Frank Krasnowsky |
The Drafting of Carl Helper |
The Peralta Press |
It was the fall of 1942, and the Draft Board in Los Angeles must have been desperate to provide their quota. Why else would they send an official notice to my stepfather, Carl Helper, to appear for a physical? Carl was not an ideal candidate for the army. He was well into his forties, and though he was reasonably healthy, thirty years as a tailor had left him with little more muscle than what was needed for his trade. He was small and slightly built, but not short enough that anybody would notice. I doubt if he could have carried a backpack and rifle a hundred yards. It was a safe bet that he wouldn't pass the physical; still, he and my mother were worried. Serving in the army would have been a violation of his principles. Carl was an Anarcho-syndicalist and a pacifist, an extant combination not recognized by government authorities. He had been a youth during World War I, and the tragic farce of that war to "make the world safe for democracy" convinced him that social problems were not going to be solved by wars between nations. He believed the Government served only the wealthy, and wasn't prepared to die in its behalf. Like most philosophic Anarchists, his hopes for peace rested in the organization of workers across national lines. He seriously considered becoming a conscientious objector. But draft boards did not take kindly to even religious objections--many Jehovah's Witnesses wound up in jail--and Carl's objections were secular. Membership in the Kropotkin Branch of the Workmen's Circle was hardly a basis for military exemption, and demanding CO status would involve him in a prolonged legal and political struggle. He was not a man to make ripples, let alone waves, and was really more afraid of becoming a public spectacle than he was of going to jail or in the Army. Carl decided to take his chances on failing the physical. Besides, the rapid and vicious advances of the Nazis modified his opposition to military action. Somebody, even a capitalist state, had to stop Hitler. I was a little surprised that the draft board knew he existed. My stepfather was a complete nebbish. For six years, from high school through my first two years of college, he sat at the dinner table with my mother, my sister, and me, and for the life of me I can't remember him being there. When he left Los Angeles after my mother died, the Workmen's Circle, to which he'd been a member for fifteen years, held a farewell event in his honor. The Chair memorialized him as a man "who was always there to set up the chairs before a meeting, and to take out the garbage after a dinner or picnic." As a surrogate father, he was an intentional bust. I never asked him for anything, and he never offered. Never asked him for advice, and never got it. He had an agreement with my mother that my sister and I would be her responsibility, and whenever I needed money or clothes I went to my mother. He did have a car, and sometimes took my mother, with us along, to parks or picnics, but he never offered to teach me to drive. A picture of Carl with me at Palm Springs revives my memory of him, but I can't remember what the car looked like. Even the car was something of a nebbish. For a year, he parked it illegally in a Hollywood alleyway near to where he worked, and it was never cited. When an officer suddenly noticed the car and gave him a ticket, Carl, surprisingly, felt offended. He appealed to the judge, who, even more surprisingly, agreed with him that, since he had parked there for a year without getting a citation, he had the right to assume it was legal. Carl was told that he couldn't park there anymore, but his fine was rescinded and the officer reprimanded for being lax on his duties. Leo Rosten's definition of a nebbish as someone between a schlemiel and a schlimazel is not quite accurate. A nebbish is neither. The noun derives, let me say, from a Yiddish interjection: nebbech. It's just there; like the "let me say" in the previous sentence. The phrase can be wise or stupid, but nobody pays any attention to it. Carl was a thinking man and a highly skilled hand tailor. Marlene Dietrich had made mannish style suits for women popular, and he had a steady job during the depression years working for Eddie Schmidt in Hollywood making ladies' suits. I suppose being invisible was an asset in taking measurements on women. Well, he wasn't invisible to the Draft Board, and there was no way of escaping the notice without raising a fuss. With trepidation, Carl went for his physical. He came home that afternoon, very despondent. My mother was concerned, and so was I. "Nu?" she asked. "What happened?" "It's alright," he said. "They didn't take me." "So why the long face?" "They didn't take me," he repeated. But he had some explaining to do. We waited. "You know, the last thing I wanted was to be drafted. Can you see me as a soldier? Who would want me? But when I went into a room for the examination, there was this group of young, tall healthy men around me. I felt small and, nebbech, useless. Would you believe it--I was jealous. They'll take these young men and leave me behind. I felt like crying out: 'I'm as healthy and able as any of you!' But I didn't say anything." "So...? You didn't pass the physical?" "No." "So? Isn't that what you wanted?" "What I wanted," he said sadly, "had nothing to do with it. They didn't want me." |
