My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part three)

Doc, welcome back. Hope you had a nice Vacation in Miami Beach. You look good. Healthy. Better than Vienna right?! Had a little bout with something. Last week but I'm fine now...

To bring you up to date: I spent about two years chasing cops on the police beat. Auto accidents, fires, and the like, before my time came to move ahead. On the beat I learned a lot about the human condition in Cleveland; the plight of blacks and whites struggling to maintain a decent lives. It wasn't easy in the city, even in those relatively benign days of the 50's. Of course, the raucous 60's were just around the corner. We should have seen that coming, but we didn't. It wasn't a soft touch for the cops either. The police beat experience made me wonder what happens to a good, decent human being when he or she puts on a uniform.

Doc, you probably understand this better than I. Human nature, right? The uniformed guys lose their humanness. Can't change that, Doc. The uniform brings out the feeling of power. Every time I encountered a cop in later years, I tried to deal with them like human beings. It simply didn't and doesn't work. The law is the law. I invariably ended up saying yes "Sir, yes Sir," and they mostly ended up telling me to tell it to a judge.

One night when I first went down to Texas, I was driving in a relatively dark busy road on the way to a religious service in Sun City about ten miles away. After I had made a turn onto a main road, there was the sight of flashing lights the sound of a siren.

“What have I done?,” I thought to myself.

The cop pulled me over, and walked toward the car. Oh good, it was a woman! A young blonde. Not bad looking. I breathed a sigh of relief. I can handle this. But I had sighed too soon. From those beautiful lips she barked,  

“You got a license? You a citizen?! What are you doing down here? Do you know where you are going?”

“I’m going to a religious service at Sun city, and I'm a bit lost Ma’am. Maybe you can help me? By the way I really like your town, the library, the theater...”

“Any drugs in the car? Do you know you were doing 25 in a 40 mile zone?! That's a violation of state law. And you made a wide turn into Williams Drive,” she barked as she poked her flashlight into my face.

“I’ll let it go this time, with a warning. Better not happen again.”

So much for good looking blondes in uniform.

My opportunity to move up from the police beat arrived when Alex Groner, a fine reporter and writer, accepted a job with Time magazine. He had covered the Health and Welfare beat for the Press. Louis Seltzer asked me take over the assignment, a prime job. He was strongly involved in the health and well being of the town's citizens, particularly for the powerless and the disadvantaged. I was told that Health and Welfare was important. The editors weren't socialists, but good journalists. We became the champions of the weak and the powerless, and we were interested in the rapid growth of health care in the city. 

Dr. Crile

Dr. George Crile led the way. He came to the east side where he founded the Cleveland Clinic, initially known as the Crile Clinic. The Press was on top of the story. The paper was also concerned for the care of the elderly and the poor. They were convinced we could do better, and our readers wanted it that way. It was a huge public issue in those days, too.

After I established myself on the beat, the editors agreed to send me on an ambitious five week trip to Europe to take a look at the advanced social systems that were emerging in the West. If they could meet the social needs of their folks why can't we? The question of course, is unanswered to this day. For me it became, with the boss’s permission, much more than a simple journalistic venture.

It was my sentimental return to Europe, only a few years after the war. This time I took the Queen Mary, the stately ocean liner of its time. I had my own bunk, but not much more. I holed up in the lowest class. It must have been fifth class. Four of us shared a so-called room. There was me, another fellow my age from Chicago, who I hung out with, a priest, and a middle aged guy. A group of us from steerage hung together, found a secret passage to First Class and had a ball. There were a number of young single guys and some very lovely British young ladies.

But there was a hooker to this, Doc. These girls were all Brits who had married American soldiers during the war, and were now returning home to visit their families. I, of course, was very careful, not wanting to create an international incident, but not careful enough. To this day I blame it on the guy from Chicago. (And of course the priest, who should have prayed for me.)

I was controlling myself as best I could, because my Cleveland girlfriend, Bette Daneman, was to meet me in London. I forgot to tell you about her, Doc. Bette was a very bright young lady, and head of the Cleveland Junior council on World Affairs, who was studying in Oxford for the summer. We’d planned to travel together on a five week adventure. Innocents abroad, so to speak. I would stay in a hotel on Sloane Square, do my reporting in the London area and then drive up to Oxford and pick her up.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Doc. You know, raging hormones.

