Personal history question:
Didn’t get m’s
email. But I think her question for today was something like
“Did your family (growing up) have discussions about the
news and politics of the day?”
Yes!
To clarify, there wasn’t so much
discussion as there was avid discourse by my father to all of us children and
our mother. He was a passionate anti-Communist, a believer in the necessity of
the Cold War. Dad belonged to
Toastmasters and to a speakers’ bureau, which sent him like a missionary to
various service clubs and other gatherings to preach about the Communist
infiltration of American institutions. I
think now that many of his dinner table diatribes were “practice runs” for his
speeches.
If we listened respectfully (i.e.,
silently) all was well. If we interrupted,
the wrath came down on us. To ask a
question was to threaten his authority, and by extension, to reveal
indoctrination by Communist influences, such as the Beatles. So we just listened.
At the age of six, I organized the
littler kids in the neighborhood to shelter from atomic bombs. We would hear or
see an airplane go by overhead, and run for cover. The screaming was amazing as
we ran around the yard pretending to look for a place to hide, finally ducking
under lawn furniture. Someone started crying once, imaginations being so vivid
at that age, and I got into a heap of trouble for frightening my little peers,
a caustic irony given the fact that everywhere we turned in those days,
gigantic adults were frightening us out of our wits.
Dad’s bedtime stories for me
included tales of the crucifying of Chinese Catholic priests and nuns at the
hands of the communists and little Chinese
Catholic children having chopsticks rammed through their
ears if they failed to denounce Jesus. Naturally, this was going to happen in
America, as soon as the Russians and Chinese got the bomb. Catholics would be the first to go, and all
due to the Commie pink-o sympathizers at Harvard and Hollywood, who were going
to give them the plans for the bomb and open the garden gate for them to come
get us.
In 1959, when
I was 8 years old, the communist Fidel Castro overthrew the Catholic Cuban
dictator Batista. To hear the ranting
and fear from my parents and their friends, you would have thought the Russians
had invaded Evansville, Indiana. Obviously
the next step would be the atomic bombing of our home. That same year, Nixon
ran for President against Kennedy and lost. Nixon had been prominent in the congressional
committee on Un-American Activities, that era when academics, politicians and
artists were “exposed” as having been members of the International Communist Party
or having sympathy with communists, or just knowing any. Naturally this made Nixon a hero, and Kennedy
a villain. It must have been hard for my
parents at some level, having divided loyalties between the anti-Communist
conservative and a liberal Catholic.
Around this
time, Catholic people associated with the Batista regime were fleeing Cuba and
seeking asylum in the US, as well as other Catholic countries in Europe and
South America. There was a program
through our diocese whereby Catholic families in good standing could take in
some of these refugees. My parents applied
to take in a teenaged boy about 4 years older than me. We were all very excited, getting a room
ready, preparing ourselves for a new brother.
Then we got the news that we were denied. We were all very disappointed. When questioned why this action was taken,
the answer was “Politics.” Whether it
was because of Dad’s virulent speaking against Communism and Castro, or because
of their very public support of Nixon over Kennedy, I don’t know.
Once when I was in
the7th or 8th grade, he spoke at a high school assembly at Mater Dei
High School, the Catholic high school on our side of town. The principal there
was Sister Mary Esther. They became great friends, based, I believe, mainly on
her high personal standards, which included being ferociously
anti-Communist. She was tall, willowy,
with an elegant swaying walk, quick and light, despite her height. It was she who recruited me to attend the
Academy Immaculate Conception, where she was being transferred by her order to
become the principal there, and where I would attend four years of High school,
although only two of them with her as Principal.
Political fervor went way back in
the families of both my parents, although it was not universal. My father’s maternal grandmother, Marie
Boudousquie Cabiro, was fiercely antagonistic toward Huey Long, governor and
later assassinated Senator from Louisiana. She loathed him so much that she
took an oath never to cross the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans. Her sons, my dad’s uncles, known for their
pranks, once got her into a car on some pretense and distracted her about the
destination and route, until they had her out in the middle of the bridge, when
they revealed that she had broken her oath. Clearly, not everyone in the family
cared so much about politics!
ON my mother’s side, it was quite a
different story. My grandfather Dominic
Galeota was reputed to have been a Socialist at best, and a Communist at
worst. My Uncle Art Bisone, married to
my Aunt Kathleen Galeota, told me that Dominic had been in Utah to work on the
railroad, and that he had written for the Daily Worker.
I have never seen anything to verify either one of these
statements, and Uncle Art was known for joking around. However, my father was heard to say on more
than one occasion that Dominic was a Communist.
They didn’t get along, but that’s not proof of anything. It would be a fun area to research; once more
important research is completed.
My mother had some friends who were
active politically, and she read a lot of books and pamphlets brought to her by
our friend and neighbor Mrs. Kautzman, but I really don’t know what they were
about. She may have participated in a
few Republican social outings, but it wasn’t a driving force for her to be
active. She did read quite a bit, but
her belief was that the wife should follow the political opinions of her
husband. Given my dad’s fiery commitment
to his own opinion, I think it would not have been wise for her to do
otherwise.
My Dad ran unsuccessfully for the Indiana legislature once,
and I still have some of his campaign flyers.
As a 12 year old, I wore a “Goldwater
for President” campaign button to school, ensuring my Least Popular status in
the 7th grade. This may also
have contributed to the general downfall of my family at Corpus Christ Parish School,
recounted in another chapter. Evansville Catholics were predominantly Democrats
and liberals. I was enthusiastic for no
other reason than family loyalty, and I think my parents were naïve or fearless
enough not to care about the consequences of being different.
As a teenager, I was encouraged to
spend my summers working as an unpaid volunteer for the campaign of a
Republican congressman, Roger Zion. You
can read the Wiki article about him at this address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_H._Zion.
At the time, I thought he was quite
the hero, but to look at his picture now, I don’t remember anything about his
politics. I loved the campaign
activities—attending county fairs in a little white boater hat passing out
leaflets to crowd about the candidate and his stance on Social Security, among
other things, none of which I understood or cared much about. I liked the boys who rode the campaign van,
danced with them in the dance tents at the fairs, and kissed most of them at
least once. I was such an activist!
My one
distinct issue-oriented encounter was at one of these fairs, when I handed a
flyer about Social Security to a man in his 20s. He kind of threw it back in my face and said,
“Why would I bet interested in Social Security?” I have to laugh when I realize
that he is at least 65 by now, and receiving that income that he didn’t care
about when lawmakers were making big decisions about it.
