, he once again banged  his bad knee stepping out of the car.  Still running a low fever, he had nonetheless spent a grueling day on the campaign trail and looked drained by the time of the debate.

Camera Ready – Don’t Sweat It

Richard Nixon’s light gray suit and pale complexion faded into the backdrop.

When it came down to it, Nixon was just not ready for his close up.

Before the debate both candidates had been  offered the help of top professional make up artists brought in by CBS from NY. Both refused. Bronzed and naturally telegenic Kennedy was more than ready for the camera. Nixon with his naturally pale skin and heavy beard  could have used the help.

Instead he sent an aide to a nearby drug store for  a package of Lazy Shave a pancake makeup created by Max Factor meant to hide the heavy 5 o’clock shadow. Lazy Shave “Hides the Beard!” claimed the box copy. A “color-cake for between shaves,” it was basically a powder makeup thick enough to mask a five o’clock shadow for a few extra hours.

But during the debate, Nixon began to sweat under the studio lights, and the makeup melted off his cheeks, making him look unshaven.

The rest is history.

Will The Real President Elect Please Stand Up

At the end of the debate Dad had a sinking feeling. His candidate was doomed .

Listening from the kitchen Mom was sure the debate was at least a draw between her favored candidate and the V.P., even giving a slight edge to Nixon. The fact was, both candidates were more or less matched when it came to substance. Each were skillful debaters and presented remarkably similar agendas.

Yet for those who only listened to the debate like my mother, and those who heard  it on the radio, the win was given to Nixon. But TV won over the 70 million viewers convincing them Kennedy was the victor by a broad margin.

In the end, Nixon failed his audition as a winning television candidate. When it came to substance, JFK stood toe to toe with Nixon, but it was JFK who appeared to stand  taller, more commanding and presidential.

To tell the truth, appearances would hence forth always matter. About that there would be no debate.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.