Chapter 5
“WAS YOUR FATHER RELIGIOUS?” people often ask me. Did he follow his faith? Is it true, as someone has written, that your mother forced him to give up his religion and become a Unitarian?”
No one forced my father to do anything. He grew up in a Reform Jewish family and they were involved in the Binghamton Jewish Community Center, but the Center was said to have been held together more by shared ethnic values than religious beliefs. Sam was vice president of the Reform Temple, but his family did not attend synagogue regularly, the exception being the High Holy Days.
One day Sam sits Bob and my father down and says, “I am not a good Jew, but I think I’m a good person. If you want to be very religious, that’s up to you. My own philosophy is, I take people for what they are, not where they go to pray.”
These are powerful and compelling words to my father. Something clearly resonates that day and lasts a lifetime.
My parents always remain wary of organized religion. They agree that my sister and I will go to the Unitarian Church Sunday mornings when we are younger. This is acceptable to my dad because the messages taught are intellectually open-minded. It is a liberal religion. Nothing is compulsory, and many of the ideals are similar to Judaism. My mother, who was raised Unitarian, likes the free thinking, the permission to believe what one wants.
My dad doesn’t accompany us to church, but I do distinctly recall him dropping us off one Sunday and my friend Elizabeth Arlen and I sneaking off instead to the local grocery store. As we are racing carts down the aisles, suddenly, at the end of one, we see my dad. We abruptly go into reverse. I am sure he sees us, but knowing my dad, I am confident he won’t say a word to my mother. And he doesn’t.
Throughout his life, my father holds on to many Jewish values and traditions. For years I see him light Yahrzeit memorial candles at sundown on the anniversaries of his parents’ deaths. The candlelight glows in the darkness of the room, flickering when we walk by, burning into the following day. Sometimes he stops and stares for just a moment. It is the same expression he has when he carries that box of old letters outside and sits in the yard at the cottage. I watch as he gently removes them from their envelopes and unfolds them. Many, I know, are from his parents. He reads them and then carefully folds them back up, replacing them in their envelopes. And then I see that same inaccessible look I will come to know and, even as a child, understand.
I remember his childhood bedtime prayer that he taught me. For some reason I memorize this, and both my children know it as well. “God bless Dearest and Daddy and big brother Bobby and all my relations and all my friends and God, help me to be a good boy and a good Jew. Amen.”
For years, my father and Bob go to the Jewish Community Center. The director Isidore Friedland and his wife are philosophical humanists and spiritual mentors to many of Binghamton’s Jewish youth.
My father can imitate Mr. Friedland’s voice flawlessly and loves to do impersonations and play jokes on people. His brother Bob, always gullible, is the perfect target. One day, when Bob is home visiting from Antioch College and my dad is about ten, he calls Bob from the upstairs phone and pretends to be Mr. Friedland. “Hello Bobby? Why haven’t you called me? I know you’ve been home for days.” Bob stammers. “Hello, Mr. Friedland, yes, yes, I’ve been meaning to call you . . .” It isn’t until he hears my father laughing on the other phone that Bob realizes who he is actually apologizing to. “God damn it, Rod!”
At the Community Center, my dad and his friend Julie Golden join a local Boy Scout troop. As Julie pointed out, in a now famous photo of Troop 36, my dad sits in the center, the shortest kid with the biggest smile. “Among those ‘tenderfeet, ’ two grew up to be doctors, another a lawyer, yet another a college professor.”
Julie and my father attend Sunday school and play a lot of Ping-Pong. “Your dad was a good player,” says Julie, “but I was better.” They go to each other’s houses and hang out for hours. “Your grandfather, Sam,” Julie remembers, “had a great sense of humor and loved to talk, just like your dad.” He describes Esther, my grandmother, as “an elegant, soft-spoken woman who physically reminded me of Margaret Dumont, the tall, somewhat matronly actress who was often a foil for Groucho Marx. She was always charming.”
Often they ride their bikes to the park with the carousel. My dad carves his name on a post of the bandstand, as in a scene he will later recreate in “Walking Distance.”
Soon the boys enter Binghamton Central High School where, Julie says, “Your dad was very popular among most of his contemporaries. A lot of us were members of Upsilon Lambda Phi, a Jewish high school fraternity, and participated in social events in Binghamton, Scranton, and Wilkes-Barre. Your father, however, was blackballed by some ULPS members because he dated non-Jewish girls.”
It is ironic that this first experience of discrimination comes from my dad’s own Jewish contemporaries. The fight against discrimination and prejudice will remain central throughout his life.
Julie tells me my dad was adventurous long before he became famous and that the adventures often included him. “One winter afternoon, for example, your dad and I were visiting a high school friend,just chatting in the living room. Suddenly, he jumped up, ran outside, climbed up on the roof, and jumped off into the snow.”
Julie remembers that they played a fair amount of tennis at Recreation Park, but that a typical Serling/Golden afternoon would be: “We would meet at my father’s clothing store on Water Street, then walk next door to the Lyric Theater for a terrific double feature; the absolute best we ever saw was Frankenstein and Dracula.”
Thousands of miles away from this small town and these boys in the Lyric Theater, the world is on fire. Without warning, Russia has been attacked by Germany. The United States, no longer neutral, is actively aiding the allies. Japanese armed forces attack Pearl Harbor, and war, for the United States, begins the next day: December 8, 1941. A front-page headline proclaims: “THE UNITED STATES DECLARES WAR ON JAPAN.” Twenty-four hours later: “GERMANY AND ITALY DECLARE WAR ON THE UNITED STATES.” Congress reestablishes the draft.
My father’s childhood ends.