By pure coincidence Doc, honest, I happened to be innocently walking hand in hand down the gangplank with one of the British gals, and would you believe, standing there among the greeting crowd to surprise me was Bette, with a pained look on her face. Boy, was I surprised. She saw me “walking the plank,” so to speak. I ducked away from the British girl, but it was too late.

Bette never really smiled that day or the next. You understand, don't you Doc? Girls are funny. They're sensitive. It seemed like a wonderful friendship begun in Cleveland, but it was destined for disaster in London.

Can you help me with this one? Can you, Doctor?

Next: Crying in my beer in Asmunhausen, and a dicey encounter with Yugoslavia's Dictator, Tito.

My Life As a Muckraker (part two) As Told To Dr. Freud (Sending a boy to do a man's job.)

I'm sorry I missed my session last week, Doctor, but I had a bad cold and I didn't want to give it to you. Your wife said it was your policy that I had to pay for missed sessions. I gave her my card. (He nodded at me looking not at all embarrassed. I was annoyed, but I didn't say anything.)

Just to sum up from last time Doc, you recall that I was hired by the Press right out of college, spent a few days in Toledo, then hopped the Mercury Streamliner to begin my career as a journalist.

You might expect that at my moment of triumph, I would have jumped off the train at the terminal, grabbed a bus, and headed to Ninth St. and the Press to report for work. Instead took a deep breath, and took the Cedar Hill trolley up to the Heights for home. I had to find a white shirt, a narrow tie, and get a haircut and shave.

The Cedar Hill trolley

Maurice Weidenthal, my grandfather

A few days later, with dreams of becoming some kind of hot shot editor, I walked into Norman Shaw's office and presented myself for the coronation, so to speak. After all, he did call my home asking about me, right Doc?!

Shaw was a fine looking, cool type with graying hair and a straight serious face. He was an Oberlin man, the son of a Plain Dealer editor. He was much the antithesis of Press editor Louis B.Seltzer, who left school after junior high to find his way in journalism. Kind of a balance at the top, which as it turned out, worked very well.

It wasn't long into our conversation when Shaw noted that his father, Archer Shaw, and my grandfather, Maurice, had worked together at the Plain Dealer at the turn of the century. He as associate editor, my grandad as politics writer and theater critic. I said to myself, it’s my name he wants, not me or my great talents. My ego sank. I was hurt inside. Yes, Doc, it hurt.

It sank even deeper when I was told that there weren't any real reporter or editing jobs open at the moment; that I would have to start as a copy boy. Oh my God, I thought to myself, how much can my fragile manhood take?

Enough of this “boy” stuff!

But I sucked it up, Doctor, and took the job, still at $35 a week. I forgot to tell you that part of the job was to clean and fill paste pots. Each writer had a coffee cup filled with paste, necessary to clip and paste copy after proof reading or edits. It was a messy job, especially when you consider how easy it is to cut and paste on the computer these days.

My plan was to do a first class job, even with the paste pots. (Which I became very good at, by the way.) I’d get to know the territory and become friendly with some of the big guys that I admired. One of them was Dick Peters, a genuine Yalie, who looked the part. Like Shaw, he was tall, with silvering, thinning, graying hair, in his early 40's and straight as an arrow. I learned that he’d been General Douglas MacArthur’s PR guy during the war in the Pacific. I fantasized that he was there when MacArthur made his famous return to the Philippines. Maybe he even wrote the line.

Peters lived on Princeton Rd. in Cleveland Heights with his father, who was the headmaster at University School. For some reason, Peters and I hit it off. After a few months of "boy" work, Peters approached me one day saying,

"We’re going to try an experiment in our department. We need young blood and we want you to join us.”

 I was stunned. Flattered.

“You start on Monday.”

I didn't quite know how to act. I had to buy more shirts and ties for my transition from filling paste pots, to being an editorial writer. It was a real coup. There were four men in the department. I would become the fifth. My job was to deal with letters to the editor, pick out the best, and confirm their authenticity.

I would also help in the back room laying out the page, proofreading, and making the morning deadline. It was cool. And I tried to act normal among my comrades who worked in the chaotic City Room.

After awhile I was given the latitude to crank out editorials on fairly non controversial subjects. One of my first ventures into the world of editorial writing, was a full page editorial I wrote for the Saturday page, calling for a rebuilding of the Cleveland Airport, which was, at that time, nothing more than a backwater pre war facility with no concourses or jet ways. We ran three rather large aerial photos of the three area regional airports; Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit. The other two were already in the construction stage. As usual, Cleveland was slow to catch up. We were entering a new era of jet travel, and Cleveland was falling behind, being dragged down by the small mindedness at City Hall, while Detroit and Pittsburgh were taking a regional approach.

