How do I know all this? It was taught by my Father long ago. Shall I take you back there? To those whispered haunts of childhood that are way back in the age of "duck and cover" and Joe Demaggio? Yes, lets.... Place: Pound Ridge, New York. Upper Westchester County, one of the most charming bedroom communities within commuting distance from Manhattan. It is also one of the most pastoral. "God's Country," was the epithet of choice. Our house sat on a hill overlooking the Pound Ridge Reservation. There were many miles of view from our windows, and in that view no other sign of civilization. It was hard to believe that we were only 40 miles from Rockefeller Center. There in this idyllic setting, scotch in hand, Jeremiah was certainly in the wilderness. My Father commuted to Rockefeller Center where he drew current event maps for Time Magazine. It was a short week, he never worked Fridays, so he freelanced with the extra time drawing maps for history books. He was from Brooklyn and Pound Ridge was his first taste of status. Both my parents were staunch Democrats. The town was almost entirely Republican and the Democrats - "a few Jews and misfits" - clung together for support. Being a Democrat was as far left as my Father could stretch his leanings, and for someone who strained switching allegiance from the Dodgers to the Mets, he stretched the limit. Although Henry Luce employed a few notable ex-commies such a Witiker Chambers, and although John Hersey (as in Luce's words, "The Pope is a Christian") was a noted Democrat, these were the exceptions: Chambers was polarized into a far right cold warrior and Hersey, never fully or logically explaining the reasons ( Weeeellll ), left because of "philosophical" differences with his boss. If Luce claimed that he invited dissent, his actions belied this. My Father kept a low profile with his politics at work and always felt "surrounded by the enemy". A good portion of the conversation in my parent's hard drinking set was political. Most of the set were "those misfit democrats", but there was one noticeable exception. Alan Jackson had the largest syndicated radio news show: "Alan Jackson and the News". This was during the transition when radio was not yet totally co-opted by TV. Alan Jackson came to "hear the other side's point of view", and I can still hear him, sitting on the raised hearth, haranguing through the boozy room, on and on how preposterous it was that anyone could question the loyalty of the "Pres-i-dent of the Unit-ed States" (Ike) or infer that he had "commie connections". I remember that conversation most particularly because of my Father's reaction after Mr. Jackson and the other guests had left. Speaking with my Mother, he noted that he was coming to terms with his shift of consciousness toward what I am referring to as the "ruler perspective". What was shocking to my Father, and this was clearly stated, was that he, a nobody, could know so much more concerning the current events than a "Professional". I want to be clear that I am not talkng about political opinion, or view, but degree of "insider perspective" that my Father was privy to. He (too!) was getting his bearings. My Mother was a good person to bounce this stuff off of as she was politically very savvy. She collected political novels that were the genre of disguised truth, a fan of Vidal etc. "Just so different!" my father would shake his head. "Guns and money," my Mother would nod. I am entering here a few notes concerning my Mother. I said that this is a true account. For that reason please forgive that the next few facts do not flow gently into this narrative. They are just that: facts, and although possibly in some way they are connected, my inclination here is that I would perform a disservice with conclusions or views that might, with perspective too close to this tapestry, be distorted. Dr. Stephen Pelham Jewett, my Mother's Father, was one of the first psychiatrists in the U.S. He had met Sigmond Freud in Wochester, Mass., when he had come over to lecture. My Grandfather was just out of medical school. He got into the field at the ground floor, helped start the first Dept of Psychiatry at a medical school and taught psychiatry most of his life. He was the "governments boy" and always there for a fee to say "electrocute him - he's sane". He. spoke, on a number of occasions, of the experiments in the death camps, in a manner suggestive of an intimate understanding. It is very unusual for Doubleday to publish poetry. In the late 1960's they were going to do so. He wrote verse in English, Latin and classical Greek. All copies of his writing were stolen out of a motel room in Florida. Money and jewelry were not taken. It was too much to re-do: they were never published. He admitted on a few occasions to the possibility that Rickover was a genius in a manner which bespoke "saying something naughty". At age seven, post-partem to the birth of my only sibling, my Mother had a manic episode (she was bipolar) that was also classified as psychotic. It was the first of about six episodes throughout her life for which she was hospitalized. My Father and my Grandfather parted ways after this first hospitalization. My Mother was hospitalized without my Father's knowledge at a hospital where my Grandfather had no privileges but was the attending physician for his own daughter. I remember her screaming about "beings" that were operating on her children. This was plural, the year: 1951. 1 had chronic tonsillitis. I never had them out, but when I was 4 and 5, a very slight 4 and 5, it took three adults with a sheet to hold me down for penicillin. She also stated, then I think, but in subsequent episodes for sure, that "Dr. Mengele (of the death camps) is being protected by us. He's in South America." The last statement turned out more than 30 years later to be true, he was alive, he was in South America, and he certainly was protected by somebody. To my knowledge, and I listened very carefully, the statement about "beings" performing surgical operations on her children, was the only statement that in retrospect could be classified as "psychotic". She was questioned a number of times by the New Jersey State Police (around 1955) concerning a hunting accident that looked like murder. During the same time I rode to the lumber yard in Mt Kisco with my Father and found a note in his raincoat. The note was in pencil torn from a small pad. It stated simply: "Keep her mum or we will kill her". I do not know how many times I looked up "mum" to check and recheck the meaning. I never confronted my Father guessing, correctly I am sure, that I would not be told the truth. My Mother was my Grandfather's secretary during the war. I repeat: during. Not after. I remember being struck at Ike's insistence that what was found at the camps be documented. He did not fully trust his superiors. He thought that there might be a cover-up. This was more than just "taking no chances". I leave the sequencing, Dear Lady - Kind Sir, to you. Prior to this, after Stalin's death, during Dien Phen Phu there was a time of marked tenseness. There were strange cars, there were phone calls. But I had no interest in politics as a child, preferred science, and never thought to ask, as if referring to somebody responsible for misplaced car keys, who the person was who "lost China", or who "Uncle Joe" was who could "always be trusted". I just knew that somebody iost China, and knew that there was some "Uncle Joe" someplace who could always be trusted, and that these things- like the starting lineup for the Dodgers- were all just part and parcel of the way things were. The topic of war was ever present. I joined a rifle club. The patch was a beaver shooting up at a parachute. The young would be trained to take care of the commies. I knew also that war was too important to discuss in public. The public must be lead. I knew that the death of "Uncle Joe" made things difficult for "us" when the French were loosing Indochina at Dien Phen Phu. I "knew" these things even though I never knew that "Uncle Joe" was Joseph Stalin or that the main factor was the bomb or that the "us" wasn't us at all.
