Touch and Go (15 page)

Ida had several different roommates, and one was named Stern, a rather elfin and playful girl. One night Ida dreamt she'd gone outside, naked, and Stern shut the door on her. In the dream, she's standing outside naked and just then a man passes by and Ida says,
“I'm not at my best, Mr. Smith.” She did have a certain humor. I liked that about her, too.

Once we started getting serious, it was an easy, very delightful courtship, though visiting my mother was always an adventure. I was still living with Annie at the time. When Ida was first going to meet my mother, I warned her, “Well, she's a little on the nervous side.” An understatement, you might say.

First thing, Annie says, “So you're it, you're a college girl. Hmm . . .” Then the topper: “You should kiss my hands and feet for giving you such a man!”

Ida said, “Oh, all right, sure.” And she bent down . . .

“Oh,
stop
!” Annie brushed her off. Ida had her number and my mother knew she had it. Annie treated Ida differently than the others. Sophie and Mary, Meyer and Benny's wives, were simple, hardworking women, stenographers, typists, who didn't go to college, and my mother was scornful. She wanted a certain kind of recognition and success, and to her, Sophie and Mary in no way met the standard.

When my Aunt Fanny, my father's sister, and her husband knew I was going with Ida, they wanted to meet her, and so did my cousin Charlie. He was also one of my closest friends, and he hung around with real killers. He had by this time become a soldier in the Mob and had married a semi-hooker who was also there for the introduction. We went to a club to eat with them. Now, here's sweet Ida from Wisconsin. Her parents, hardworking people, good people, owned a wearing apparel store. There were eight kids in the family—one shy of a baseball team: five boys, three girls. So we're at this gathering to meet my family.

Ida said: “My introduction to your aunt was a rather interesting one. The first thing Fanny said to me, she took me by the arm, and kissed me on the cheek, and she said, ‘I want to tell you something. See that woman there? She killed my brother.' ” She was pointing at my mother. That was Ida's introduction to the Terkel family. “She killed my brother.”

WE DATED FOR ABOUT A YEAR, and then we got hitched. One day, I said, “Let's get married.” Like that.

She said, “Great.”

Ida's brother-in-law worked for a steel company and was doing pretty well, so the wedding was at her sister's house in Highland Park. Annie was a certain kind of woman who, shall we say, was hard to make happy, but even my brother Ben was a little shocked at the festivities. There was no booze.

My mother said, “Where's the pastrami sandwiches?” Well, you know she's going to complain anyway. What they had was coffee and cake.

Ida said, “It was my idea.”

“Your idea? Coffee and a piece of cake?!”

Benny wanted a little shot of whiskey so he thought the whole thing was rather outrageous. “No drinks?! Unbelievable.”

Ida said, “This is the way I'd like it. I asked for this.”

But my mother, of course, that's all she needed. “No corned beef sandwich? What is this?” So that was the wedding. 1939.

 

 

OUR LIVELIEST GUEST was always Ida's younger sister, Minsa. She was a character—very pretty and very, very eccentric. She'd studied dance with Martha Graham and ended up marrying a renowned Italian painter, Alberto Burri.

Earlier on, during one visit, Minsa made three dates in the same day: with a young dentist, a young lawyer, and a young doctor. My job was to entertain each guy as she went for a walk with the previous one.

Ida said to her, “You know, you really can't do that. Three dates. That's a lot. And see, Studs is stuck here now.” And I
was
stuck.

I said, “Maybe I'll get these guys drunk or something.” But each
one waited patiently and she got rid of the last guy without the next one knowing.

Minsa had an innocence about her, and yet she was always in charge. Another visit, she has a boyfriend, Frederick something, a Viennese guy. He does nothing, sort of hangs around. Apparently, he has a gold mine somewhere, a map and all that. Minsa wants to stay in Chicago, and she wants to be at a hotel that's modest in price but not seedy. So Ida finds something called Canterbury Courts. We're there, waiting, and I decide to go out and get a bottle of J&B to celebrate, to welcome our visitors.

I walk to the corner; I see a big crowd gathering. There's a young guy with glasses, a cabdriver. There's somebody in a coolie hat, gesticulating wildly, and of course it's Minsa. She's bawling the cabdriver out. Standing to the side is Frederick, with the luggage, always lots of luggage. I'm coming closer, and Minsa calls out, “Oh, Studs, darling, see what he did? He deliberately says he's out of gas. Now where is it we have to walk?”

I say, “You're only half a block away.” This poor guy says, “I
am
out of gas.”

She says, “I'm going to call and report you. What's your license number?”

I say, “No, you're not.” I say to the guy, “Don't worry, it's OK.”

“You're sure?”

“It's OK.”

So now we come with the bottle of booze and the two of them, upstairs, and there's Ida waiting in the hotel room. Minsa says, “What have you got here? This is a junkyard. What in the world?” And now they have a dispute.

Ida says, “Minsa, you wanted something modest-priced, this is modest in price!”

“No, I'm not going to have it!” She goes out and finds another hotel, and the next thing you know a young bellhop is carrying all her luggage. Whatever she wants. She has a way. I went to tip him a
fin, and she says, “Oh, no, no.” And the
bellhop
says, “No, no, no . . .” She did something to people.

Ida and Minsa were close, despite everything. Ida was closest to all of them. She's the one the family all came to, the one they all called.

Ida was a far better person than I, that's the reality of it. People wouldn't exactly come to me for advice. They would for an idea or to put my name on a letter, but for personal advice, they'd come to her, men and women both. She had a certain empathy I lack. And she was more politically active than I.

She had several black friends, also social workers, and was part of a group of three or four that went into a restaurant to break the color line. Things were thrown at them. Ida was gentle, but she was no pushover. When there were gatherings, she was there to demonstrate. As Garry Wills put it, “Studs was envious of her because her dossier was bigger than his.” She was arrested along with Garry during an anti-Vietnam protest.