Cleveland Hopkins Airport 1956

We did get some action, when the city announced it was tacking on two concourses to the existing building, but the basic small mindedness continues to this very day.

I learned a lot about the inside of the big city paper while working “up front”, as they called it. There was always this behind-the-scene tension between the local editors and the Scripps Howard owners. Scripps was conservative, and owned a chain of papers across the country. It also owned Cleveland's first television station, WEWS. (Remember Dorothy Fuldheim?)

Dorothy Fuldheim

The Press was populist liberal. Scripps didn't worry about the local stuff. It sold papers. But on major national matters, we were being watched.

Roy Cohn and Jospeh McCarthy

Those were the days of that evil man, Joe McCarthy. The editorial writers wanted to tee off on this man and the witch hunt. He was no Trump, but in those days, many felt he was a threat to the nation. He had destroyed the lives of many good people in his so-called Communist Crusade. His side kick was nasty New York lawyer, Roy Cohn, who in later years turned up advising Trump. 

Finally, aggressive lawyer Jack Welch, from Massachusetts stood up, as he defended members of the Armed services. 

He looked McCarthy in the eyes and declared,

“You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

McCarthy eventually faded into obscurity, done in by growing opposition, good journalism, his own nastiness and alcoholism.

A lesson from history. 

The truth does matter.

Next: (My Life as a Cop Watcher )

My Life As a Muckraker (part one) As Told To Dr. Freud

Doctor, please pay attention. Your wife left some coffee for you. That should help.

There was another bizarre turn in my life. 

In the summer of my senior year at college, after struggling with my manhood for four years, I was hired by The Cleveland Press. It was the largest newspaper in Ohio. I was to be a COPY BOY. Yes, boy...B-O-Y. 

I took the job, of course, because it was my entryway into the profession of my dreams. But to be called "boy" 15 or 20 times a day, five days a week, was to say the least, 

unnerving. 

You understand Doc, don't you? 

Remember the cemetery? 

The broken little finger?

The Cleveland Press at E. Ninth & Lakeside
Photo courtesy of The Cleveland Memory Project

The press was a classic big city paper. One hundred twenty-five men, all in one room, all very busy, seemingly knowing what they were doing. We were working on eight deadlines a day, starting at 9 a.m. up to the Final Edition, at four in the afternoon.

(One inside secret. The Final always carried the number of stocks traded each day. That number was used by the gangster numbers guys to ply their trade. And then, of course, we crusaded in the paper against those racketeers, and allegedly helped put them in jail.)

The only other time I can remember holding the presses, was just before the final deadline on the day President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. lt was chaos, and I was caught up in it. (More on that later.)

The daily paper was pretty much the major source of news and information in those days. This was before computers, before cell phones, before cable news, before "alternate facts", before Trump. Remember those days, Doc? They were different. Truth mattered, and we did our best to get the truth, whatever that was, to 400,000 readers in the Cleveland metropolitan area.

The Cleveland Press city room 1955
Photo courtesy of The Cleveland Memory Project

Each reporter had a desk, typically messy, with at least one stack of paper and plenty of carbons. Remembers those awful carbons? Remember them, Doc? Carbon paper. Did they have them in Germany? Every news article, every movie review, every fashion story, had to be written in triplicate. It was messy, to say the least. Unnerving and slow. Remember white out? Every error had to be corrected on each of the three copies.

Once the reporters finally were finished writing, they called out "Boy!", and that's where I came in. I ran over to the desk, took one copy of the story to the city desk, (more about that later) and one to the copy desk...then took my place back in the center of the room again. It was not was intellectually stimulating, but if you kept your eyes and ears open, you could pick up bit of the routine.

For that, I made $35 a week.

The Cleveland Press City Desk

At least I was in good company, and I considered myself fortunate to have the job in those post war days, when the competition for jobs in journalism WAS FIERCE.

Among my colleagues, was Strobe Talbott, later to become head of the Brookings Institution in Washington. (I used to think Strobe was a funny name, but he turned out to be a pretty nice guy.)

