Mr. Mossbacher let our YCL leaders, mostly good physics students, hang out at his house. He let us eat all the candy we wanted and did not kick us out at 8 pm. We were in heaven! We stayed as long as we liked, discussing heady subjects. That included the stuff the universe was made of. And we dreamed of socialism and how we could win it. I changed my passion from biology to physics. But first we had to win the revolution because that was more urgent. That summer, we all graduated. Then Mr. Mossbacher took a cruise to Europe on a well-deserved vacation. He came back in a box. Only 34, he suffered a fatal heart attack on board the cruise ship. He had no children and had never married. He remained single, as the story went, because he knew about the heart condition. But in a way, we were his children.
For many of us, it was the first death that struck so close. Years before, I had seen my eight-year old friend crying as I walked to school. Her eyes were blood shot and she looked so sad. “My sister died last night,” she told me. I knew her sister and I was sad, too. There had also been a death in the family above us in my old apartment building. “Shhh! Be quiet,” we were told. Our parents stopped us from playing and laughing for fear we would disturb the grieving family. “They are sitting shiva,” we were warned. That meant they sat on the floor, tore their clothes and smeared ashes on their face. And then, of course, there was the baby brother who had died when I was an infant. My mother had cried when I asked about him. Death was hard to accept and we did not believe in life after death. But over the years, we learned to see our immortality in a better future for humanity.
Our physics-YCL group scattered to different places. In 1934, The Bronx and Manhattan City Colleges were free of tuition. They even issued free textbooks that we returned at the end of the semester. Only those with higher grades on statewide “Regents” exams were admitted. Very few students of color made it into the City Colleges. No women could attend CCNY (City College of New York). CCNY was only for men and Hunter College was only for women. So I had to attend Hunter even though they did not have the engineering classes or the advanced physics classes that were offered at CCNY. We Hunter freshmen attended a separate branch at 32nd Street because the main building at 68th St. was overcrowded. I had classes at both buildings. I had a nickel to take the subway between classes but no money for lunch. It was an easy decision. I spent the nickel for a big candy bar and walked from 32nd to 68th Street, several times a week.
In the freshmen school lunchroom, a half-pint of milk cost 5 ¢. To our dismay, a sign went up warning that milk was going up to 6 ¢. Students, coming from depression-struck homes, were outraged. The price for a whole quart of milk was then 9 ¢. Our YCL club decided to organize a boycott. We stayed up all night producing a leaflet to announce our boycott. First, we had to write the leaflet. That wasn’t too hard because BOYCOTT 6 ¢ MILK took up two-thirds of the page. Then we had to make 500 copies. That was hard. Wet-ink mimeograph duplicators seldom worked right and we ended up putting in the sheets one at a time. In the process, we got ink over everything. The next morning we weren’t sleepy because excitement kept our adrenaline flowing.
The boycott was a huge success. Students massed around our table. I had to climb on top of the table to be heard. I did not realize that the Dean of Students had come into the lunchroom. The first I knew of her presence, she was standing on a table, too, trying to break up our protest. It was too late to be diplomatic; I am afraid that I had already called her a fascist. We were saved by the bell because it was time for class. The next day, milk was back to 5 ¢. As for the Dean, I suspect that she was not really a fascist. She was best known for insisting on proper dress for “ladies.” “Only Communists or prostitutes would be seen in public without a hat,” was one of her pearls of wisdom.
to be continued...
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