In April 1962 my father attended a business meeting in Manhattan for Ma Bell. While my father was at his appointment, my older brother and I accompanied my mother to Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty and rode a taxi north through the Bowery heading to the Enpire State Building. As we passed along the Bowery, I asked my mother, if the men sprawled on the sidewalks were dead.
“No, they’re drunk like Red Tate.”
Red was our town drunk. He has served with the Marines in Korea.
He drank wine at the gas station and slept in a concrete bunker in the abandoned army base in the Blue Hills.
“You don’t want to end up here ”
My mother took us the Empire State Building. From the top the metropolis stretched to the horizons and into the Atlantic.
My father met us at Tad’s Steak House. We asked about the men on the Bowery.
My father told us that some soldiers came back from the war damaged and drink helped quiet demons.
“Like the devil?” Asked my brother.
“No, something much worse.”
During WWII my father had tested radar-directed 20mm cannons on B-26s In Kentucky. Thousands of miles away from the front line the fatality rates were 15%. My father never said what was worse adn I have no idea either.
foto by Meryl Meisler