World's Fair (29 page)

But, generally speaking, the movie versions of comic book heroes were great disappointments. Flash Gordon, for example, was too thick around the middle. He didn’t seem to be as quickwitted as he was in the panel drawings, there was some sinuous capability lacking there. Of course, Zorro was better on the movie screen than in the original. And
The Green Hornet
was best of all on the radio. My friends and I were thoughtful critics of these conversions of life forms. Arnold—the boy with the peculiar flattened ears and handwriting like a spider, in addition to strangely large eyes behind his eyeglasses and a wet sort of speech that produced a kind of spray when he was excited—was the most astute of all of us. He knew everything about serials, he could tell us who produced them—Republic Studios or Universal or Monogram—and the names of the actors who played in them. He even knew the genealogy of Britt Reid, the Green Hornet: Britt Reid, he said, was none other than the Lone Ranger’s grandnephew. We were skeptical, and hurt Arnold’s feelings by laughing at him, but he drew himself up and marshaled his facts. “One, the Lone Ranger’s real name was Reid, and he had a nephew, Dan Reid.” We gave Arnold that—Dan Reid was in several of the radio stories. “Two,” said Arnold, “Britt Reid, who is the Green Hornet, has a father named Dan Reid. Three, this Dan Reid who is Britt Reid’s father is an old white-haired man, which proves enough years have passed for him to be the same Dan Reid, the boy, whose uncle was the Lone Ranger. Four—Britt Reid is the Lone Ranger’s grandnephew!”

Wiping my face, I grudgingly accepted Arnold’s analysis. I thought privately that if it was true, it was disappointing. The Lone Ranger was one thing, the Green Hornet was another.
One rode horseback, the other drove a Lincoln Zephyr with custom wheel covers. The Green Hornet moved about the city, a modern city, he wore a hat with a snap brim and a belted raincoat with the collar up. I didn’t want to know that he was related to the Lone Ranger. Also I didn’t like to believe that families through generations tended to wear masks and dedicate their lives to fighting crime. Each of them would be presumed to eliminate all crime forever. There was a loss of the idea of perfection. The Lone Ranger was
lone
, and that was the way he should have been.

But then one night when
The Green Hornet
radio program came on, my mother happened by and heard the opening theme music. It was very fast and full of tension. “‘The Flight of the Bumblebee,’” my mother said. “Why do you suppose these junky programs all use classical music for their themes?” She was thinking also of
The Lone Ranger
, which used the overture from
William Tell
, an opera by Rossini. That led to my revelation. In school the next day I sought out Arnold. “Arnold,” I said, “it’s not that the Green Hornet and the Lone Ranger are related. It’s that their writers are related! I bet you we will find out that both stories are written by the same person. Both programs use classical music, both the heroes wear masks, the Lone Ranger has Tonto at his side, and the Green Hornet has Cato driving his car.”

Arnold looked at me. His favorite subject was Science. He wanted to be a scientist when he grew up. He already had the objectivity of the scientist, which is the willingness to give up one hypothesis for another that is more reasonable. His eyes widened. “And they both leave calling cards!” he shouted.

“A silver bullet!” I cried.

“A hornet pin!” he screamed. And we pounded each other and jumped up and down and laughed.

I
found out that my father had lost his store one morning when I met him at the breakfast table. He was cheerful. “How are you, young man,” he said. He had brought home a radio that you didn’t have to plug in. It worked on a battery. It was covered in alligator skin and had a leather carrying handle. It was like a small suitcase and you flicked the switch and it lit up on the dial just like a regular radio. You could carry it anywhere, to the beach or picnics, but I found it heavy. Then I noticed a cardboard box with many packets of needles and also a microphone, the kind used by radio stations, except that it wobbled on its base. And finally there was a pack of records in green envelopes. Some of them were old with grooves only on one side. “These are rare recordings by Caruso and Gigli,” my father said. “If we hold on to them long enough they’ll be valuable.” While I ate my oatmeal he opened his newspaper. I saw the headlines. The other bad news was that France had fallen to Hitler.

DONALD

I
didn’t actually flunk out of City College, although I was called before the Dean—the late Dean Morton Gottschal. He said I would have to improve my grades or I would be out. But I wasn’t ready for a full-time college career, I knew that. I quit City and enrolled in night school and went to work as a messenger at Warriner during the day. I wouldn’t go back to school full time till after the war, when I racked up straight A’s and got my degree in two and a half years. At Warriner I made twelve dollars a week, not fifteen, as you said, although I could hope to supplement that with what I could clip on the expense account. You’d charge for a bus ride, a nickel, but you walked—that sort of thing. You walked fast. I didn’t feel I was cheating. They paid me nothing. I worked hard, I did what I was supposed to. Maybe they paid so low because they knew all messenger boys padded the expense account. But anyway I worked all day and then went to night school. I was still seventeen and a half. I was a kid. I’d always worked. I started working for Dad when I was thirteen or fourteen. I know I was that young because I couldn’t go to lunch myself, he had to take me. I still wore knickers. Now, maybe eighteen, I was keeping the family going. Dad had lost his store, he was out of work, and my crummy twelve dollars was keeping the household in food. I turned my pay envelope over to Mom every week. I was the breadwinner. I was very disturbed by that.
It didn’t last long, a couple of months till Dad got a job as a salesman with Home Appliance Distributors. But it wasn’t good. I was tied down to them, I was doing what he should have been doing. Mother always complained about not being given enough to run the household, although there was never any time when we didn’t have food or clothing or were threatened with eviction. But that was the big problem in the family, never having enough money. We all lived with that idea, it was the thirties, it conditioned everything—teenage kids were expected to help out, there was no question about it. But it was getting to me, I suppose. Harvey Stern, whom I’d known since first grade, had found out about an interesting opportunity. The Signal Corps was accepting applications for a civilian trainee program. They taught you how to be a radio operator, how to transmit and receive in Morse code, work a transmitter, repair radios, all of that; and they paid you besides. When Dad got his job at Home Appliance and began to bring money into the house, the folks didn’t need my salary anymore. The great thing about this job was that it wasn’t even in New York, it was in Philadelphia. Harvey and I went down and took the exam and a few weeks later we were told we had passed, and we were hired. We would live in a dormitory there and study radio and get paid and be on our own. So that was a big break for me. The folks gave me permission, it seemed the wisest course for several reasons. We all knew I would be drafted. When the time came it would be better to enlist. If I had experience in radio, I could hope to get a technical rating in the Signal Corps.

