He Was Commie When Commie Wasn’t Cool
Yesterday marked my grandfather’s 100th birthday. Although I didn’t meet my paternal grandparents until I was 12 and saw them only once or twice a year until their respective deaths, he is one of only two family members to inspire characters in the book – and minor ones at that.
I didn’t have hippie parents. In high school, learning that the 60s and 70s were about more than Lawrence Welk and the Brady Bunch, I found myself an anomaly amongst my classmates in 11th grade American history class. Asked to interview a family member about growing up in the decades of Camelot and Kotter, my dad’s answer to every question about what something meant to him was “Oh, not a hell of a lot…” Everyone’s mom or dad sat in sit-ins. They campaigned for LBJ or followed the Chicago Seven trials. If they didn’t dodge Vietnam, or serve there, they at least got busted for pot. But no. Coolness skipped a generation in ma famille. My grandpa was a pinko.
Of course, no one bothered to tell me this until the Red was dead. All I knew was that he was an atheist, and even that took time to get out. Like any other red-blooded American (with a lowercase “r”), I was raised to believe that Communists were pond scum and that we should feel sorry for Eastern Europeans but not too sorry. Come to think of it, none of this instruction came from my father.
Grandpa was an organizer for the Party. He held workers’ meetings in his home. He loaned Gus Hall $500 once, during the latter’s gas-pumping days in Cleveland. And he remained loyal to the Party till the end, even after the Wall came down and half the group splintered off from Gus Hall’s faction. He forbade his children listen to Amos and Andy because it was racist (they secretly did, anyway). In school, my father and aunt were graded less than objectively by some less than enlightened teachers. Grandpa went to Malcolm X rallies and police brutality protests well into his eighties. And then there was his “invitation” to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, summer of ’52.
“That is not pertinent,” Grandpa replied to one of the J. Edgars’ questions.
“Not pertinent to what?” The Committee asked.
“Not pertinent to anything,” He shot back.
If nothing else, my grandfather knew whereof he spoke. He visited the Communist Czechoslovakia where his parents’ relatives still lived. He rode the Trans-Siberian across the U.S.S.R. Nor was he in denial about the Party’s own consistent inconsistencies. The Party played the stock market, he told his children.
“Arlen Specter reminds me of my father,” Daddy said once as we watched Mr. R-Pennsylvania on C-SPAN.
“Why?” I asked as Specter walked the Senate floor.
“He dresses well and doesn’t take shit off anybody.”
It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood when the Feds pulled up to my grandparents’ home. They headed not to the Party man’s door, but toward the middle-aged man raking leaves in the next yard. Oh, no, I don’t mind answering a few questions. Yes, I know the gentleman next door. Yes, I guess he is a good neighbor. No, I haven’t seen any suspicious activities. (Maybe they knew all along. Public Enemy Number 11305 was working in his parents’ yard, next to his own house.)
Around what would have been Grandpa’s 91st birthday, Aunt Charlotte got a condolence letter from Rick Nagin, head of the Ohio Communist Party, praising Jim’s dedication and radical outlook, and encouraging someone in the family to document his activities. (I wish someone did.) Enclosed was a copy of the CPUSA People’s Weekly World. Near an ad about a shrine where Che Guevara’s severed hands are preserved in glass, Grandpa’s buddies took out a memorial ad heralding him as “A feisty and beloved comrade”. The cutout advertisement is somewhere in my dad’s bedroom. The rest of the newspaper is somewhere in my secretary. The letter is somewhere betwixt the two, and I transcribed it, and that transcription’s somewhere amongst my floppy collection.
The coast is clear. We can talk about this stuff now. We’re just not quite sure what we want to say.
