A Freewheelin' Time Read Online Free PDF

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    My father worked at Mergenthaler, a linotype factory near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He was a shop steward for the union and well liked by his coworkers, even though they were aware of his politics.
    He had bought a car, which made the trip to Brooklyn from Queens a little easier. When he had the heart attack he was driving home from work. My mother was very anxious because he was unusually late. When he finally made it home, he could barely climb the stairs. Apparently he had stopped the car by the side of the road several times to wait for the pain to subside before continuing.
    He took a medical leave from work and began to paint and to cook. It was strange having someone at home when I returned from school. Painting with oils was difficult in a small apartment, so instead he used gouache or watercolors, and he did a lot of drawing. I would often pose for him when I got home but after he died, in the upheavals that ensued, somehow the drawings were lost.
    His coworkers from the Mergenthaler factory visited him on weekends, and when the decision was made to leave his job for good, they took up a collection and bought us a television set. He planned to work as a freelance illustrator and take up painting again. Despite the fact that he had suffered a heart attack, he was noticeably happier. He sang as he worked on drawings at the kitchen table.
    He continued to smoke, however, even though the doctor told him to quit. Both he and my mother smoked unfiltered Chesterfield cigarettes. By then so did my sister, but maybe she smoked something with a filter, newly on the market. Not too many years later, I took up the family tradition.
    Just when he seemed to be getting stronger, my father was hit by some sort of ministroke that left half of his face paralyzed. I was embarrassed to have my friends see him with his face held together with medical tape, looking disfigured. Gradually the feeling in his face came back, but he did not look well. He was thin and drawn and looked much older than his years.
    On top of this, my mother had been diagnosed with an overactive thyroid and an ulcer; it was a highly stressful time. I was in my junior year of high school, and Carla had started Hunter College.

    Socialist realism for Christmas
    We both traveled by bus and subway to our respective schools, but at different times, so our paths never crossed. On an unusually mild February day, considering there had been a snowstorm a few days before, my sister chose to go home right after her last class ended, and we caught the same bus at the Roosevelt Avenue subway station.
    We thought that it was an odd thing for us to meet and we laughed over the coincidence. On the three-block walk home from the bus, we were in a good mood. Just a few yards from the apartment, Selma Shill came running out, calling, Girls, girls, come here! She sounded frantic. She ushered us in to her house to block our view of our father’s car, motor running loudly, with him slumped over the steering wheel.
    Selma was saying over and over that something terrible had happened. And of course it had. Our father had been headed to meet his painter friend, Ralph Fasanella, who worked in a gas station for many years and wasn’t discovered until the 1970s, to see the studio they were planning to rent together. Afterwards he was to pick up our mother at Dr. Rosen’s office in Manhattan. My father had gone to the car, turned on the motor, and died. Selma said later that she kept hearing this strange sound, and when she looked out her window, she saw him in the car. Realizing what had happened she called an ambulance and then sat in wait for it and for us. At some point I saw from the window my father lying on the ground in front of the building, covered by a sheet. A crowd had gathered. People were standing nearby staring, and the neighborhood kids were dancing around and playing. They had no idea the sky had fallen. It was fortunate that my sister and I came