SPECIAL: The Fire Storm rages again

Filmed July 1976

When I started this project, first with the blog, RALPH’S TREK, which ran for a year and a half, and then this website, RALPH’S CINEMA TREK, my intention was to make each post a fly-on-the-wall-view visit to the sets of the films I had directed and to make them informative and entertaining. I hope I have accomplished what I set out to do. But today as I sit at my computer 10 years later, I’m informing you that this post is going to be different!

In my lifetime I have seen a lot. I was 6 years old at the time of the 1929 stock market crash. I have no memories of that, but I do remember, but not sadly, the Great Depression in the decade that followed. My dad worked in my Uncle Larner’s (the husband of his older sister) clothing store. He did everything. Since my uncle sat at his desk most of the time, my dad was the store’s only salesman (and a damned good one); he trimmed the windows (beautifully); he swept the floor in the morning, wet-mopped it when needed and when necessary he pitched in and helped the tailor Charlie with the alterations. Friday and Saturday nights, the times when the farmers in the surrounding farms came to town, he kept the store open until 10 or 11 o’clock, until there were no possible customers walking on the street. All this for $40.00 a week!

When I was 9 years old, we moved from the 3-bedroom house at 4 North Jefferson to a 2-bedroom apartment in the K.C. Building on Federal Avenue and 2^nd Street South. We stayed in the apartment for 2 years. Then my parents considered buying their first home. It was a 2-bedroom house on the West side of Mason City. I don’t remember the price. I just know that it was low – like maybe $2,000.00. There would be a down payment and monthly mortgage payments. I do remember hearing Mom and Dad discussing it and him worriedly saying, “Can we swing it?” They did. They bought it and we moved out of the apartment.

I remember Sunday, December 7, 1941. Mom, Dad and I were in the kitchen, doing the lunch dishes. Mom was washing; Dad and I were wiping. The radio was on. An announcer broke into the program to announce that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. I can still hear my Dad saying, “Do you know what this means?” 16 months later I remember being in a parking lot in Des Moines, Iowa with Mom and Dad. I was there to be inducted into the Army. Our country had been officially at war with Japan since the day after that fateful day in December and soon after with Germany and Italy. As we said our goodbyes, it was the first time I saw my Dad cry.

I was 19 years old, less than a month from turning 20. I had done very little traveling during that time. When I was 9 years old (before we moved into the apartment) I went by car with relatives to meet and visit our relatives in Winnipeg, Canada. When I was 17 I went by car with 2 uncles to Philadelphia, again to meet and visit relatives, the 7 siblings of my maternal grandfather and their very large families. That was about to change. I had never flown in an airplane. I was about to board a train for the first time to travel to Camp Roberts, California for 3 months of basic training. During the ensuing 12 months I spent time on the Stanford University campus in California and time at the University in Akron, Ohio. It was at Camp Campbell in Tennessee that I was transferred out of the unit I was with that was heading for Africa to an Anti-Aircraft Group Headquarters. I became a corporal and would serve with a lieutenant as the Special Service for the unit. And then on to an ocean liner bound for Europe. Mid-ocean on June 6, 1944, we learned of the Allied seaborne invasion of German-occupied Normandy, France.

We docked in England. It was my first experience with wartime blackouts. I remember little of our short stay on the post there. I do remember one night, moving from one building to another, I walked straight into a brick wall. I didn’t receive a Purple Heart for the bruises on my face. Then it was onto a ship to cross the English Channel to France, where we motored cross-country in caravan to our destination outside of Liege, Belgium. I was assigned to drive one of the army vehicles. I remember it as a 2-day trip. On our one night on the road we bivouacked somewhere in French open country. It poured down rain, which made the pup tents we slept in an uncomfortable mess. That didn’t bother me too much as I spent most of the night in the tented outhouse that had been constructed in the middle of a nearby field. I had Montezuma’s Revenge, which I thought was slightly bizarre – a Mexican affliction on French soil.

Our headquarters in Belgium was in a large chateau. We were billeted 6 or 8 to a room with double-decker bunk beds. By the time we landed in France, German troops had been pushed eastward back into their homeland. My Special Service duty was to take a 16 mm projector out to the troop encampments in the area and in a large tent run Hollywood movies. I never was involved in front line combat, but I did see the results of past bombings as I made my daily trips through the countryside.

Then in December came the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans made a last attempted offensive. Day and night buzz bombs soared overhead. As we sat around in our room at night, some reading, others playing cards, we hesitated in our activities when we heard a buzz bomb approaching. It made an eerie whirring sound that grew louder as the bomb approached. Once we heard the bomb was above us, we would relax. Only when that whirring sound cut off before the bomb was overhead were we concerned. That meant the bomb was now in descent, hopefully not at us, and soon we would hear the explosion as the bomb hit somewhere in the vicinity. There was now an added security activity. We all took our turn at guard duty. Day and night a shift policed the grounds of our chateau. I remember one night being on guard duty with Joe from Jersey. It was a cold December night and as we circled the building, we heard a buzz bomb approaching. The whirring sound grew louder and louder and then cut off and we heard the sound of the bomb descending. Joe yelled, “Hit the ground.” We both did. I remember that sound of the bomb’s descent growing louder and louder. It sounded like it was heading for the back of my neck. And then the explosion! It was nearby. As Joe and I picked ourselves up from the ground, 3 or 4 officers came rushing out of the building. “What was that?” one of them said. I wish I could remember Joe’s very funny, caustic answer.

