Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family Read online

  No one would ever question our father’s devotion or skill as a parent, but Ari, the youngest shavov, certainly challenged his patience. In some instances he deliberately tried to get my father’s goat. At every restaurant, for instance, he would scan the menu to identify the most expensive appetizer, entrée, and dessert, and order them all. This habit was partly connected to his dyslexia. He had trouble reading menus and he found it easier just to look for the higher prices, which he anticipated were associated with the better dishes.

  In other cases, Ari really could not help but be annoying. No matter what day of the week it happened to be, or whether school was in session or not, he was always awake by 5 A.M. Jittery and anxious, he could not stay in bed, and he would prowl around the house looking for something to occupy his mind and help him burn off excess energy.

  Although he tried to be quiet, inevitably Ari would awaken Rahm, or me, or worse, my father on a morning when he was trying to recover some of the sleep he lost during a busy workweek. To his credit, our father understood that Ari was just too energized to control himself. He was less sanguine about the harassment and goofing around that Ari practiced as he got older and learned the fine art of persistent and intentional irritation.

  Typically these elaborate episodes involved something as mundane as a television-channel-changing contest. These began with my father, home after a long, hard day at work, descending into the family room and stretching out on the sofa to watch something on channel 11, Chicago’s public television station. Ari would waltz into the family room and change the channel. In these days before remote controls, my father would have to command Ari to restore his program of choice, or else would have to get up from the sofa, walk across the room, and do it himself.

  One day Ari switched the TV to All Star Wrestling on channel 32. My father got up and flipped the channel back to 11. Just as my father sat down on the sofa, Ari reached up from his spot on the floor and flipped it back to channel 32. My father then got up and changed it back to channel 11. Ari waited again and as my father sat he flipped the channel.

  Thirty-two.

  Eleven.

  Thirty-two.

  Eleven.

  Seated nearby, Rahm the peacemaker laughed nervously to encourage my father to see the humor in the situation, all the while praying that his little brother would stop before he crossed that imaginary line and reached my father’s breaking point.

  As Ari continued to defy him, my father finally warned, “You better stop it now!”

  Ari should have known better than to risk one more flip. He did not. “Gudt-dammit!” my father cried, and leaped off the sofa. Ari dashed up the stairs to the kitchen. My father gave chase. Rahm followed. Hearing the commotion, I came out of my room just in time to see our father chasing Ari through the kitchen, where my dad picked up a large carving knife and shouted something about how Ari better not let himself get caught.

  My brother raced to the kitchen and through the formal living room, putting enough distance between himself and our father so that when he dashed up the steps to his bedroom Rahm and I could fill the space in the stairway and slow down his knife-wielding pursuer. We grabbed our father and, though we knew in our hearts he would never hurt Ari, we used all our strength to hold him back until we heard the door to Ari’s room slam shut. At this point my father gave up and, having spent most of the energy that powered his outrage, he simply dropped the matter and walked away.

  This was generally how things worked with my dad. You could needle and bother and argue with him a hundred different times and he would manage to keep his cool. When he did finally lose his temper, the outrage was volcanic but always short-lived. And if his pique included some threat of physical violence it was always a threat, and nothing more.

  Consider, for example, the winter day when he rose early for his breakfast, went out to the garage, opened the big door, and got into the Pontiac Grand Prix (white with a black vinyl roof) for the commute to work. Ari stared out the back door as my father started the engine and revved it to get it warm. While my father waited for the engine to fall into a reliable rhythm Ari came outside and ran around like some meshugenah elf.

  Remember, it was early morning. Dad was probably a little groggy and reluctant to shout or honk the horn for fear of waking the neighbors. Hyper as always, Ari was thrilled to at last have something to do after waiting so long for someone, anyone, to awaken in the house. When the car was finally ready my father slipped it into reverse gear, looked in the rearview mirror, and saw my brother still dancing on the driveway.

  Getting out of the garage was tough because you had to back up a little, then turn the wheel and drive forward a few feet to get the car on the proper angle to roll down the driveway. My father made the first move, all right, but when he put it in drive to ease it forward, the rear wheel hit a patch of ice. He tapped the accelerator a bit, and before he realized what was happening, the car had lurched forward and smashed into the back wall of the garage. The car did not stop until the wall had been knocked off the concrete slab foundation.

  Once he made sure that the garage was not going to collapse, my father grabbed a short piece of two-by-four lumber and chased Ari, shouting mortal threats. The accident may not have been Ari’s fault, but his antics had distracted my father, and his hyperactivity was always a trip wire for my father’s tension. Once again, Ari escaped any real physical punishment, but he did get the kind of lecture that passed for punishment in our house.

  If you transgressed inside the family you were supposed to own up to it, take responsibility, and acknowledge the harm you had done to another person. As young children, we brothers were also required to literally kiss and make up after any grievous conflict. We generally hated doing this, and put a lot of effort into finding ways to say we were sorry, which satisfied our mother, but communicated that we really did not mean it.

