Lou Gordon
Well, you are asking me about the evictions and that period (early 1930S). We, uh, well to begin with, we gathered each time and, the whole club, the whole kit. There must have been 30 or 40 hangers on. And we would continuously meet there and so on. The days that we had duties to perform, things like blocking evictions or visiting a home of (???), I tell you this, but I have to build this up myself.
We would go down as a crew and the marshals that were coming that day posted the time and day they were going to have the eviction. They posted on the door of the place that was going to be evicted, and we were there, we came there, oh an hour or two before they did.
Once we got there we went through a regular routine. We would move the furniture against the door and then we would sit on the floor in a circle and lock arms and wait for it to hit the fan.
They would come in and break the door down, smash it, and throw us out. They didn’t arrest anybody, just forcibly took us out. Then we would stand down in the street and jeer at them, we couldn’t do anything else. We kept heckling them saying things such as “couldn’t you find somethin’ better to do, a big guy like you, than to throw people out in the goddamn street?” you know, try and insult them as best we could; even rougher things than that.
They would pile up the belongings down on the street, which looked like a garbage dump. Then they would nail the door shut with boards and put a very important looking sign on the door that would threaten you with what law you were going to break if you got back in there. And then they would leave.
Well, we chased off the street and waited awhile and after an hour or two we would come back and break the door open, rebuild it some, and then what they – the marshals – would have to do then was they couldn’t come back right away, it wasn’t legal for them to do that. They would have to go back to court and get an order. And they had to post the order and so on, so we would go through that routine again during, which time the family would go back upstairs and again move back in.
The next time that we did it would be the last time, you could never do it after the second time, we would do it at least twice.
The other thing we would do is accompany these people and any other people who were in dire straights, who didn’t have food and so on, and we’d accompany them to the Home Relief Bureau, that’s what we called it at that time, and it would be a madhouse full of people waiting for their names to be called, and we would go and sit among this group and we would represent the people who we had come with, this family each time. When the family was called, we’d all respond; not a big crowd, there would be about three of us that would come up to the person that was talking about the case. We wouldn’t let those people talk, we would talk for them – kind of precocious kids. We would give them a hell of an argument, and if they ended up by saying “well, we’ll take this under consideration,” that’s not good enough. They’re not eating now, you know. And I would sit there, and of course the sitting would go on until they were getting ready to close the place up and we didn’t leave so they would drag us out and throw us in street. We would come right back again the next morning.
We were able to get cases approved that would not have been approved without us being there.
A lot of the people were Italian, by the way, and blacks, that would be the predominant group.
We were able to do this any number of times. We were able to get them to approve the case. These people were eligible for checks and they were eligible for food. There were no stamps then as I remember. They would get actual food, cans of stuff that they could take with them. And we would get the most we could get out of each case.
Of course we would fail lots of times, most of the time. There were young kids, there were a lot of babies around and sometimes there would be teenagers, girls and boys, dressed badly, and really not eating.
I remember some of the ones that became more violent. We weren’t always treated gently and some of the guys got hurt and some of the police got hurt, and we failed lots of times, there wasn’t anything we could do about it. There were times too when we would try and get food for people around the neighborhood. We would go around and collect food for a family and we were fairly successful at that. That’s all I can remember.
How old? This would be 1932, ’33, ’35, it was really the heart of the depression.
My family? My father had a job all during The Depression. We didn’t know that we were poor. We didn’t have or need or want toys or extra things. We never missed a meal. My mother was a horrible cook and whatever she cooked tasted good and that was the end of that. My mother made all of our clothes or got clothes and remade them. She was a good seamstress.
My father worked in this big factory. He had come over, his brother was working in this factory and they gave him a job in that same factory. He worked there for 40 years. He worked in a paper factory and he was in the printing department. It was paper bags and plates and doilies, and he was a printer. He was a teacher on the other side. Actually, it wasn’t for years before I was able to appreciate what he did and how he was able to overcome it because I looked in the closet one day and found a large bag of pamphlets and magazines and what they were was a complete course of the international collegiate, what it was was a course on English and grammar. Not only had he learned to speak, but to read and write in order to become a union leader. He would make wild speeches in English, good English. And when he was in Russia he taught literature and languages and stuff like that. He was from the Ukraine, near Kiev.
