The Martin Luther King Mitzvah

by Tekulsky, Mathew;

  After we had marched for half an hour or so, Mr. Roberts and Miss Palmer arrived, striding across the grass to join us.

  “We figured we’d just stop by to see what was going on,” Miss Palmer said, giving Sally a quick hug.

  Even though the teachers weren’t supposed to get involved in politics, we knew that this was their way of supporting us. The fact that they had shown up made me like them all the more, as people and not just as our teachers. Suddenly, a truck came into view around the corner of the Post Road and Beachmont Avenue. WNBC-TV News was emblazoned on its side and an antenna stuck out of its roof.

  Oh my God! I thought with excited disbelief. “Sally, we’re going to be on TV!”

  Sally started shrieking, “What do we do now?”

  Gladys greeted the newsman who hopped down from the truck, and brought him over. “This is my old friend, David,” Gladys introduced us. “He does the news for NBC and I told him about the demonstration.”

  Another man carrying a movie camera started filming the protest, and before I knew it, I had a microphone in front of my face. “So what inspired you children, I mean, young people, to have an anti-war demonstration right here in Beachmont?” David asked me.

  At that point, it occurred to me that we were rather young to be politically involved, but we had never stopped to think about it. As far as we were concerned, we had just as much right as an adult to protest against the war in Vietnam; perhaps even more so—as we got older, we might have to fight in it.

  “We were inspired by Martin Luther King,” I said nervously, imagining what Mom and Dad would think when they saw me on TV, not to mention all of my schoolmates and the rest of Beachmont. “And Gladys here really helped us a lot,” I added.

  Gladys put one arm around me and the other around Sally. “I’m really proud of these kids,” she said.

  Jimmy sidled over, passing me a cream soda as he leaned over to speak into the microphone: “Are we going to be on TV?” We all started laughing.

  A car honked as it went by. It was our white Biscayne and I saw my mother waving from the window with Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher in the back seat. A few minutes later, our parents walked up the sidewalk, joining us on the library lawn. Mr. Fletcher didn’t look very happy as he frowned beneath the rim of his Homburg hat. Across the street, I could see the Collins Service Station, and Mr. Collins and Billy out front staring at us. I thought about Billy’s older brother fighting in Vietnam and I figured that they hated us for protesting. Then I thought about what Martin Luther King had said, that we were just trying to save those kids that were over there and bring them back home. What was the harm in that?

  We were on the local news that night, but in New York the local news was broadcast across the entire metropolitan area. As I watched David report the story, I decided that this was about as good a birthday as any kid could have.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning, I woke up to the sounds of Tommy James singing “I Think We’re Alone Now” on the radio. As Tommy sang that children should behave, I thought about Sally and Jimmy and what we were doing. My mother had French toast waiting for me in the kitchen, and my father sat reading The New York Times. It was Sunday and businesses in Beachmont were closed.

  “You won’t believe this,” my father said, gazing at the paper in astonishment. “Mohammad Ali refused induction into the draft on Friday.” As Dad passed me the maple syrup, he added, “If the heavyweight champion of the world is against all of this violence, maybe there’s something to what you kids are doing. You may be creating waves in this town, and it might hurt my business, but you’re doing what you think is right and you’re becoming a man. I guess a father should be proud of that.”

  “Dad,” I said, “can I go over to Gladys’?”

  My father threw up his hands. “As if I’m going to stop you! Go ahead.”

  I ran out the front door and as I got to the top of Gladys’ driveway, I heard, through the open window, the sound of Arthur Conley singing “Sweet Soul Music” on Gladys’ radio. As Conley sang about shining a spotlight on Otis Redding, I could hear Honey singing a bunch of fa, fa, fa’s along with him. I found Gladys and Honey both in the kitchen.

  “You children did good with your protest,” Honey said.

  “You should’ve been there,” I replied.

  “Not in this town,” Honey replied. “We blacks are free, but we still have to watch ourselves.”

