Enlist and die as young as possible, I was advised
Ancient memories (Part 3)
By Saul Landau
Harvey and I rode in a truck cab along Highway 66 through a mixture of citrus groves and housing construction. San Bernardino County morphed from desert into the beginnings of suburban sprawl. We passed a sign that said: “Rancho Cucamonga, population 1,255.” Harvey sang: “How are things in Cucamonga?”– Bob Hope’s radio show takeoff on the “Finian’s Rainbow” musical, “How are things in Glocca Morra.” (Rancho Cucamonga today has a population of more than 130,000.)
By the time we reached Los Angeles County at Claremont, the orange trees became thinner and tract homes became thicker. But palm trees and fruit trees in the streets amazed two teenagers from the very concrete Bronx.
The trucker dropped us off in some warehouse district near downtown. A cop told us to catch the Wilshire bus, which we took all the way to Santa Monica, a seemingly endless ride along Wilshire Boulevard. We gawked at the stores and shoppers on the Miracle Mile area between La Brea and Fairfax avenues, hoping in futility to see Hollywood stars driving some Lincoln or Packard convertible. We got off at the end of the line and stared at the Pacific Ocean. The ocean breeze seemed to cause the temperature to drop ten degrees.
“Looks just like Rockaway Beach, except for the palm trees and the blondes. The broads are everywhere.” Harvey referred to the young women in scanty bathing suits that quickly overcame the lure of the Pacific Ocean’s horizon.
Two horny teenagers checked into a hotel near the beach ($4 a night without sheets on the bed). While Harvey checked for cockroaches and bed bugs, I called Uncle Max from a pay phone in the hall.
“You hitchhiked all the way? You didn’t get molested? Did the cops pick you up?
“Yes,” I replied. “One night in the Winslow, Arizona jail.”
“You got some balls for a kid of 17.”
I reminded him I was only 15.
“Jesus,” he squealed, “you’re a bigger jerk than I thought.” He gave me his address and bus directions from Santa Monica to his home in Silver Lake (near downtown LA). “Can you find your way over here?”
Harvey said he would explore the beach — we needed a break from each other’s company — as I took the necessary buses to arrive at my uncle’s modest and modestly furnished two-story home on a hill where he lived with his wife, Paulette.
I had seen him at family weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and on his occasional East Coast visits. A family pariah, Max had divorced his first wife, a taboo in orthodox Jewish circles. Although my mother’s three brothers and two sisters became Communists in the 1920s and 30s, they did not relinquish their cultural ties to their childhood cultures, which they somehow incorporated into Stalinism — two orthodoxies, a weird ideological combination. Max not only divorced his first wife, but also made his living as a gambler.
He lost no time, however, in beginning his indoctrination lecture, for which I gave him a straight man’s lead.
In response to his question about my future career, I said:
“I’m going to enlist in the service as soon as I can.”
He smiled. “Your life’s aim is to die as young as possible? Maybe even before you get laid? I know you’ve watched the movies on how wonderful war is and how great it is to stick a bayonet into another person or shoot him or bomb him. But what did that person do to you? Would you walk up to a guy on the street and kill him because he’s Korean? Did the Koreans hurt you? Did they attack the United States? Do you know how many times South Korean troops crossed the border into North Korea? Do you have any idea why Korea is two countries today and not one like it had been for centuries?”
I had no answers.
“You ignorant little schmuck. You think you’re going to become a man because you wear a uniform and carry a gun? The army makes you into a killer, not a man.”
Uncle Max, 5 feet tall and 90 pounds, carried an aura of confidence when he spoke that I could not contest. I was ignorant and once the sting of resentment faded, I recognized the horrifying fact: absence of knowledge.
Over the next few days, Uncle Max drove us around except when he “worked” at the poker palace in Gardena, but told his wife he was selling rosaries and crosses to nuns in convents. As he drove us down Sunset Boulevard and we asked about where the movie stars lived, he orated about imperialism.
He quoted Lenin and Stalin, told us to remember what we had read about “Uncle Joe” in our Weekly Reader — during World War II, “Uncle Joe” (Stalin) sat in photos alongside Uncle “Winnie” (Churchill) and Father Figure FDR as good guys fighting Hitler. They smiled and looked like good friends and in school the teachers parroted the official line about the wonderful allies and evil Axis.
“So why do you believe the crap they’re feeding you now? Why don’t you believe the Weekly Reader?”
He also extolled the virtues of Mao Tse-Tung. “He might be the greatest of all of the Marxist leaders. He has taken a billion people and put them on the road to progress and equality.” (In 1961, Uncle Max was thrown out of the Communist Party for “Maoist tendencies.” He immediately joined Progressive Labor, the Maoist party.)
Harvey snorted with derision at Max’s remarks. “How can you praise a guy who sends millions of soldiers to die so they can kill a few Americans?” (Harvey referred to reports of Chinese generals sending massive numbers of troops directly into enemy fire in Korea. China entered the war in October 1950.)
Max tried patiently to explain to Harvey: “History does not get made by softies, by those who think the value of a soldier’s life is more important than the larger destiny. The defeat of American imperialism is the most important strategic goal just as the fight for Negro equality is the key to the domestic agenda.”
Harvey remained skeptical. My admiration for Max grew, not because I agreed with him, but because he could articulate his passion with reasonable arguments. Harvey seemed impervious, however, to Max’s revolutionary orations. He wanted to see movie stars.
At our request, Max dropped us on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. We found Grauman’s Chinese theater and walked in the footsteps of the stars, wandered into Schwab’s drug store looking — in vain — for famous faces and gawked at The Brown Derby sign. Radio shows — Bob Hope and Jack Benny in particular — had educated us about the names of these places. Hawkers on the street were selling maps to movie stars’ homes. But $2 seemed like a very steep price.
After six days in southern California, one spent packing lemons and oranges for 40 cents an hour, we both got homesick. Uncle Max gave us $10 each from his poker winnings and we started home. We thanked him. “Don’t worry,” he said, “your parents are good for it.”
We chose the northern route for our return. Two days later, after passing through the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas and St. George, Utah, Harvey and I sat on a grassy hill in Utah surrounded by sheep and sheep shit. We tried to converse with a Basque shepherd. I used my high school Spanish, Harvey mimed and shouted the English words as if volume should increase the shepherd’s understanding.
When he heard my last name he seemed elated. “Landa,” he shouted, “Usted es Basco. Caramba!” (I didn’t know Landa was a Basque name.) “No,” I tried to explain, “Mi padre viene de Kiev, Ukrania.”
He smiled enigmatically and shared his leather pouch of red wine with us, hugging both of us before shouting to his dog and returning to the sheep. We hit the road again, with another story to tell the guys on the block — if we could stretch our combined $42 all the way to New York and not die from the lingering odor in our nostrils of sheep dung.
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His films are available on DVD from roundworldproductions@gmail.com.
Ancient memories (Part 1)
Altering our narrow view of the world (Part 2)