Then there was Oliver Brooks, who ended up as a University Circle Inc. executive. And oddly, (in those days) a woman, Donna Shalala, who later became president of the University of Wisconsin and then Bill Clinton's secretary of Health Education and Welfare. Donna, I remember, was from Lakewood; a great tennis player. I often wondered how the guys felt calling her “boy” all day. It didn’t seem to hurt her ego. Who knows? Maybe it helped. That would be a good case to study, yes Doc?

Louis B. Seltzer

Well, I survived the summer in that hot, old city room as we called it. There was no air conditioning. A few of the windows opened part way. Yet our ultimate boss Louis Seltzer always wore a dress shirt and tie and a suit coat, maybe to show he was different.

And he really was.

In his book "The Years Were Good" he tells how he grew up on Cleveland’s west side, quit school after junior high and got a job as a mail boy at The Press. 

He eventually worked his way up to Editor. He knew the city and its people, a blue collar town and The Press, for the most part, was a blue collar paper. There were no aspirations to be another New York Times or a Wall Street Journal, or even a Chicago Tribune. It all started in the 19th century as the Penny Press, the first of the famous Scripps Howard Newspapers.

Perhaps The Cleveland Press was the first of the populist papers. In telling the news, we never forgot our readers. We never overlooked Parma or Garfield Heights, Kamm’s Corners, Buckeye Rd., or Glenville. It is said that we covered Buckeye Rd. (a primarily Hungarian neighborhood) like we owned it. Those were our people. We also helped put their councilman, Jack P. Russell, in jail. And many thought we elected most of the mayors and city councilmen in those days. Think of Celebrezze, Lochar, Voinovich.

We didn't care if the intellectuals in the Heights and Rocky River read The Plain Dealer. (The competition.) I understand many of the high brows in town did read The Press, but never talked about it. It was right for those days, Doc. We had an "editor" for almost everything. There was Ted Andrica the "Hunky editor" who went to eastern Europe to visit the relatives of our readers, for example. I'll get back to him, later.

When the summer ended, I went back to Ann Arbor to finish up my education.

Graduated with no distinctions. (No honors, a B minus average.) Not even a graduation ceremony.

I accepted an invitation from my fraternity brother Stanley May, to spend a week's vacation with his family in Toledo... yes Toledo. Mid-week I got a frantic call from my mother.

“Norman Shaw called, and wants to know where you are!”

Shaw was the number two guy at the Press. So I cut my vacation short, and headed home on the "Mercury" (the streamlined train that ran along Lake Erie from Cleveland to Detroit with a stop in Toledo) to begin my career as a journalist.

But it wasn't that easy...

Next: Sending a boy to do a man’s job.

My Life as a Wolverine with PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud

Frankly Doctor, the end of the war may have solved the world's problems, but not all of mine. Let me explain.

Yes. I was home, alive, a hero of sorts, clutching a four year free ride at the University of Michigan, thanks to the GI Bill.

Yes, the home of the Victors Valiant, where athletes were students, where winning was a tradition. Where campus life is everything that a battle weary soldier might desire. I wanted to become one of them. A victor, a winner.

A man.

But it really didn't work out that simply.

First my girlfriend Rita and I broke up. Once I shed my ribbon draped uniform the glamour was gone. That hurt, Doctor. It really did! Was I less handsome? Less masculine? Inside I felt okay. My hormones were raging. Perhaps hers weren't. You know what they say about Jewish girls.

Dr. Freud looked up at me through his squinting eyes.

"Son, you should know that is a myth," he said with a knowing smile.

("That little old guy was a fount of wisdom," I remember telling myself a couple of years later.)

Rita moved with her family to Waukegan, Illinois and attended the University of Illinois. (More on that later.)

I told myself that campus life in the coveted Ann Arbor, would heal the wounds of my fragile sense of self, as I made the transition into civilian life.

The first psychological blow was my assignment to live in Willow Run Village, a make-shift development built by the government to house laborers in Henry Ford’s Willow Run Bomber Plant, where they built the B-24 Liberator bombers that helped win the war. Now it was empty and the university, desperate for housing, grabbed it.

When I arrived in Ann Arbor I found the town and university swarming with ex Gl's, most on the GI Bill. I was one of them; just another number at the very overcrowded university.

The "village" looked very much like the barracks back at Indiantown Gap where I did my basic training. It was in Ypsilanti, an ugly town, 12 miles from Ann Arbor. 