  “Let’s not think about that,” Gladys said.

  As Honey heated milk for hot chocolate on the stove, a rap sounded on the kitchen door; it was Sally.

  “You’re just the person I wanted to see,” Gladys told her as Sally joined us at the table. As “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” by the Monkees came over the radio, Honey brought us all steaming mugs of hot chocolate. “Martin Luther King’s coming into town on Tuesday, and he wants to see you two kids again. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Sally shrieked with excitement, leapt from the table, and started cavorting around the kitchen in delighted leaps and bounds, her blonde ponytail flipping back and forth. I thought back to when I first saw it bouncing along in the October breeze, and could hardly believe that I was in the kitchen with her, Gladys, and Honey, and that we were going to meet Martin Luther King again!

  “He’s giving a speech at the Americana Hotel in New York,” Gladys went on, smiling at Sally. “It’s a conference for the union workers. He has time to meet us right after the conference at five o’clock. Honey has to work, so we’ll take the train into the city by ourselves. Is that okay with you?”

  Sally and I nodded our enthusiastic agreement.

  Tuesday could not come fast enough, but when it did my mother picked Sally and me up after school to drive us to the train station. The three of us sat in facing seats near the window as the train clacked through New Rochelle, Pelham, Mount Vernon, on through the Bronx and past 125th Street and into the long, black tunnel that led to Grand Central Station. Gladys told us that she had started a series of newspaper columns about Martin Luther King.

  “Did you know that he came from a family of preachers?” she told us. “His father was a preacher, and his grandfather was a preacher, and his great-grandfather was a preacher, so Martin was destined to be a preacher. He once told me that he had no choice in the matter,” she continued, chuckling to herself. “But look at what he’s done! He led the bus boycott in Montgomery in 1955 after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat; he organized the march on Washington eight years later, when he gave his I Have a Dream speech. Then after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he organized the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, which led, in turn, to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. And now, he’s on a mission to stop the war in Vietnam and bring about social justice and equality. I’m so proud to call him my friend.”

  The train slowed down, creeping through the tunnel as I looked out the window at the white maintenance lights that passed by. Finally, the train stopped. We stretched stiff legs crossing the giant lobby of Grand Central Station, and then took a taxi to the Americana Hotel on Seventh Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets. We were to meet Martin Luther King, after his conference, at the Royal Box Supper Club. Filled with excitement, we waited at a circular table covered with a pristine white tablecloth. It was exactly five p.m.

  When Martin Luther King saw us, a broad smile crossed his face, and he asked the men who accompanied him to wait by the door.

  “I don’t have much time,” Martin Luther King said apologetically to Gladys, before turning to me and Sally. “I heard about your demonstration,” he went on. “I want you to know how much I appreciate your efforts on behalf of the cause. You know, it’s not just up to me, it is the struggle of all of us to make this country and this world a better place. We are all just doing God’s will.”

  Martin Luther King thanked Sally for the portrait that Gladys had given him, and I handed
him an envelope that contained the photograph I had taken at Riverside Church. We told him all about our protest in Beachmont, how all of Grappa’s friends had helped out, and how our parents had shown up to support us. He nodded and smiled as we spoke, then he let me take another photo of him with Gladys and Sally. Then he shook our hands and gave each of us a hug. I heard one of his men by the door say, “Dr. King, we really must go.”

  I will never forget what he did next—I remember it as if it were yesterday! Dr. Martin Luther King kneeled down on the carpet so that we were eye to eye and he said to us, “Children, I have been to the mountaintop. I have seen the Promised Land. With your help, we will get to the Promised Land.” Then he bid us farewell. The last I saw of him was a silhouette, dark against the ballroom lights, as he walked out of the Royal Box Supper Club holding the envelope in his right hand, with my photograph inside it. Looking around, I saw a few people in the club, sitting at tables and leaning against the walls. They all started clapping.

