Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

This story has been locked away in my heart for over half-a-century. Time after time I took pen in hand, but the words would not flow. I guess my muse was quieted, because I did not know if or why the story should be told and more importantly, to whom. A story teller’s voice speaks directly to someone. But the election of our forty-fourth president, Barack Hussein Obama, an African American to grace the hallowed halls of the White House, gave me pause – an epiphany, if you will – and in that moment came the raison d’tre for the tale and the audience for whom it is meant.  

Brooklyn , New York 1941. It was in the autumn of the year that my family decided to move to The Bronx. It was a sad day for me. I had never been to The Bronx once in my life until the day we moved. And when I started school it got even worse. The school kids were mostly Italian and Irish and stuck together in their respective cliques. As luck would have it, the handful of Jewish boys at P.S. 47, had the top stickball team in the east Bronx . They were all good ball players. But, at that point in time, I was in a rather chunky prepubescent state and my klutzy ways offered nothing to my kinsman. Not at the plate, not on the field. I didn’t have a single friend.  

Then one day the lone black kid in the school asked if I wanted to come over to his house to play, “My father is a policeman,” he said. “And if you come over, he’ll let you see his gun. A real gun, but you gotta promise never to touch it. Never ever!” A real gun? I thought I died and went to heaven.

“Momma, momma,” I said when I burst though the door. “I have a friend and his father is a policeman and he has a real gun and he wants me to come over to his house to play, can I go momma, can I?”  

“What kind of boy is he?” my mother asked, calmly. “Is he Jewish?”  

“Oh, I don’t know momma. I didn’t ask, but he’s colored so I don’t think so.”  

“He’s colored and his father is a policeman in New York ?” my mother asked, eyebrows raised.  

“Yes, momma, in New York . I made him swear!”  

“Well Geruleh, if he’s colored and is a cop in New York that must be some family,” she said, wisely. “Yes, you can play with him, but swear on my life that you’ll never touch that gun.”  

So my life took a new turn. I had a friend with a funny name (I was told it was African) to play with and a real gun to look at. He had an older brother who also had a funny name (African too, they explained). But most interesting was that they called their father, Sir. I didn’t even know a “Sir” I thought to myself. I ate dinner at his house once or twice a week and we went to the movies every Saturday. I asked him to come to my house several times, but his mother said, “No, It’s best if you play here.”  

Then on Sunday, December 7, 1941 the world changed forever. That Wednesday, two days after President Roosevelt’s “a date which shall live in infamy” speech was broadcast over our school’s loud speaker, I was sitting at the dinner table with my friend, his older brother and mother and father and bore witness to the following scene, etched indelibly and forever in my mind:  

Older Son: “Sir, I want to enlist, but I’m only seventeen, so I’ll need your permission.”  

Father: Rising slowly from the table, “what do you want to carry the white man’s burden for?”  

Older Son: “It’s our country too, sir, and I want to fight for it. It’s my duty father, Please.”  

Father: “Well son,” the father said after some thought. “If you want to go, at least enlist in the navy. They’ll put you to work in the kitchen or serving meals, but you’ll have a clean bed to sleep in and besides, the army might not even take you. So I’ll sign the papers but only for the navy.”  

Older Son: “Thank you, sir,” he said, standing for the first time. “It’ll be the navy and I’ll make you proud of me father, I promise.” And they embraced.  

I wish I had a proper ending to the story, but I don’t. The family moved away shortly after the young man enlisted. What I find so compelling is that this gallant teenage African American boy chose to risk his life for his country. The same country that for generations denied him and his forefathers a piece of the American dream.  

We’ve come a long way since then and have, no doubt, yet a ways to go. But I am confident that America will long remain the “land of the free,” because it also is and shall ever be, “the home of the brave.”