After yet another lengthy hiatus, I am back to looking at Dad's stories and culling them for this and other efforts at letting the world see what otherwise would remain anonymous--his writing talent. As I am the last in the immediate family line, there simply is no one to whom to leave anything of Dad's or of mine. My extended family is large, but my parents, for reasons of their own kept me separate from nearly all of them when I was growing up; of the few I did or do know, our contacts were limited over the years. There were efforts at recontact, but once we all hit adulthood, relationships just did not develop. No one to blame. Just the way it was. Still, I have always been interested in the posterity of others, family or otherwise, especially since I read the Alexander Masters book "A Life Discarded". The book tells the story and speculations about a series of diaries found in a trash bin in England, and about the person who wrote them. I am fascinated by the stories of others, and I guess the truth is, I hope somebody or many people will be fascinated by my father's and my stories (I have inherited the rather undisciplined desire to write). While I am a fervent believer in God, Providence and Eternity, and the Immortality of the Soul, I admit that I resist the idea of people being forgotten in this life, particularly after those who knew them are themselves forgotten.
This story I somehow never read before. I have no idea if it is true. Was my father arrested as a sixteen year old for a failure to have a license to sell peanuts? Could be? His stories usually combined facts with fiction. And political lament.
CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
In the summer of 1934 I was arrested by two plain clothes detectives in front of the entrance to the Bronx Botanical Gardens. There was no such thing as a Miranda right in those days. The charge was peddling peanuts without a license.
I was husteled, unceremoniously, to a holding area where there were corralled several dozen miscreants of a similar category--peddlars of all descriptions, from frankfurters to ice cream pops.
It was noon when I was deposited among this crop of criminals, most of whom were much advanced in age beyond my sixteen years. I was received with parental like concern. I learned my first lesson in dealing with the "Cossacks", the appellation then current among those downtrodden. "Ya shdda said you was fifteen", I was advised. "They don't pick you up if y'are under sixteen."
We were being held for Night Court. It was not until the sun was deep in retreat in the sky that the ominous vans arrived to transport us to the western "Chateau D'If", the Tombs, that forbidding tower of justice for the iniquitous. We were herded into the black panelled vehicles for the ride "downtown."
It appears there were no gradations of criminality of criminality at the Tombs. We were packed into already overcrowded cells, occupied to satiation by every category of felon, to await adjudication, to bgin at 10 p.m., traditionally.
Then, we were led before the 'bench' in groups of twelve. As instructed, we offered our Constitutionally endowed plea of "Guilty" in a chorus. There were no dissenters. We were fined, "Two dollars or two days."
I chose the two days. Two dollars was a mighty sum in those days. Perhaps it would be best to end this narration, but honesty compels me. . . I was retured to the cell where the residual, unprocessed criminals were housed. I learned about "craps", the cubes that Julius Caesar is said to have thrown. I lost the two dollars I should have used for the fine in one roll.
But these were days of promise. There was nothing to fear, as the sainted Franklin intone, "except fear itself.' This had a sonorous ring, almost equal to the deposed President's offering, that engineer whose expertise could feed the starving revolutionaries of the Soviet Union, but was ineffective to stem the burgeoning bread lines he created, "Prosperity is just around the corner!" Neither phrase were the palliative equal to the "Chicken in every pot!" offered centuries ago by a Roman Caesar. But I guess it was better than Bread and Circuses. After all, this was America.
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