  The thing that bothered us the most was losing esteem in the eyes of our mother and father. Having a parent say something like “I’m so disappointed in you” is a big deal in a close family that counts character as the highest value. We were never “grounded” or punished by having money withheld. Still, my parents had their limits, especially when outside authorities were involved, and they eventually reached the point where they believed a little suffering might do us some good.

  Consider what happened to Ari on a summer night in 1974 when he and his friends rode their bikes to the Turnstyle shopping center. A little context helps. At the time the nation was being swept by the “streaking” fad, which involved individuals or groups of people—usually they were college students—running naked through public places, like the Yale library. Maybe people were blowing off steam after a decade or so of serious political strife or perhaps it was just one of those quirky, unexplainable crazes like swallowing goldfish that began with a few isolated events and then spread across the country. Whatever the cause, exposing oneself was the thing to do. The trouble was that the driver Ari decided to bless with the sight of his naked ass was a plainclothes police officer in an unmarked car. He promptly took Ari into custody, along with his bicycle, and brought him to the village police department.

  By the time the cops called our house my father was in bed. He grabbed the phone when it rang, and listened while the officer on the other end of the line explained the situation. My father coolly replied, “You can keep him.”

  His reaction wasn’t just pure emotion. After countless little conflicts with his youngest, Ben Emanuel thought it might be a good idea for Ari to discover that his charm wouldn’t always get him out of trouble in the real world. Eventually my parents went to bail out their wayward mooner, but not until they made him wait a while.

  Although Ari was more rambunctious, I don’t want to leave the impression that Rahm and I were significantly more restrained. From a very young age Rahm was notorious for testing adults, but he tended to practice this risk-taking with friends and family. The Glass brothers, whom we visited often, would marvel
at the way Rahm responded to their father. Bill Glass loved to quiz us on geography and show off how much he knew. He also pestered us with half-serious comments about how women should stay in the kitchen and Nixon was a hero. Rahm would eventually say, “Fuck you, Uncle Bill” and launch into a tirade about how Mr. Glass was Archie Bunker come to life.

  Rahm’s use of swearwords began in earnest when he was twelve or thirteen. My mother would chastise him, but so inconsistently that it never had much effect. By the time he was in high school, he was fluent in both English and Yiddish cursing and could have held his own in the navy or at a construction site.

  “One of his favorite words was schmuck,” recalled Bruce Glass. “Rahm would always say, ‘Oy, what a schmuck,’ and that would get everyone arguing.”

  Burned into the memory of Bruce’s brother Michael is a summer afternoon when his father ordered the six of us out onto his lawn to pick weeds and mow with the care and concern of the grounds crew at Wrigley Field. “He wanted us to mow twice, on the diagonal, and to get every dandelion and leaf of crabgrass out,” explained Michael. “Rahm would protest, saying, ‘I’m not your kid. I don’t work for you!’ He would do a sit-in at the house, saying he wouldn’t work on a nonunion job site and that my father was practicing taxation without representation.”

  The Emanuel family’s loose regard for authority helps explain my own adolescent run-in with the police at the park. The pavilion at Ravinia, a few suburbs north of Wilmette, accommodates more than three thousand people. Some pay for stadium-style seats, which are arranged in a semicircle before the stage. Behind these seats, separated by a low fence, a big lawn dotted with trees offers space for people like the Emanuels, who were happy to spread out a blanket to eat a picnic dinner and hear the music for a few bucks apiece.

  Ravinia is beautifully landscaped. The trees that border the picnic grounds twinkle with white lights during evening events. They also offer a terrific view of the stage, which is why I climbed one of them on a night our parents brought us to see Joni Mitchell.

  Naturally, the security staff was not too keen on adolescents climbing the trees. When a police officer ordered me down I first ignored him and then protested his order rather loudly. From my adult perspective I can see that my resistance was juvenile but also completely characteristic. My brothers and I naturally pushed limits and challenged the powerful even when in the wrong. I knew that the local police would be reluctant to arrest a white kid from the suburbs. But as cocky and obnoxious as I was, I eventually bowed to my parents’ impatience and the officer’s discomfort, and climbed down.

  Eleven

  TIME OF TURMOIL

  “We don’t hire your type.”

  Out in the world we discovered the exceptions to the Emanuel rules. This happened one summer afternoon when Arnie Grant and I hopped on our bicycles and rode to the Indian Hill Country Club. As the crow flies, the club was less than two miles from our Locust Road house. In terms of culture, tradition, and status it was on another planet.

  We had heard that a kid might earn as much as five dollars per round working as a caddie there. Of course, neither Arnie nor I knew the first thing about golf, but as an Emanuel brother, I did not think this lack of experience mattered.

  When we reached the imposing whitewashed clubhouse we were met by a tanned, square-shouldered man in a golfer’s uniform of plaid pants and a short-sleeved, cotton piqué shirt. We rolled to a stop and in our most formal and eager voices, asked if the club might need some new boys to be caddies for the summer.

  “There are no openings,” he said.

  When we asked if there was a waiting list he said, “We don’t hire your type.”

  By “type” he meant Jews.