Can you imagine Doctor, my dream of campus life, relegated to a barracks and riding a school bus to and from campus? Maybe that was it, Doctor. Was that it? There weren't many women at Willow Run Village.

He grunted. Put down his pipe and and picked up his pencil.

"Ya" he said. “Tell me some more."

What I saw of the campus was through the window of a rattling school bus. The high point of the barracks life was listening on my radio to the Cleveland Indians play the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

Even that didn't rock my soul.

I wound up the session by telling the doctor, of my difficult experience with class registration. We gathered in huge, impersonal classrooms (lecture halls) where professors, some well known, read from their so called scholarly books.

For example, our European History class with Professor Reichenbach was held in the lobby of the University museum. There were, perhaps, 500 folding chairs in this cavernous space. Since the bus from Ypsilanti was usually late, I always sat near the back. I could barely understand or hear what he was saying as he read from his book, which I am sure was a great literary document. I rarely took notes. It was uninspiring, to say the least.

I knew that something unsavory was happening. I couldn't concentrate. I was depressed.

Finally, I went to the University Health Service to see a "counselor". There was what he called a “Worry Bird" on his desk.

"Give your problems to the bird. Maybe you will feel better".

I scoffed.

Can you imagine that, Doctor? A worry bird!

Instead I headed back to Cleveland for a serious mid semester rest and visit to a real therapist, who I had known. That, and the change of scenery helped and I soon made it back to Ann Arbor, just in time to finish the semester with acceptable grades.

There was hope.

Next: My major campus achievements in Ann Arbor...

My Life with PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud (Part One)

“PTSD? Vat in the Vorld is that?,” the old man murmured as I started telling my story.

I understand, Dr. Freud, they hadn't dreamed up the disease in those days, sir, but let me explain.

In the spring of 1944 the 95th Division was wrapping up the war in Europe. We had taken Metz in a brutal battle that had cost us 50% casualties. Our first sergeant, a fine man from Indiana, was dead from a fatal wound to the stomach. Several of my close friends had been killed in an ambush. Our regimental commander was sent back to Paris for psychiatric treatment. Then there was a brush with The Bulge, another trauma.

I was still a callow 19 year old, shaken but not battered by these events. We ended up the war by crossing the Rhine and taking Dortmund, a Cleveland-like steel town on the Ruhr, destroyed by the battering of the final surge of the war.

We were the labeled “Victory Divison.”

On VE day we celebrated with the rest of them.

We took off our steel helmets and simultaneously breathed in the fresh spring air. No guns, no carbines, no M ones. The weight was off our shoulders.

It was like being reborn, Doctor. You understand the feeling. I was alive, I had survived the war!

“Ya, ya,” he murmured, showing absolutely no emotion.

I was ready to become a human being again. I was a young buck ready to come home a hero to my beloved girlfriend, who wrote me almost every day. To my grandmother, Goldie, my twin sister and some adoring friends. I was joyous.

But there was a hitch. There always is, Doctor.

Right?

Word somehow slipped out, perhaps through WikiLeaks, that our unit would soon be moved to the port of Hamburg and shipped back to the states to prepare for the invasion of Japan!

OMG, I screamed to myself...What will I tell my mother?!

Compared to Japan, Europe was a piece of cake, Doctor Freud. I was really anxious.

I tried to pretend this was all a bad dream, Doctor.

Why me? Why the 95th? What did we do to deserve this?!

We tried to kiss it off as just a wild army-type rumor, as we climbed aboard the troop ship in late May for the trip back to Boston and wherever destiny would take us. We were the first combat division to go back.

Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud are you asleep?

You dropped your pencil! I was going to Japan, Doctor. Did you hear me?

lnvade. Japan. A terrible place! I can't even speak the language.

The old man scowled, a bored scowl.

He mumbled, “You're time is up, son. I will write you a prescription for Valium. Take two before you go bed. You'II feel better.”

But Doctor! Japan!  Banzai! Kamikaze!

Unmoved, he murmured, "Stay calm, call my secretary in two weeks. Maybe I can help.”

(To be continued)

My Life with PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud (Part Two)

Thank you, thank you so much, Doctor for seeing me again! I'm so sorry about not paying you last time, but your wife wouldn't take my MasterCard. She didn't know what it was.

MasterCard is modern day miracle, Doctor. It's a scientific wonder. But I brought dollars this time. They are as good as Deutsche Marks. I promise!

