Seen and Unseen

Travels with Mom and Dad

There are photos of a trip to Panama that they remembered, but I have no memory of that. And we took the train to San Francisco to visit “Uncle Cyril,” but I only have a vague memory of that trip. But I do vividly remember trips to Los Angeles, to visit my godmother, Mabel Howard.

Godmother Mabel had been my grandmother Alma’s best friend in New York, and when Mom went to Hollywood to make movies, my grandmother sent Mabel to “look after the little girl.”

Looking after “the little girl” must have been a challenge. Mom was just over 20 years old when she started making movies, earning $1 million a year in today’s money; according to one article, she was the highest paid African American in Hollywood. And as Mom later described those years to me, she said, “Your mother was a holy terror,” playing elaborate practical jokes with her pals Bing Crosby and then, on the east coast, with Frank Sinatra.

But I didn’t see any of that. By the early 1950s, she was playing concerts – I remember the Hollywood Bowl – and appearing on TV.

On one trip, she was performing in a prime time variety show originating from CBS Television City in L.A., and I went along for a rehearsal. One of her friends was Art Linkletter, who hosted “House Party,” a popular daytime show on CBS; he asked her whether I could go on his show. Ask him, she said, pointing to me. While I had been in the Peanut Gallery on NBC (“What time is it, kids?” The shouted response: “IT’S HOWDY DOODY TIME!!!”) While that was a kids show, this was for adults. What could be so different?

Soon I was seated in a row with three other children for Linkletter’s daily talk with little kids. He turned it into a book, Kids Say the Darndest Things, but I don’t remember signing a release. It was just live TV, and he was asking our ages and what we wanted to be when we grew up. So he walked over to me and asked, How old are you? “Five,” I replied. “And what do you want to be when you are older?” “Six,” I said. He and the audience laughed. What was so funny? Adults are so weird.

And then there was Linkletter’s sponsor, a food company, and there on the set was an absolutely delicious plate of pineapple. I started to take a piece, but a stagehand warned, “Stop! It’s covered with motor oil.” Motor oil? That made it look more appealing on black and white television. Remember, nothing is as it seems.

After Mom’s TV show was canceled, my parents and I started to travel to Europe every summer, in 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1954. In those days, Congress was only in session until May – the Capitol wasn’t air conditioned! – so no need to take the Congressional Limited express to DC. Instead, we would spend the summer overseas.

On that first trip, we sailed on the Queen Mary, and it was a very rough passage. Winston Churchill was onboard, and he had to be in London for an important meeting, so we sailed right through a storm. And that is when I discovered I don’t get seasick.

Most of our crossings were on the SS United States, a new American ocean liner that set a speed record across the Atlantic, a record which has never been broken. Designed by the brilliant naval architect William Francis Gibbs, the SS US was built to be converted in the event of war into a military vessel, a high-speed troop carrier, and when we sailed on it, much of the ship was still classified, including the propulsion system.

Of course one incentive for us was that Members of Congress and their families could travel on the SS US at a fraction of the regular price. Another incentive for Dad was that, given his rank, he could go below to the engine room and hang out with the crew there. Once I went with him; I just remember it was hot and full of huge machines. Later I learned that the steam powering the propellers was under such pressure, to deliver such speed, that if a hole had opened in one of the huge steel tubes, anyone nearby could be killed instantly. (Now you can read about it in A Man and His Ship: America’s Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States, by Steven Ujifusa.)

My mother’s most vivid memory of the SS US, which I also remember, was one crossing when the three of us were accompanied by my grandmother Irene, my grandfather’s second wife. The four of us were in one of the ship’s elevators when a woman entered, recognized my father, and looking around smiled and congratulated him on his wonderful family, especially his wife and lovely son and daughter. Mom was furious, having been mistaken as my sister; Dad just smiled and said thank you.

That was also the only time I have been sick at sea. But no, I was not seasick: Just before leaving New York, I felt terrible, and I took my temperature and discovered I had a fever. To make certain they didn’t leave me behind, I concealed my illness until we set sail and the pilot boats left us to head into the Atlantic. Then I told my parents I felt terrible.