So I was free. I was leaving the house. I would not come back for several years, until after the war. I went down there and started to live for myself. It was a remarkable feeling. In Philadelphia we met some girls and went to bed with them. That was the first time for me. Life was speeding up. Everyone believed war was coming, nobody knew how or why, but everyone felt it. People wanted to live and enjoy themselves while they could. It was a strange feeling living for myself, on my own, with nobody to tell me what to do, and with nobody’s welfare to worry about except my own. I did well in the Signal Corps school, in fact I
finished first in my class. I was a very good radio operator. I bought my own bug. That’s what the telegraph key in its modern form was called. It was semiautomatic. You could transmit faster than you could with an old-fashioned key. We each had our bug and developed our sending styles so that they were as recognizable to other operators as our handwriting or our voice. I wanted to go into the Signal Corps when I enlisted and become a radioman on airplanes, I wanted to get an assignment to the Army Air Corps, which is what the Air Force was called then, it wasn’t a separate branch, it was part of the Army. The word “radioman” had glamour attached to it. You were on the leading edge of technology. I thought I was getting out, getting away from that intense family life we lived, I couldn’t have realized it or articulated it but we were all too close and everything was terribly intense. There was no letup. Partly it was everyone’s struggle for survival, partly it was the enormous difference in the personalities of Mom and Dad. Dad went off in all directions, he was full of surprises, some of them were good, some not so good. But it kept everyone on edge, Mother especially. You know, once I was working in the store when it was at the Hippodrome, and, you remember, Dad kept these record catalogues on the counter by the cash register, catalogues, and invoices, all that sort of paperwork. And stuck among these one day I found a photograph of a woman. A very glamorous woman, it showed her head and shoulders, it was a formal portrait theatrically lit. She had long hair flowing over her shoulders, which were bare, she was wearing some sort of costume, I suppose she was some kind of singer, I don’t know why I thought that. But, anyway, in ink at the bottom she had written,
To Dave, Always
. And it was signed
Irene
. I didn’t say anything, but I was enraged. I found it unforgivable that he was fooling around. He was the kind of man to fool around, to philander. He was errant. He had a wild streak in him. He was generous to us and we all lived together as a very close knit family relying on one another, and that was all true, but he had his secrets and they came out of the same part of his character that made him dream big impractical dreams that he couldn’t realize. I mean he was a scrapper and
he kept us going somehow. But something really broke for me when he accepted my messenger’s salary for Mom’s allowance. Why didn’t he say something about that? Why didn’t he say he’d pay me back? Why didn’t he say he’d keep an accurate record, and account for every dollar and make sure I got it back when he was on his feet again? But he didn’t. And Mom came to depend on me. I mean I think of it now, I started working very young, I always did something, I was always trying to get ahead, get myself a summer vacation by putting together a band with my friends. That wasn’t a bad thing to do, at age sixteen, posing as a nineteen-year-old professional musician. Where did I learn that enterprise? It was part expediency, of course, partly the spirit of the time, but I had some drive to bring to it that was all my own. Dad was a good model in one way—he didn’t like working for anyone else, he liked to be on his own, he had ambition, he was always cooking up deals, even though most of them didn’t come through. But that would have impressed me. He was a good salesman too, and knowledgeable about what he sold. Even though he wasn’t really the hustling salesman type, he had a refinement about him that would not let him hard-sell. But he was never satisfied to be what he had chosen to be. Do you know what I mean? You could not define him by what he did. There was no security in him of definition. You could never imagine his finding one thing to do and making a success of it and not try to do anything else. I don’t think he ever found what it was that would make him say, “This is me, Dave Altschuler, and I am forty-eight years old and I live at such and such address and I do such and such for a living and I am satisfied with my life and my work.” You couldn’t pin him down. And the funny thing is I thought I was getting away from him. And what did I go and do but get into a radio business of another sort, just like my father, riding the airwaves for a living.

TWENTY-FIVE

I
still had my Heinz pickle pin from the World’s Fair; lots of people had them, there was a currency in these things and some kids didn’t care for them, they went from hand to hand; and so I now had not only the Heinz pickle but the Planters nut company’s Mr. Peanut, who wore a top hat and monocle, and I had a DC-3 charm from the aviation exhibit. I found out that my friend Meg’s mother had a job at the World’s Fair, although she didn’t say doing what. But as a result Meg made me a present one afternoon of a full-color map of the Fair, and it was the kind of map I liked, with the drawings of the buildings in three dimensions, and in color, as if you were looking down from an airplane, but it was like a cartoon too, with little flags and people walking, and the very clear overhead view showed you immediately where the attractions were and named each one right on the roof. Meg had already been to the Fair several times and was able to tell me what was good, I got a hang of the layout this way, and by studying the map carefully—it had an index, which located things for you by means of a simple grid, A to K and 1 to 7—I was able to plan just how I would go about seeing the Fair, where I would start, and the best way to proceed, step by step, until I felt that I knew what to do, I could see everything I wanted to see and not become confused or miss anything. That had been a worry of mine.