He plugged for us to have an education, but he couldn’t himself. He read a lot. He just read every book that was around. He always pushed us to go to school.
Club House
Yes, we had a club house, it was a little loft in a small building, a two story, with a big large front and a second floor. The rent on it was nothin’. It was for rent generally and they couldn’t rent it, so in between they sort of gave us a bargain coming up there. We paid so little I think the landlord was a left winger too. We would always go back there whether we were coming from school or time of vacation; it just went on for years. The club was bigger than the amount of friends I had, I had made. The real crowd that; the real group that you had the cadre sort of thing, there were about 15 of us. We were totally the same. We got to the point where we were collecting medical supplies for Spain. It went to the point where one of the guys, I think it was Abe Smorodin’s brother in-law, who got killed, but that’s another story. He, just out of left field, stood up and said he was going to Spain in a few weeks. We just didn’t believe him. He found the whole entrée how you could get over and you know you would talk about people going over in different ways. They would go over in the strangest ways. There was ball teams, there was musical groups, there was students just on a trip, and when they would get to the other side, like the baseball team, they would leave all their equipment for the next group to make the trip.
Abe and I were on the same ship, well the story of Abe and I is a pretty remarkable one because we went to Spain on the same ship, the Holland-America Lines Stotendam. We sailed out of Hoboken early in June so we didn’t have to worry about anything as the boat was full of teachers and students on their way to Europe. I just want to follow Abe through now: Abe and I were on the same ship, we climbed a mountain together to get into Spain. We walked single file in the black dark led by a smuggler who was the guide into Spain, in single file and told not to talk, not to smoke, not to do anything. And Abe was right in front of me, he doesn’t like to remember this because he fell down I would say it must have been 18 times. There was plenty of reason for him to fall, there were people doing it all over. It was black, you’d walk into a tree, a rock, into anything and you’d fall down. Every time he fell down I was very careful to get around so he fell down about ten times more than I did. He took the falls.
Anyway, to do it quickly we ran, traveled down into Spain, to the fort, and then to the base at Albicete, that’s where we were separated. While we were there he saved my life because I definitely wouldn’t be hear. We were waiting in this line and there was a long convoy waiting to go down to Cordoba, to the south, and there weren’t enough drivers. They were desperate. They had to find somebody who could drive a big truck. I decided that I didn’t come to Spain to drive a truck, but Abe, the big genius, said in a very loud voice, I used to, do you know Saul Welman? He went to Spain too, Sauly, as a commissar. Sauly Welman’s father owned a wholesale candy place. When Sauly got kicked out of Boys’ High, he got expelled in his senior year for activities around the campus and talking out, political activities, you know, they bounced him right out. And so he went to drive his uncle and his father’s truck. During the summer I had become his helper. I drove the truck every once and awhile even though I wasn’t of age at that point. So because of Sauly I got to drive this truck and Abe announced in a very loud voice, “Hey Lou!” he said. “Come on, you can drive that truck.” I said “Shhhh!” The next place I was was behind the wheel of a truck and I only saw Abe sporadically from then on. I was in the South six months on the Cordoba Front and it wasn’t until we came up to the mid country, toward Madrid that I met the battalion again and Abe was in the Mac paps.
How did I meet and become friends with Abe? Well, first of all he lived near me and second of all we went to the same school and were in the same class. What brought us together, most of the fifteen guys who went to Spain from our neighborhood, just Abe and I were the only ones who went to Boys High.
