Your Legacy
Benny If You Read
this, Write
It is winter and we
are having our first snow storm. I am traveling north on Amtrak
looking out at the frozen train tracks and fields. For some reason I
recall the winter of 1940. My family had a small furniture store
on the corner of 17th Street and 6th Avenue,(now known as the Avenue
of the Americas). The elevated train tracks and steel girders
had just been torn down and the scrap sold to Japan. (which they later
used to make ammunition to shoot at us) The street seemed very
wide and with the new snow piled high, didn’t look like New York at
all.
My father and I waded
through the packed snow to the store. Huddled in the doorway was
a man. We were quite used to this. Homeless men or Bowery
bums always roamed 6th Avenue. My father shook the crouched
figure and said, “C’mon fella. You can’t sleep here.” The
face that looked up at was young and sad. I don’t know why my
father asked him, “What’s your name?” “Benny.” He
stood, shaking with the cold. “Benny, do you want to shovel the snow
off of our walk? I’ll pay you two bucks. If you don’t
scram! If you do, take this buck and bring back three
coffees.” My father held out a dollar. In 1940 coffee cost 25
cents.
We watched Benny go
off down the street and of course had no way of knowing if he would
return. He came back, shoveled the walk, swept the store,
polished the furniture, unloaded the trucks and stayed for two years. Benny
was a product of the Great Depression, a poet and a dreamer, and a
member of the Lincoln Brigade, very much wanted by the F.B.I. My
father realized the danger of Franco and Hitler and was a sympathizer
with the young men who had gone off to fight terrorism in Spain and
since the third floor of our store was empty my father allowed Benny
to make it his room. Before long 12 other members of the Lincoln
Brigade became our guests.
I was twelve years
old. Benny and the others filled my head with stories of
heroism, the open road, talk of survival, and poetry. They cooked
their food on a hot plate, and the artists painted murals on the
walls. I listened to how they would hop a freight train (going in any
direction) and it made me ache with the desire to live their kind of
life.
One day they were
gone. I did meet a few as the years passed and heard their
success stories and how they were grateful to my father for saving
their lives but I never heard from Benny.
Carol Greenberg
Narberth, PA
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