The ship’s doctor quickly diagnosed my illness – pneumonia – and confined me to my cabin.

That was pretty boring, sitting inside all day staring out the port holes with meals wheeled in. But then I discovered that there was a door from my cabin to the adjacent cabin. So I unlocked my side of the door and tapped lightly, and lo and behold, it was unlocked and opened from the other side by a man who broke into a big smile and introduced himself.

“Hello, I’m Jack!”

The passenger next door was Senator John F. Kennedy. I must have introduced myself, and Kennedy must have quickly realized I was his colleague’s son. Before serving in the U.S. Senate, Kennedy been elected to the House of Representatives in 1946, two years after my father was first elected. They had been good friends on the Hill. And Kennedy was also confined to his cabin for reasons I never knew.

We decided to keep the door open between our cabins, and ever the political trader, said he would like me to arrange for him to have one of my father’s Cuban cigars. And what could he do for me in return?

Chocolate ice cream! I said he could order chocolate ice cream for dessert and give it to me, so I would have seconds in addition to the ice cream I always ordered. When my father returned, I told him of Kennedy’s plan, which Dad pronounced “quite fair” and handed me a cigar to give to Kennedy. Ever the good politician, JFK remembered that years later when we met in the Oval Office, joking the White House chocolate ice cream was quite good. (There was more to that meeting, but we will get to that later.)

On our first trip, much of London was still rubble, rebuilding from the German air raids of World War II. But the Underground was running, and as a child of the New York subway system, that became my favorite way to explore from our home base, the Marble Arch station.

We rented a flat in Mayfair, and Mom had a series of engagements, including at the invitation of then Princess (not yet Queen) Elizabeth. The only one I remember was the Palladium, which gave Mom a small silver plaque with her name and “London Palladium.”

We also met my grandfather’s friend, Hannen Swaffer, a reporter and drama critic who was said to have discovered George Bernard Shaw. Mom called him “Swaff.” I never learned how grandfather knew him (had he made many trips to London?), but they were contemporaries: My grandfather was born in 1865, and Swaff was born in 1879. To my eyes, Swaff was incredibly old – 79 on our first trip. My most vivid memory of him was that he never knocked the ashes off of his cigarettes. They would just get longer and longer until they fell onto his lap.

We also took a sleeper train to Glasgow, where Mom was booked for a concert. My main memory of that trip was when my mother’s hairdresser, Pearl Swangin (and not so incidentally one of the Abyssinia church ladies), looked out hotel the window, turned to us and said, “Mrs. P, there are some people here to see you.” I walked over and, indeed, a crowd had gathered below our balcony. Mom: “Tell them I’ll be right out.” So Pearl opened the doors to the balcony and shouted, “She will be right out.” But before Mom could get to the balcony, there was a roar from the crowd. And that is when we learned that the guest in the suite above ours had just appeared on her balcony. It was Princess Elizabeth.

Then we traveled around Europe, my mother playing concerts and entertaining the troops, and my father making unannounced visits to U.S. military bases to see how Black troops were being treated. He brought me along on a few of these trips, always an adventure. When my father appeared without notice at the front gate, the G.I.’s on duty would contact the base commander, who would always rush to meet him, saying there would be a reception for him in the officers’ club. Dad would always wave him off, saying he first wanted to visit the motor pool. The motor pool was where he could talk to privates about conditions on the base.

The times I went, the guys would hold back, until Dad asked whether anyone had a pack of cards, and they would start a game. (Dad could count cards, but he always let the guys win.) That broke the ice – and more. By the time he went to the officers’ club, he had enough information for a frank conversation with the base commander.

Sometimes we flew military aircraft, which they let me pilot (sort of) once we reached altitude. But whenever we flew commercial, our rule was to stay on the plane until all of the other passengers had disembarked. The reason was that, in the days before jet bridges (or jet planes), photographers were waiting down on the tarmac to take pictures of Mom and Dad, and the shot they wanted was of them in the aircraft’s doorway, waving, often with a flight attendant at their side. If we didn’t waited to be the last to disembark, we would hold up the other passengers.