Abe is married to a woman whose brothers, both brothers went to Spain. They changed their name when they went there, don’t ask me why, but they changed their name to Gordon. So Joe Gordon and Leo Gordon. Leo was somebody who, as a matter of fact I spent more time with and had a foot deeper friendship with Leo than anybody else, Abe not withstanding. Leo was a jewel of a man (I should connect this with Abe’s story of how Leo died). Well, both these guys, Leo and Joe, are Rose Smorodin’s brothers. Leo was killed in Spain during the retreats and Joe, there’s a lot of good stories about him, Joe came to Spain early, he was one of the first ones. There was a battle in Harrer(sp?) which was a terrible, terrible disaster of a battle. It was badly handled, there was people killed who shouldn’t have been. They were completely untrained and unready for this horrible place. Joe was hit in Hatarama trying to pull one of his commanding officers to safety. He was hit so bad it knocked his one eye out and a couple other pieces of shrapnel hit him in other places too, but the one that hit him in the head knocked his eye right out.
He then went back home to heal. His brother Leo didn’t go to Herama, he stayed down, but then Leo decided he wanted to go and so he went to Spain at the same time Joe went back home. And when Joe got home Leo went to Spain and Joe decided that he had wanted to come back to make sure Leo didn’t go only to find that Leo had gone. So Joe turned around and went back to Spain. By the time he got back he found out his brother had been killed.
Joe hooked up with the Lincolns and was hit with shrapnel again. A big piece of shrapnel hit him in his hip. It was inoperable and they sent him home.
Then World War II came around and he wasn’t eligible for the armed services because he was a wreck, so he went into the merchant marine. He made trips to Mermansk, the toughest transit there was to supply the Russians. During one of those trips his ship was hit, it was a munitions ship, and when it was hit by a torpedo it blew up. There were no survivors.
So the two brothers of Abe’s wife were killed that way.
I was friends with the whole family. Leo and I made a couple of trips. He had been in the CCC camps and he always wore an army shirt that said CCC with a green tree. He hit me up one day because they wanted to organize the CCC camps, talk about a dumb thing to do. It would be like trying to organize the army into a union, that’s what you would be doing. Anyway, he wanted my help to do this job and he asked me to come along. I was his buddy so I went with him. We went right across the whole country. We went to about every CCC camp you ever knew about. Such as Wyoming, Cheney’s home town.
There’s another two stories I’ll tell you about. Leo and I and a guy named Danny Crew and another fourth person who Leo named, I never knew his name, Leo named him Babbling Brooks. I’ll tell you why. We went into Ridgewood, which was an all German area, solid, solid German area. And Bushwood High School was out that way and they had this white wall that went all around the football field. We went out with three cans of red paint and a whole bunch of brushes. Leo and I did the painting, Danny was the lookout and Babbling Brooks was sitting in the car ready to role. We painted anti-Nazi slogans and stuff on the wall. And we got arrested, but we got arrested because it was Leo’s fault. Why was it Leo’s fault? We painted the entire slogan, we’re talking about six foot letters painting over it three coats. Leo insisted we add an exclamation point. He was a funny guy. I said let’s get out of here, it was two o’clock in the morning. Someone might get up to go to the bathroom, see us through their window and call the cops. And that’s what happened. He had to do the exclamation point and I had to help him because I wanted to get it done quicker. And so we did the exclamation point and a couple of police cars came running silently up to us and we were in jail in the next ten minutes.
Why did he call him Babbling Brooks? This was not a guy who was part of our club, he was a pick up. When we got into the police station we were each in one individual holding cell, the four of us. There were two or three irish detectives who came in to work us over. They got Danny and Danny had the same facial problem that Cheney has, he had a sneer on his face. You know Cheney can’t wipe that off. That was Danny’s problem and he would look at the detective that way. It didn’t mean anything. He was docile. And the detective smashed him in the face. “Take that sneer off your face,” but he couldn’t do it. So they went to the next room, which was me and they pushed me around.