  Gladys bought us a hamburger, French fries, and a Coke, before we began our walk down 52nd Street to Fifth Avenue, past Rockefeller Center and down to Grand Central Station, where we would get the train back to Beachmont.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The following day, Mr. Roberts handed out copies of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech to everyone in our English class. He instructed us all to be very quiet as he turned on a tape recorder and I heard the powerful voice of Martin Luther King. Listening to his words, I thought about how amazing it was to know him and I started to smile. I grinned at Sally and she grinned back.

  Martin Luther King spoke about making justice ring for all of God’s children, about having a dream that one day our nation’s children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the quality of their character. By the time he got to “Free at last! Free at last!” I had started to cry, and, looking at Sally, I could see tears in her eyes too. Mr. Roberts and several other kids in the class were similarly choked up.

  “Now, children,” Mr. Roberts asked, after he had managed to pull himself together, “what does this speech say to you?”

  Sally raised her hand and Mr. Roberts called on her.

  “It means that all men are brothers,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Roberts replied. “And that means not only black men and white men but Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus—everybody.”

  “But what about Beachmont?” I asked, raising my hand. “The Catholics go to the Manor Club; the Protestants go to the Shoreline Club; the Jews go to the Harbor Club. The Manor Club is right down the street from my house, but we can’t belong to that club because we’re Jewish, so we have to drive all the way across Beachmont to the Harbor Club.”

  Mr. Roberts nodded. “We still have a long way to go here in Beachmont,” he said. “Remember what Martin Luther King said? Everyone has to work together to make the world a better place.”

  As I rode my bike past the Collins’ Service Station on the way home from school, Billy Collins ran out and started shouting, “You asshole! You traitor! I hope you die!” I just kept riding and when I got home, my mother told me that Jeffrey Collins had gotten killed over in Vietnam. The next day, the American flag at the service station was at half-staff and everyone in Beachmont was sad. All I could think was if we had managed to stop the war already, Jeffrey Collins would still be alive.

  “It’s not your fault,” my father told me that night as we watched Walter Cronkite report bombing raids over North Vietnam. “This war has made a mess out of everything. I don’t know where we’re heading, but this war is tearing us apart. I’ll tell you what,” he went on, in an effort to cheer me up, “let’s go to the Mets game tomorrow night. Seaver’s pitching. It’ll take your mind off things.”

  My father loved the Mets because they were underdogs and they were fighting for respect, just like he was. So the next evening, Dad and I drove down the New England Thruway and over the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge to Shea Stadium. On the radio, the Easybeats sang about having fun in the city with “Friday on my Mind,” and then Cousin Louie introduced “I’m a Man” by the Spencer Davis Group.

  “How can you listen to this stuff?” my father asked me. “When I was your age, I listened to Mozart and Beethoven.”

  It was great having my father all to myself. As we took our seats behind home plate in the upper deck at Shea Stadium, all I could see was a broad expanse of green. Soon Tom Seaver took the field, along with all of my baseball heroes like Bud Harrelson, Cleon Jones, and Jerry Grote. They beat the Houston Astros by three to two, with Seaver getting the win and Jerry Buchek hitting the game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth. The thousands of fans at Shea Stadium went crazy and, for a little while, I forgot about the war in Vietnam and Jeffrey Collins getting killed, and the fact that Billy Collins hated my guts.

  On the way home, as we crossed over the Bronx-

  Whitestone Bridge, Dad looked straight ahead at the taillights of the cars in front and said, “You know, Adam, you’ve become a strong person. You have things to say and you are saying them. You are becoming a man, and I am proud of you.”

  Holy cow, I thought. Is this really my dad speaking?

  “Just do one thing for me,” he went on. “Try not to get too attached to Dr. King, because what he’s doing is very dangerous. He is rising up against great powers just like we tried to do in Germany. You never know what these powers will do in return.”