We went to a number of cities in Italy, but I only remember Venice, for the canals, and Rome, for a television show. Mom was playing the piano on RAI, then the only Italian TV network, when a stage manager rushed out and put handkerchiefs all over her bare shoulders. She looked around, puzzled, but kept playing. I asked why they were covering my mother’s shoulders; the answer: “The Pope is watching!”

And we always spent time in Paris. We stayed at two military hotels, the Littré (which seems to have moved) or the Powers (now the five-star Grand Powers). The George V metro station was nearby, so that became my home base. Paris was and is a great city to explore on foot, whatever your age. One regular hangout for me was the American Embassy, just off the Place Concorde. Just west of the Embassy and the Annex was a park with a playground, carousel, and more.

Sometimes I could stay up late to go to dinner with Mom and Dad. Their favorite restaurant, Le Grand Véfour, old enough to have served Napoleon Bonaparte and Victor Hugo. It is still there, still honored by Michelin, and for the past few decades, I have dined there every time I have been in town.

Today Guy Martin rules over the kitchen with distinction, but in the 1950s the great Raymond Oliver reigned. My parents no doubt ordered his specialties, and he also prepared, for me, my favorite vegetable, spinach, along something that today would be considered from a kiddie menu: hamburger and mashed potatoes. And I still remember: they were always really good hamburgers and mashed potatoes. That was when I also became a fan of mushrooms, which were brought on the side. It’s only recently that I discovered the sauce for one of his asparagus dishes was based on egg yolks and butter. Cuisine minceur had not yet arrived. Today I am more adventurous, but I try to limit egg yolks and butter.

Other destinations I remember well include Copenhagen, where I learned quite a bit of Danish. I was shocked a few years ago when, watching the Danish TV series “Borgen,” I could understand much of the dialogue without reading the subtitles. We also went to North Africa, but I have very little memory of those stops.

On that first trip in 1951, we also flew to the then three-year-old state of Israel, where we were greeted warmly by the Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. He said something to me that was so odd, to my five-year-old mind, that I have always remembered it: He asked whether I could read Hebrew. No, I replied, but my mother did (she spoke several languages). Ben-Gurion urged me to learn Hebrew. Otherwise, he said, “reading the Bible is like kissing through a handkerchief.” (Like what? What does that mean? It was not until years later that later I understood what he meant.)

And my father always wanted to go to Germany, so every summer he and I went there, without Mom. In addition to his surprise visits to military bases, he always wanted to make two special stops. Dad was fluent in German – I never knew why. Back in New York, on some weekends, he and I would go to the German bars and restaurants on East 86^th Street where he would talk to everyone in German. But in Europe, he was fascinated by Germany, and by the years just before World War II.

Dad knew his way around Berlin without a map. By the time we visited, after the war, the city was divided into four occupied zones, run by the US, the UK, France and the USSR, and we kept walking into the Soviet zone, my father pointing down the street, saying he remembered landmarks including a “really decadent” night club there. We had diplomatic passports, so the Soviet soldiers would just march us back out of their zone. But what was he remembering, from when? I didn’t think much of it; it was just Dad.

The other stop he always made was to fly to the US military base at Garmisch, where we would pick up a military driver to drive to… a trout stream. Dad was obsessed by this trout stream. He said the biggest, fattest fish were under a bush, where it was hard to cast because the branches reached almost to the water. So there we would stand, the three of us, in hip boots in the stream. Sometimes he would fish for two days, and we would always stay at the same hotel in a nearby village.

But those were our first trips to Europe: Why was he so obsessed with Berlin and by this trout stream? And why were Mom and Dad greeted so warmly by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion? I didn’t give it much thought: it was just Mom and Dad.

It was only in later decades that I learned hints of what my father was doing there and how he knew those two places so well. But that is for the chapter after next.