But back to my story.

As we were heading to Boston in the troopship we were told we each would get a 30 day leave at home before regrouping at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, for "jungle training" before heading for the Far East for the invasion that would make Normandy look like child's play. Japan had pledged to defend its country to the death of every man woman and child.

You know what sublimation is, Doctor. I sublimated, big time, all the way home on the train ride from Beantown to Cleveland, as I prepared for my grand entrance back home as a hero.

In Cleveland, you come into the terminal under ground, not like in Europe, Doctor.

So there I was, trudging up those steps (that was before escalators) to the grand hall, one of the grandest terminals in America, with my duffle bag on my shoulder and battle stars and an air medal on my chest. It was the hero's welcome I had envisioned.

My mother was in tears. She rarely cried. Little did she or the rest of them know that I was carrying a lot more baggage than that heavy duffle, but more on that later.

This was a time for joy and celebration. We were among the first back from Europe. When I walked down the street, people saluted. Honest. And sometimes I saluted back. I had been faithful to my girlfriend Rita Barnet, a sweet high school senior who would graduate Heights High in the spring. One of the high points was the day she took me to school to show off to her classmates. (They looked like children to me, Doctor after my year and a half away. And I, of course, was a man! A hero, a warrior.)

At the beginning of our 30 day leave, I hooked up with my friend Lawrence Siegel, a neighbor in Cleveland Heights. He had been assigned to the 104th division which took the brunt of the surprise Nazi attack in the Battle of the Bulge. What was left of the division was pretty much decimated and sent back to the States. He didn't talk about it much. I didn't push. He was one of few survivors of his unit.

So Larry and I did the last dance in Cleveland, you might call it. We took our girlfriends out early, dropping them off about eleven, then headed downtown. It was pretty lively in those days. Nothing much was said about Japan but I felt it, Doctor. It had a doom-like quality finding a special home in my brain... get it Doc?

Baggage…doom…BRAIN…PTSD.

At the end of our month I was shipped down to Mississippi, and Larry went to a military hospital for rehab, whatever that meant in those days.

My trip took me first to Camp Atterbury near Indianapolis for a few days for reassignment work. By some huge coincidence I ran into my first cousin Malcolm Krohngold, who had spent several years in Australia, and was also ticketed for Japan.

On the second day in Indiana I picked up a copy of the lndianapolis Star. It had this huge headline: TRUMAN SAYS WE DROPPED AN AUTOMATIC BOMB ON JAPAN.

OMG I said to myself and then to Malcolm, “What the hell is an automatic bomb!?”
"You're reading it wrong. It's atomic bomb." my cousin said.

I didn't know what the hell it was except it was another weapon to scare and kill a lot of people. We had already carpet bombed Tokyo, killing two hundred thousand human beings in one night...what could be worse?

Little did I know.

There was a lot of talk and speculation, but nothing for certain. As we climbed aboard I the train I noticed something unusual. There were no Negro* troops in our car. They were all sent to the back of the train, to the last two cars.

I wondered why, but I didn't think much more about it. There were no Negroes in my division. Didn't see many in combat. They were mostly in quartermaster units. Maybe that’s why. I’d known of two at Heights High. Both smart. The son and daughter of the custodian of the apartment next door, I remembered.

As we moved along the tracks heading south, we crossed into Kentucky at Cincinnati and into another world, where I was to learn a lot about the disgusting treatment of Negroes in the American south.

Hattiesburg, here I come, where we would prepare for the landing on the southern island of Japan. As the train pulled into to the station I was stunned. I hadn't seen any like this before. Over the entrance to the station there were large signs over two separate doors. One sign said "White," and the other, “Colored”.

Welcome to the land of Dixie, I thought to myself. Aren't we all fighting the same war?!

I turned to Dr. Freud.
“Does this remind you of those signs in the stores and houses in Germany? Big stars of David and the word JUDEN?”

I had seen some in Dortmund.

“Ya, ya,” he said quietly, barely showing emotion.

“Remember to take your Valium, son. See you in two weeks.”

I swallowed hard, gave him the money and turned away. I wonder how long he will put up with me, I said to myself as I turned and walked out down the narrow staircase and out the door...

(to be continued)

* In this essay African Americans are referred to as "Negroes," as this latter terminology is what was used at the time. Usage here is meant to reflect the language of the period and is not intended to be derogatory or disrespectful.