One of my favorite stories about her: She's picketing a church, and an old priest comes out and says, “Get away from my sidewalk!”

She says, “Oh, Father, I thought the sidewalk belonged to the people who walk on it.”

“Get away, this is my church.”

“Father, I thought the church was that of your parish.”

“What is your name?” he demands.

“Ida Terkel, Father, what's yours?” And then he rushes back inside furious.

A young priest at the top of the stairs looks at Ida, this rather attractive, lithe woman, and he winks. A big wink! A wink that Ida says was definitely everything. But mostly it was a wink to show he agreed with her reasons for being there. So that was her manner. Easygoing. But on occasion . . .

Once Mike Royko was off on a tear, talking about ragheads. Ida interrupted: “Mike.”

He says, “What?”

She says, “Fuck off.”

“Did you hear what she said?” She hardly ever used foul language. Everybody there was astonished. Mike could never get mad at her. He was just stunned 'cause he thinks, sweet little Ida. “Did you hear what she said to me? She told me to fuck off!” And then he says, “What a bod!” He'd always say that of her.

She looked like a dancer, and she was a fantastic dancer, light as a feather. Guys loved to dance with her. I'm a lousy dancer. She finally gave up trying to get me on the dance floor. I did dance with her one time. She said, “Now, you've just got to relax.” She's leading me, trying to.

“I can't do it, I can't do anything.”

“Sit down.” By this time, a couple of guys had come over anyway. Like, “Look, we want to dance with Ida. Do you mind?”

“Nah, go ahead.” It made her happy to dance.

 

AFTER IDA DIED, so many letters were sent to me, and to our son, Dan. There was one from this big girl, beautiful girl, about six feet tall. A lovely Amazon. When Ida was sick, she'd worked for us for a couple of weeks. She was a bit of a country girl, unsophisticated. She wrote: “I was only with you for a couple of weeks, and I knew your wife only a short time, but it changed my life.” She said they were shopping at Treasure Island, an upscale supermarket, and they were overcharged, it was a big mistake.

Ida said, “Don't worry about it.”

The girl said Ida went over to tell the cashier of the error. “I saw the way she spoke to the cashier, and she didn't want to hurt this woman who was just working there. She did it in such a kind way. I was so affected by that. And I never forgot her.”

Little things like that . . . Did she play a tremendous role in my life? Yeah, you could say so.

I
didn't think the country could lose World War II. Somehow the feeling was so strong here; there was a unity, a tremendous solidarity. We were all a little too gung-ho. The phrase “gung-ho” was at first a Communist saying. It was used by Mao and brought here by Major Colonel Evans Carlson. “Gung-ho” meant “working together.” Isn't that funny?

I was going along with the people in the Chicago Repertory Theater Group. Remember, this was after the Spanish Civil War and the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee—for those who'd been fighting for the Republican Army in Spain. Woody Guthrie used to tease lefties about their change from being antiwar to pro–ending Fascism.

I was drafted, but I would have gone anyway. Oh, I was absolutely patriotic. I wanted to join; I was against Hitler. I was doing broadcasts at the time, pro-Roosevelt broadcasts in favor of a short ballot so soldiers overseas could vote. They were overwhelmingly for Roosevelt.

Ida was for my going, though she didn't care for war. She's the one who insisted I use quotes in the title of
“The Good War.”
Before being inducted, I had been raising money for the Soviet American Friendship Committee and the Anti-Fascist Committee. She'd write to me in the Air Force telling me I'd been missed at this or
that event. But these were private letters, they were love letters, and I later found out FBI guys were reading them. The Air Force was spying on me and I didn't know.

September of 1942 is when I went into the Air Force. By this time, I was fairly well known; I'd been on the air doing pro-FDR commentaries and all that. The Chicago Repertory Theatre Group used to have parties that were
the
parties of the year. They'd put on sketches and skits from various plays. All our parties were for causes, and I'd been the emcee of a number of events. The theater group threw a big party in honor of my going into the Air Force, but the cause may have been for a guy about to be lynched, or for the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. It was a big jam, a midnight party, and Billie Holiday came over from a nearby nightclub to sing. A couple of guys in the band were friends of the rep group.

Billie said to me, “What would you like to hear, baby?” She sang “Strange Fruit” and “Fine and Mellow.”

So I go in the Air Force, LS—Limited Service—because of a perforated eardrum. We were in three different barracks, BTC, Basic Training Centers. Being in the Air Force changed me in certain ways. Until then, I'd never smoked, never used swear words. I was older than most of the kids, but I liked the camaraderie.

First we were sent to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri for regular barracks stuff, basic training. We were all LS guys. Nothing unusual happened, except seeing this country kid taking a bunch of East Coast sharpies for a ride in dice. He looked just like a goofy, freckled, perfect rube, an easy mark, a Toby. His humor was pulling his eyelids back so his eyes would pop out. Toby humor. (Toby was a tent-show hero for rural people, and Toby always gets the better of the big-city wise guy.)

These hotshots from New York and Philadelphia played dice and poker and he'd wipe them out every night. They didn't know what hit 'em. I got a great kick out of that.

In basic training, you learn the use of a gun. I never understood how that all worked. Being LS, I wasn't going to be sent overseas to
fight, so it didn't matter. We'd do our calisthenics and one exercise was leaping over a fence. Everybody could leap over a fence except me. I wrote to Ida: “All I say is, ‘Stalingrad!' ” Stalingrad was a big turning point of the war where the Soviet Army held off the German troops. So I'd holler “Stalingrad!” and bump into the fence. I'd holler “Stalingrad!” and fall on my ass. I tried and tried. Couldn't make it. They finally took me off it as hopeless.