Actually, he went to Babbling Brooks first and Babbling Brooks, the reason Leo named him was he started to confess, to talk before the detectives came near the gate. He began to cry and he really broke down. When they got to Leo, and I love this one, when they got to Leo I thought he was such a stubborn mule that I thought he was going to get banged around worse than any of us, but when those guys saw the CCC shirt one of them said, “What’s a nice young American like you doing with these God damn Reds, you know?” And he did not touch Leo, he practically congratulated him.
One more quick Leo story. Another time Leo got arrested in our neighborhood. He was probably speaking on a corner or something. And they took him down to Gateson Ave., they had a police station that’s still there. It was built in 1880 or something. So they took him inside alone. We had followed behind and waited outside the police station to see what happened. Well, they beat the hell out of him. They just beat him and beat him. At one point I went in, and I didn’t see them doing this, I don’t know what I would have done if I had. I went up to the desk sergeant and I said I wanted to know what was happening with Leo Gordon. He said, “Get the hell out of here you bastard before I knock the hell out of ya.” So I ended up back on the street again and we waited for Leo. He came out again finally “They didn’t book me or nothing,” he said, “they just beat the hell out of me.” When he came out he was kind of pale, ashen, and he came over to the crowd and said, “Bunch of punies in there. No punch or nothing. They got tired of hittin me.”
How did we know about Spain? We were well informed. There were two correspondents from the New York Times over there that reported the entire war from each side. The guy on the fascist side was a fellow named Carney and the guy on the nationalist side was Matthews, Dave(?) Matthews, who wrote a good book about it. They did a report on the front page every day. We also found other ways to read about it, we exchanged ideas. You know, we knew about the concentration camps in Germany. We knew what had happened to the Jews. We knew what the routine was. That didn’t make us very happy. We knew that pretty horrible things were happening to Jews, to Catholics, to union people, to Gypsies, to anybody who would end up in the fire.
I think it might be that the feeling got to be enough reading and talking about it. Do something, you know. We were busy trying to change the world in a minor way, we weren’t making much of a dent, but talk is cheap. If you believe in it, then do something. So we did. We went to Spain.
What really got to us about what was going on in Spain, I guess, was that the Germans and Italians were the mainstay for Franco’s existence. They were slaughtering Spaniards and nobody was helping the Spaniards, nobody. The rest of Europe and America had done this None-Intervention Pact. In those days, England especially, they were busy giving countries away to Hitler. Every country that Hitler walked through they made excuses for. Hitler would promise he wouldn’t go any further and they hoped he wouldn’t, but then he would.
When he took Czechoslovakia we were already in Spain. The Skurtwerks, which was the main munitions plant in Czechoslovakia, they sent over everything they had on the floor that was already made. We got an enormous shipment of new rifles and modern machine guns, a little more modern, but then Hitler walked in and took all that over and began getting ready for World War II even more so.
What were we trying to do by fighting in Spain? We were very optimistic about this whole thing. We were ready to get rid of Hitler and Mussolini. Chase them away, beat them and get rid of them if we could. I think everybody felt that the war, World War II, was coming anyway. When you think about it, it took the Germans six weeks to take France. It took three years to take Spain. What we provided was a very effective delay. Another thing, is that we never believed America and England would stand by and just watch the fight go entirely the German way. It was just inconceivable that they wouldn’t jump in and help. At least help by sending equipment, but they didn’t. And Germany tested all of their stuff out and later on were able to kill even more Americans, Brits, and Russians because of all that they had developed in Spain.
When did I make the decision to go? I made the decision by every time one of the guys went I got closer. I don’t know what number I ended up, but Abe and I went fairly early. Harama was at the end of February and we went the first of June. I don’t know, it’s a very, a very… I don’t know how to describe how you make a decision like that because a lot of it feels unreal. Does that reach you in any way? I remember having some misgivings as I watched the Statue of Liberty getting smaller and smaller, you know? From then on I had a good time. But when I got to Albecete where we were all lined up and we were sworn into the army for the duration, I wondered what duration means. Duration of your life? And making it that you are now in the Spanish Army. I didn’t have any doubts. I was pretty dopey anyway.
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