Every morning the Chicago Tribune was delivered
outside the kitchen door, on the landing beside the
stairs and the freight elevator. Everything about the
stairs and the freight elevator fascinated me, but I
had never investigated how the newspaper arrived.
A deliveryman must have ridden the freight elevator
in the early morning with a stack of Tribunes, stopping
at every floor that had a newspaper subscription. It
must have taken a fair amount of time, considering
the slow speed of the freight elevator. But I had never
looked into it.
If my mother woke early, or if she had not slept at all,
she brought the newspaper inside. If she stayed late
in bed, Catherine would get it. But since Catherine
didn’t come on weekend mornings, and my father
never got the newspaper, I got it on Saturdays and
Sundays.
On Saturday, October 5, 1957, I saw the front page
of the Tribune and immediately realized that everything
would be different from now on. The headline – REDS
FIRE MOON INTO SKY – was brilliant, terrifying,
deeply meaningful and incomprehensible all at once.
The accompanying article was more of the same:
“At 560 miles high, it spins five miles a second.”
What could that mean?
Alone in the breakfast nook, I continued staring at the
Tribune. Gradually I became aware of other articles
on the front page. There was something about game
three of the World Series. What foolishness. How
could anyone care about baseball when everything
was completely changed?
I wanted to listen to Radio Moscow immediately. I had
never done that by myself. With Murr, my friend from
the sixth floor, I listened to Radio Moscow on the
huge mahogany contraption in the living room. Besides
its tiny television screen, the contraption had a phonograph
and a powerful radio with shortwave capability that could
access Radio Moscow’s English language broadcasts.
Listening was scary. Suppose the FBI found out?
My father entered the breakfast nook. Saturday was a
favorite day for him. For thirty years, since the late 1920s,
he had played pinochle on Saturdays with the same small
group of friends. Originally there were three of them: Gus
Golding, Joe Weiss, and Charlie Shapiro. Gus Golding
had died a few years ago so now they played three-handed
pinochle. Winter or summer, they never missed a Saturday
game. It was an impressive accomplishment because
Charlie Shapiro lived in LaPorte, Indiana, almost a two hour
drive away. He must have picked up Joe Weiss somewhere
along the route because they always came together, and
they always arrived at exactly one o’clock.
“Something wrong?” my father asked. I was standing beside
the Formica table staring down at the newspaper.
“Have a look.”
I stepped aside and he read the headline. I didn’t expect much
of a reaction. My father followed the news closely although he
rarely seemed engaged unless Israel was involved. But he
seemed to understand the significance of REDS FIRE MOON
INTO SKY.
“It’s a good thing Stalin is gone.”
“Stalin? What about Khrushchev?”
“Better than Stalin.”
I wasn’t ready to talk. It was still early on this grim Saturday
morning. Walking down the long hall, I passed the blue room
where my mother was still sleeping. What would she make
of the earth satellite? Probably nothing. If she was feeling
well enough, she would go with Dorothy on another hunt for
ceramic figurines.
Instead of going to my room, I went into the cedar closet, with
its wood scent and darkness. I could think about anything in the
cedar closet. I could face the truth.
I thought of Invasion USA, a movie Victor and I had seen at the
Parkway theater. Suddenly the Russians had invaded America.
The guy washing the windows turned out to be a Russian spy.
Formations of Russian bombers were flying in over Alaska. The
Russians were efficient and ruthless. They easily took over
America. All would have been lost except the whole thing turned
out to be the hallucination of a guy in a bar.
But this was not a hallucination. The Russians were taking over
and they didn’t need an army or an air force. They would do it
with satellites and rockets. How would that happen? Surely the
details would soon become clear.
As I left the cedar closet the sounds of the pinochle game in the
library were loud and clear. I knew nothing about pinochle but it
seemed to involve numbers angrily shouted out. “Three-fifty!”
“Four hundred!” From the doorway of the library I saw that the
World Series was on the television, but with the sound muted.
Yes, they did this a few times a year, for World Series games
and for the Kentucky Derby. What foolishness!
“Three-fifty!” “Four-hundred!”
Comments