8
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
My parents have aged gracefully, and the faces of both are
lined with life's labor. They are in good health, and ruggedly
Republican. They consider Herbert Hoover the greatest living
American., and will defend him with their last breath. This
loyalty may be due to the fact that Father bears a startling
resemblance to the Republican statesman. Actually, the reason is more pragmatic than ideological, at least in my father's
case. While Father never speculated in stocks, and lost nothing during the disastrous Hoover regime, he suffered when
Roosevelt devaluated the dollar to fifty-nine cents, comparably
reducing its purchasing power abroad. Being an importer of
food delicacies, Father lost forty-one cents out of every dollar.
He never recovered from the blow, financially or psychologically.
Mother, out of loyalty, joined Father on the Republican
bandwagon. As soon as they were entitled to vote, in 1926,
they began to vote Republican, and have clung to the GOP
like a Bulgarian peasant to his ploughing-bull. They are charter diehards, the equal of any old-line Anglo-Saxon Republicans—and proud of it. These are my parents. You must know
them in order to know me, for as it is said in the Old World,
the first-born son mirrors his parents.
My brothers, John and Steven, three and nine years my
junior, have grown into comfortable, fairly prosperous middleclass conservatives. John is an accountant with a public-utility
firm. Steven is a successful attorney, and has been elected to
public office. Both served in the armed forces. They live and
work in or near Mineola. Both are loved and respected.
GROWTH
I AM the rebel of the household.
I might have followed the same unruffled path except for an
incident in 1933 which was so violent, and so unprecedented