The German final offensive failed and the war ended in Europe on May 8, 1945. There was still that other battle with Japan in the far East. In August I was in a Forty and Eight boxcar (fortunately with 39 men, not 8 horses) racing across Europe, headed for that war, when we learned of the Japanese surrender on August 8, 1945. I remained in Europe and served in the army of occupation based in Germany until I returned to the States on February 3, 1946 to reenter civilian life, to pick up the pieces of my life dropped 34 months ago, but with a changed direction from music to theatre.

My life from then on is pretty much what RALPH’S CINEMA TREK is all about. Now for some of the accompanying events that I was aware of and many times affected by. The war in which I had been involved was over, but wars continued. There was the Korean War early in the 1950s. Did you know that war has never officially ended? There was no peace treaty – only an armistice. There were the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. The 1960s saw John F. Kennedy and his Camelot, the Kennedy-King-Kennedy assassinations and the Vietnam War. My cousin Babe lost her oldest son, Bruce, in that war. The 1970s saw the scandal that drove vice president Spiro Agnew from office, Watergate, the Watergate televised hearings (I watched them on television from beginning to end), and Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency. In 1980 we had the Iran-Contra affair. In the 90’s there was the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky situation, Clinton’s impeachment and his trial by the Senate that failed to drive him from office. And then we arrived at a new century, where in 2001 we had the Twin-Tower attacks of 9/11 followed by the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

As I stated earlier, in my lifetime I have seen a lot and there was more than I have related. But I have never seen anything like what is happening now – in our country, in the world.

In my long career I have directed several Christmas-themed shows: A DREAM FOR CHRISTMAS (a television movie/pilot), A CHRISTMAS BALLAD (The Bill Cosby Show), THE NEW ADVENTURES OF HEIDI (The final portion of the film was devoted to Christmas). I am Jewish, but ironically I have never directed a Jewish-themed film. The closest I came (and it was not about Jewish people) was THE FIRESTORM, an episode of THE WALTONS (http://senensky.com/the-fire-storm/). It dealt with the Walton family in Virginia during the pre-World War II period. John Boy in publishing excerpts from Hitler’s MEIN KAMPF in his newspaper has stirred up the wrath of the community. He is very much like the main character in Henrik Ibsen’s AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE. He is rebuked by his pastor in a Sunday morning sermon, had advertisers in his paper cancel their accounts, and had locations where his paper was distributed refuse to continue as long as he persisted in publishing the excerpts. In trying to do some good, he has become the enemy of the people of Walton’s Mountain.

Faced with the closed mind attitudes, the unwillingness to learn, the ill feeling in the community, John Boy is on the brink of giving up…

That scene, the entire script about the late 1930s was written brilliantly by Rod Peterson and Claire Whitaker in 1976. I posted THE FIRESTORM about 7 years ago, well into the 21^st Century. Here is a Comment left at that time:

I watched this episode last night with my family (two young daughters) on DVD. Incredibly powerful! Brilliant acting and directing. After watching it we had a discussion, it was a springboard to learning about free speech, ignorance vs. knowledge, the nature of totalitarianism….issues which are still alive and present today. Thank you for this excellent, timeless work, which is still more than relevant today!

I find that Comment…

… it was a springboard to learning about free speech, ignorance vs. knowledge, the nature of totalitarianism….issues which are still alive and present today.

…to be even more relevant today — 7 years after it was written!

I recently attended a film festival evening of short films. One of the films was a documentary of a Pro-American Rally sponsored by the German American Bund at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. Attended by thousands it was held supposedly to celebrate George Washington’s Birthday, but it was just months before Hitler invaded Poland. During the speech by the head of the Bund, a protester rushed at the stage. He was immediately surrounded by security guards, beaten, had his pants ripped off and as the audience cheered, he was dragged out of the Garden. One of the people I was with said, “It was like watching a Trump rally!”

What is the solution to the situation in our country today? I don’t know. That is beyond my knowledge or experience. I am the son of immigrants. Both of my parents were born in Russia in the last decade of the 19^th century. When their parents, escaping the Russian pogroms, brought them to America, my mother was an infant less than a year old; my father was 4 or 5 years old. Now, as I am just a few days more than a month from my 96^th birthday, I state loudly and clearly that the America I’ve lived in has given me a wonderful life. Have there been difficulties? Of course there were difficulties. Overcoming difficulties is how we learn, just as climbing steep hills is how we gain strength. Am I wishing for a return to the Midwestern, serene, cocoon-like times of the first third of my life. No! And besides, that couldn’t happen, not since the advent of television, cellphones, the Internet, twitter, Facebook! I’m hoping to see our leaders in government find the way to rid us of the divisiveness and hatred in our country, reestablish the union with our previous allies, so that once and for all we can truly reemerge as the ultimate melting pot nation we have long been admired as being. For that I’m hoping and praying!

The journey continues