Memory by the Dashboard light

It was a Friday night, June 19th, 1953. I was ten years old.  It seemed very late when my mother, my grandparents and I  emerged from grocery shopping in the A & P on Main Street.  I remember it was pitch dark, that recollection has to be a false memory, it could not possibly be dark so soon after dinner because the first day of summer was 2 days away. Mom loaded the groceries in the trunk; dad always remained in the car, he never went into the A & P with us. I flopped down on the back seat behind him. He was listening to the radio and leaning heavily against the left door.  His wide shoulders and round head seemed smaller almost like a deflated balloon.The radio was not playing music, a man's voice spoke continually repeating the same story about two people, a man, and his wife, the Rosenbergs.

I heard that name often at home. Lately, my father talked about the same topics; Joe McCarty and some communist guy named David Davis who was the president of dad’s union. Mom objected to dad activities. He was trying to raise money for Davis’s bail bond and for the Rosenberg’s legal fees, plus the fact the Daily Worker was being delivered in the mail to our  home. Just that week another disagreement began when a neighbor told my mother that men wearing suits were asking people on our street questions about dad. Now I think, everyone probably had questions about my dad; it was the men in suits that riled mom and the neighbors. In our town, other than ministers and the undertaker, the only time a man wore a suit was the day one of his daughters married or the day of his Wake. 

At home, dad yelled a lot, especially about the Rosenberg’s being framed, Freedom of Speech, the First Amendment and how a man should be able to read whatever the hell he wanted to read in his own home and that he wasn’t a communist, god damn it. He had his rights! And mom would yell back he was going to get fired from Schlosser's Tool and Die if he didn’t stop all this crazy baloney and what would happen if he got arrested, then how could she pay the bills let alone put food on the table!

I was afraid to make a sound as that disembodied radio voice repeated this stuff about execution. Now two people, a man, and woman, the Rosenbergs were dead. Electrocuted. My grandfather sat behind my mother and stared ahead, with his back straight as an arrow. My grandmother sat next to me and looked down at her hands gracefully positioned on her lap, one over the other. I never heard so much silence. Outside the car, the world dimmed.  In the dark the only thing I could see was the light illuminating the dial on the radio as the repetitive report continued, the interior of the car seemed foggy while I got goose pimples and shivered.

The man's voice described the electrocution. The woman had a puff of smoke appear over her head. My stomach felt queasy. My father’s shadowy form was half lit by the radio dial.  After a short eternity, my mother spoke, in her clear and loud fashion. “Turn that damn thing off. How many times do we need to hear this tripe? Turn it off”!  Dad stirred to right himself in the seat. His body expanded somewhat; air filled his massive chest cavity a little, he rose slightly with each breath. By the time he was positioned behind the wheel, some sound resumed. My grandmother shifted slightly next to me, as my grandfather coughed. Mom lit a cigarette and some of the smoke created a halo surrounding her head in a blue haze. Main Street returned, the A & P once again visible. Abruptly, my father turned the key in the ignition and the engine started with a shutter and moved away from the curb. I listened to the announcer say the Rosenberg’s had two young sons. Their parents were dead. I thought about not having parents. It would be terrible not to have a mother. For some reason, it became difficult to keep my eyes open.

Electrocution.  And I remembered the time I was continually jolted when I was trying to use my record player in the garage, barefoot. And then the summer when my brothers invited me to be their  Lab Assistant. I had been electrocuted, sort of, several times on purpose with Ally’s Magneto as they performed science experiments with a light bulb. They were not really experiments. They knew exactly what would happen to me when they turned that little wheel. When I screamed, they told me it was an accident and could never happen again and they really needed me to be there to hold those two little wires. You don't forget that kind of hurt. It was the worst thing ever.

I thought it was horrible to do that to people, especially kill them that way. And now these kids had no mom. I heard my mom whisper something under her breath about upsetting my grandmother; her voice sounded very strange, like muffled.

         I became very dizzy when my father lunged across the dashboard and in one violent gesture almost tore the radio out of its housing as he grasped the knob and snapped off the power.

  Then the car went dark

   or maybe that was me, perhaps I fainted, but if I did, no one noticed.

Or maybe that was me, maybe I fainted, but I am not sure.  If I did, no one noticed.