  We drove the rest of the way home in silence, but I had a new understanding of my father from that moment. We all have great struggles in our lives, and we have to learn to overcome obstacles and chart our own individual paths. As we pulled into our driveway, I could see the light on in the TV room and I knew that my mother was waiting up for us.

  “Dad,” I said as I got out of the car, “I want to do the bar mitzvah. I have some things I want to say.”

  In my room, I sat at my desk and started to write. It was late and I was tired, but the Mets game had energized me, and the conversation with my father had inspired me.

  Dear Mr. Collins and Billy, I began. I’m sorry about Jeffrey. I hope you feel better soon. Sincerely, Adam Jacobs.

  I put the letter in an envelope, wrote the Collins’ address on the front, then licked a five-cent stamp and stuck it on the envelope. I would mail it tomorrow. Then I crawled into bed, turning my transistor radio to WABC. Cousin Louie was playing “When I Was Young,” by Eric Burdon and the Animals. Holding the radio to my ear, I listened to Eric Burdon sing about his faith being stronger when he was young. I drifted off to sleep thinking about Tom Seaver and the New York Mets, about Sally and Gladys and Martin Luther King.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I suppose you could say that Beachmont was your typical bedroom community, but down by the water, the Beachmont Manor section of town was especially beautiful with its old-fashioned houses, tree-lined streets, and Manor Park on the Long Island Sound. Many of the streets were named after trees, such as Oak Avenue where I lived, and Willow Avenue where Jimmy and Sally lived, and others such as Chestnut Avenue, Magnolia Avenue, Maple Avenue, Hazel Lane, and Walnut Avenue. These streets were lined with trees of the kind they were named after. During the spring, the buds on the trees started to appear and open, and our town became more and more green as the weather got warmer and the days got longer. The houses in the Manor had pretty front lawns with beds of daffodils, tulips, pansies, or pachysandra closed in by white picket fences. It was a peaceful place to walk or ride your bike and as the days got warmer, I invariably found myself down at Willow Park shooting baskets with Jimmy or, if Jimmy wasn’t around, by myself.

  After I posted the letter to the Collinses in the mailbox on the corner of Beachmont Avenue and the Boston Post Road, I rode my bicycle home and then I bounced my basketball down to Willow Park. In between shots, I looked down toward the reeds where our clubhouse was, and up the cr
eek toward the Sound, watching the ducks and geese flying overhead. I had been shooting baskets for half an hour before Jimmy showed up. He stole the ball from me as I was dribbling and went in for a layup.

  “Chump!” he yelled over to me.

  “Idiot!” I yelled back.

  “Dork!”

  “Stupid!”

  Jimmy stopped for a second.

  “Sorry,” I added.

  “Hey, wise guy,” Jimmy went on, “did you tell your father about the bar mitzvah?”

  “I changed my mind,” I said. “I’m going through with it.”

  “Why?” Jimmy asked.

  “I’ve got something to say,” I replied.

  “Hey, guess what?” a voice cried out. It was Sally running, red-faced and excited, from her house to the basketball court where Jimmy and I were playing.

  “What?” we both asked in unison.

  “Cousin Louie’s going to put us on the radio!” Sally exclaimed breathlessly as she drew closer.

  “Are you kidding?” I asked in amazement.

  “He saw the demonstration on TV, and he wants us to come over to his house!”

  So that afternoon, Sally’s mother drove us over to Cousin Louie’s house, across the street from the stream that emptied into the duck pond.

  Cousin Louie met us at the door and took us into his study, where he had framed photographs of himself in company with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and even Elvis Presley. A reel-to-reel tape recorder with a large microphone sat on the table. Cousin Louie told us about how we must speak slowly and enunciate carefully and not be nervous. He said he’d ask us questions about how we met Martin Luther King and why we decided to have our demonstration, so we’d know what to expect.

  “Now, kids,” Cousin Louie went on, “just speak into the microphone as if you are talking only to me.”