Spaghetti Radicals on Columbus Circle

We had a pact.  We always had them, it was our way, it was more than just a game.  We had a pact that whenever we went into the Automat (Horne & Hardhart Less Work for Mother Retail Shop and Restaurant) on Columbus Circle (this was before the Coliseum was built there) we would sing union songs and revolutionary hymns until we were thrown out.  This would be our major act of defiance to the Capitalist System, Imperialism and American Hegemony, whatever those terms meant.

            But first the daring thing was to go right to the heart of goyish culture.  As echtige radicals of the middle class boys and girls, we would go out on Friday evenings to the Universalist-Unitarian Church to listen to Radio Moscow, do folk-dancing, and crowd into the little kitchen to cook spaghetti and touch each other by accident.  We talked about the broadcast and the coming revolution, about the dangers of atomic bombs, and about who had spaghetti stains on his or her face.  It was the best time of the week.  Who needs more when you are sixteen years old?

Afterwards, we all walked to the Automat to sing our radical Wobbly songs.  If we got there at about ten o’clock we had a whole hour before they closed, if a little later then not so much time, but the point was to upset the capitalist bosses by our dangerous, threatening lyrics, that they would make us leave, and then we would have urged forward the revolution by just that tiny bit much.  It was all very Talmudic too.  Every week a little, we thought, we would perform tikkun ha-olam, and eventually the United States and the whole corrupt western world (“the free world”) would crumble and become nothing but the dust of history.  We would cut through the iron curtain and the red lights from the other side shine through.  It was a thrilling and an important thing to do. 

            The pact was made amongst both the boys and girls, and we knew in our hearts that we were the vanguard of the new order, the shining red beacons of the future.  So we sang for all we were worth, or as much as we could between laughter and tickling.  “Hold the Fort” and then “Shall we still be slaves and work for wages…” and then “The Internationale” and “The Ballad of Joe Hill.”  They were stirring tunes with profound lyrics we could almost remember. 

            It was no wonder that just before eleven o’clock one of the waiters would approach our table and tell us, please, to leave.  He came, we felt, as a lackey of the fat capitalist bosses who were too afraid to approach and who must have been hiding in their vaults made of silver, sitting on their money bags, and plotting how to overthrow the Soviet Revolution in Russia.  Perhaps in our hearts we knew that the waiter told us to leave because the cafeteria closed at eleven o’clock, but we wanted so much to believe that we were taking the first step along the path to revolution that we kept telling each other that was the only reason.

            So when we got outside, there was such burning sense of glory in our souls, that we did not take a bus or a subway, but arm and arm—yes, boys and girls together, touching each other—we marched down Manhattan, along Broadway, laughing and shouting, and singing our radical songs:

Shall we still be slaves and work for wage-ous

It is outrageous

Has been for age-ous

This earth by right belongs to toilers

And not to spoilers

Of liberteeeee!

Yes, the glory of it!  “There once was a union maid.”  The power!  The exaltation!  “I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night.”  It was exhilarating and we hardly noticed that it took an hour to get downtown to the project where the girls lived. 

My heart will not cater

To duke or dictator,

No man can deny

Die Gedenken sind frei!

The world was certainly ours, a kosher oyster.

            As soon as the girls—and we always promised ourselves that next time we would learn their names—were delivered to their red-brick buildings on Second Avenue, however, the boys ran as fast as we could to the public toilets in Union Square, then down the stairs to the tracks, and took the subway home, some down further to Brooklyn, some up to the Bronx, all still trembling inside from the sexual and political excitement. 

Thankfully the next day was Shabbat (Baruch ha-Shem!) and we could sleep late.  There was always another weekend coming to fight for the workers’ paradise. 

Vinceremos!

They shall not pass!