  Although it was hidden, anti-Semitism was at that time standard operating procedure at the Indian Hill Country Club. This was the time when many people did not consider Jews to be equal American citizens. A significant percentage of Americans in all social strata felt comfortable spouting all sorts of bigotry. This point was clearly illustrated when historians released tapes of then-president Nixon disparaging black, Irish, Italian, and Jewish Americans. He considered Jews to be a people with “a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.” The recordings were made in early 1973, after Arnie and I were rejected by the Indian Hill club.

  Was the guardian of decorum who turned us away a true anti-Semite? It’s hard to say. What I do know is that he was paid to maintain a status quo that made the members feel at ease, which meant not having to rub shoulders with Jews and not having to worry about making a racist joke or comment. He did his job well, dismissing us with a look that made us speed away and never try again.

  The painful reality of discrimination at Indian Hill was, for me, a lesson in the limits of my ability to get what I wanted based on merit, and of my rights as an American. Then, as now, private clubs could discriminate against those they considered to be the wrong “type,” however it’s defined. Although I could regard this as a sign of ignorance and immorality, it was not illegal. Indeed, American history is, in part, the story of one new “type” after another—Jews, Irish, Italians, Asians, Hispanics, gays—suffering exclusion and rejection but eventually gaining acceptance by the majority culture.

  As the Big Bangah and my mother showed us through example, politics was one place where America offered a chance for almost anyone to play a role. Once we were old enough to walk door-to-door without complaining too much about getting tired, our mother began bringing us with her to ring doorbells and hand out literature.

  At the start of 1968 our mother’s main political concern was the Vietnam War, which President Johnson seemed unable to win on the battlefield. More than twenty thousand Americans had died in the fighting and every male over the age of eighteen was subject to the draft. The first presidential candidate to say he would immediately negotiate an end to the war was Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy. The promise won my mother’s support and mobilized great numbers of people who helped him win a stunning 42 percent of the vote in conservative New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation Democratic Party primary. Robert Kennedy then jumped into the race, which split the anti-LBJ forces in half.

  With the Wisconsin primary next we went north with our mother for another lesson in democracy. We pinned McCarthy buttons to our coats and joined groups of students who went door-to-door distributing literature. Few people can say they actually enjoy receiving canvassers at their door. But the presence of a child or two can impose an extra level of civility on these encounters or break the ice to start a conversation, and we understood that we were there mainly to serve as props. Our labor also meant that a few hundred packets of paper could be hung on doorknobs each day and there were times when we actually had fun running from house to house.

  Then, on Sunday, March 31, all the television networks suspended their normal broadcasts to air a speech by the president. We sat with our parents to hear President Johnson announce that he would not seek reelection. As he spoke, the weary, long-faced LBJ seemed the picture of a defeated leader.

  McCarthy won in Wisconsin and for a moment it seemed like he would fight Kennedy one-on-one. Then Vice President Hubert Humphrey offered himself as a sort of compromise candidate. After Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June on the night of the California primary, which he won, it became apparent that the nomination would be decided in August in the smoke-filled rooms of the national convention in Chicago. In June, we went to Israel and read about the historic debacle in Newsweek.

  During the convention, antiwar protesters, young men and women with long hair, staged legal rallies where they were attacked by elements of an eighteen-thousand-man force, which Mayor Daley had mobilized for security. An independent commission later established that police had provoked the ensuing battle, which it described as a “police riot.” The commission concluded that officers had beaten scores of peaceful citizens and had specifically targeted journalists for assault. With the world watching on television, all tha
t troubled the country was visible in stark relief.

  In Tel Aviv, Israelis asked us questions about the level of political strife in our country and the conduct of the Chicago police, as if we were experts in these topics. We were home in plenty of time to witness Nixon’s narrow defeat of Humphrey in the general election.

  The aftermath of the convention included a kind of show trial in which a group of defendants who came to be known as “the Chicago Seven” were prosecuted in federal court on charges including conspiracy and crossing state lines to incite a riot. Among the defendants were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Tom Hayden. The judge in the case, Julius Hoffman, struggled to keep order in the court as the accused continually disrupted the proceedings with shouts of “bullshit” and insults directed at the judge and prosecutor. He overreacted by issuing extra-long contempt-of-court sentences against all of the defendants and their lawyers.

  Our friend and former neighbor, the newspaperman John Downs, covered the trial and considered it such a travesty of justice that he was finally won over to my mother’s critique of the American political system. A six-month proceeding ended in a mixed verdict and all the convictions were eventually overturned on appeal. Through it all we received insider details from Downs, and pored over press reports. But even when the defendants were convicted on some of the counts we never felt like the cause we shared with them—calling out injustice and the abuse of power—was truly lost.

  It may seem strange to read of boys who were ten, eleven, and thirteen acting out of conscience, but given our parents we did think of ourselves as actors, albeit part of the supporting cast, in a huge national political drama. My first published letter to the editor, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune in early 1970, dealt with what were then alleged atrocities perpetrated by U.S. troops at a Vietnamese village called My Lai. I was thirteen years old.