Bernie Sanders Came Home to Brooklyn I Knew

In the quadrangle where Gilda and I walked (not always together) more than a thousand times between classes at Brooklyn College, Bernie Sanders kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign Saturday. 

For Bernie it was a return, somewhat, to his roots. He grew up about a mile away, in a three-and-a-half room, rent-controlled apartment at the intersection of Kings Highway and East 26th Street. I passed that corner twice every day on my bus ride to and from my elementary school. Bernie attended Brooklyn College for one year, 1960, before transferring to the University of Chicago (

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/02/bernie-sanders-gets-personal-2020-presidential-campaign-rollout/3040149002/).

BC was and still is a commuter school. Students go home for the night, generally to their parents’ residence, not to a dormitory or fraternity/sorority house. When Gilda and I attended in the late 1960s BC had some 30,000 students. After our marriage and move to Seymour, Conn., outside New Haven, Gilda had to explain to Jewish women, amazed at our good fortune to have found a fellow Jew among the student body to wed, that it was nearly impossible to escape dating a member of the tribe back then as Jews comprised an overwhelming majority of those enrolled.

Sanders is considered a radical by some because of his label as a Social Democrat and his advocacy of progressive programs including universal health care, free tuition at all public universities and a $15  hourly minimum wage.

Truth is, BC was a hotbed of radicalism from the time it opened its doors in 1930. Leftists and Communists were plentiful on campus (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/bc/index.html). Extremism gave way to more mainstream liberalism by the 1950s. Until the mid 1960s male students were required to wear ties with sports jackets or suits; women could not wear slacks. 

By the time my freshman year started in September 1966, BC had become a rather folksy place. You could wear jeans and hang out in the cafeteria all day, if you’d like (as I did). The campus did close down during the Vietnam War protests as the decade came to a close, but the atmosphere as I recall it was nothing like the student revolt at Columbia University in Manhattan. 

Though a part of the City University of New York system, Brooklyn College nationally was considered a top liberal arts institution. Only students with an above average combined SAT and high school grade point score could attend. All at a cost of $50 per semester, equivalent today to $391.33. Books were extra. 

The year I graduated Brooklyn adopted an open admissions policy to anyone with a high school degree. The campus quickly changed. No longer could it be cast as a “white bread” campus. Academic standards deteriorated. It took several years before the open admissions policy was reversed.

The campus Bernie Sanders visited Saturday has been greatly transformed by new buildings on both sides of Bedford Avenue. Guarded gates now surround entrances from the neighborhood of single family homes and moderate height apartment houses. A few years ago, during a nostalgic tour of the Brooklyn of our youth, Gilda and I talked our way past a security guard to gain entry to the campus. Memories overwhelmed us. Good memories. 

Regret Is Not An Apology

I’m starting to get really, really worried. Donald Trump and I seem to share an increasing number of traits and experiences. Like Trump, I evaded the draft during the Vietnam War by flunking my military physical in 1970 and receiving a 1-Y deferment. My draft lottery number of 139 was high enough, like Trump’s, not to be called in subsequent years.

Fast forward to 2016. We both have a tendency to spout the wrong things when agitated. But where I have always apologized for my indiscretions, The Donald never ever backtracked, never ever apologized. Thursday, in Charlotte, NC, Trump looked like he was eating crow, admitting that sometimes his mouth runs a little faster than his brain.

“Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it.

“And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues,” Trump told a rally of his supporters.

But wait. My apologies always cite my specific transgressions. Trump was vague. He never delineated what exactly he regretted. Was it his slur of a Gold Star family? Was it his deprecation of prisoners of war and specifically John McCain for getting captured? Was it his demeaning Mexico and its people? Was it his undermining of the legitimate election of Barack Obama with his advocacy of the birther movement? Was it his scary, unprecedented request for Russia to hack the emails of his opponent? Was it his veiled invitation to second amendment advocates to take out Hillary Clinton before she could take away their guns, which, by the way, as president she would not have the power to do but which Trump riles up his audience with the suggestion she does? Was it his consistent fabrication of the truth, be it his alleging Obama and Clinton founded ISIS, or they wanted to engage in nation building in the Middle East, or that he never supported the invasion of Iraq, or any number of other deliberate misstatements of the truth? Was it his heartless ridicule of a physically handicapped reporter?

Funny, Trump blamed the heat of the moment during debates for his foul mouth disease. But all those apology worthy examples cited above came out during speeches or tweets or interviews when he had ample time to consider what he was saying.

We just don’t know what he regrets because Trump hasn’t told us specifically what he regrets. It is like his plans to end terrorism or improve the economy or solve the racial divide in the country. We just have to trust him that he will do a fabulous job and do it quickly.

So I guess I’m not really like him. I apologize in specific detail. With a promise not to do it again. Trump offers no such assurance of future behavior, especially since the one on one debates with Clinton are more than a month away from starting and just days ago he double-downed on his behavior by vowing to act the same way he has throughout the primary season and general election campaign.

I regret when I say something untoward. I regret that my incendiary words elicit offense, hurt, pain and any number of other reactions. And, I regret the loss of stature in the eyes of those I’ve offended and those who heard me. I regret my embarrassment. I regret that I have to apologize for my actions.

No doubt, Trump regrets the drop in his poll numbers from his insults and diatribes. 

But regret does not encompass or substitute for an apology. Donald Trump needs to specifically apologize to those he has demeaned and to the American public for dragging the political campaign for the highest office in the land down to the lowest depth of any modern day candidate.

Symbol of Oppression

I can’t explain or understand why, but one of my father’s favorite shows when he was just a few years older than I am now was The Dukes of Hazzard. Friday nights after dinner, whether we were visiting my parents in Brooklyn or they were with us in White Plains, he’d watch Bo and Luke Duke do their shenanigans while riding around in the General Lee, their orange Dodge Charger with a Confederate battle flag painted on the roof. To enter and exit the car the Dukes had to climb in or out through the side windows.

Sitting next to my father during these TV times would be our son Dan, all of five years old when the series ended its six-year run. So it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to me that one day during his formative years, when Dan and I were riding around in my Chevy Vega hatchback, he asked if he could get out of the car “like the Dukes.” 

The General Lee is back in the news. After the massacre of nine Afro-American parishioners in Charleston, SC, by a white supremest who posed for pictures with the Confederate battle flag, professional golfer Bubba Watson has removed the flag from his copy of the General Lee, replacing it with an American flag.  

As a symbol of oppression, the Confederate battle flag ranks right up there with the Nazi swastika and the Communist hammer and sickle. And, if we’re going to be historically correct and objective, with the Christian cross and the crescent of Islam, both religious symbols used to subjugate and annihilate millions of non-believers down through the centuries, throughout the world. Perhaps in another posting I’ll delve deeper into the realm of religious conflagrations that continue to this day, in the case of Islam, for example, or the once daily strife in Northern Ireland, or the genocide in Bosnia. In the interim, you can look up the histories of numerous wars, invasions and mass murders done in the name of religion.

For now, let’s confine ourselves to the table talk discussion at hand, the meaning, and thus the fate, of the Confederate battle flag. Flying the flag, its supporters say, respects those who died fighting for the Confederacy, the heritage of the South, its history, its way of life. They reject any suggestion that it stands for racism, segregation and white supremacy. 

The flag went into battle, they say, in the War Between the States.

In not recognizing that conflict as The Civil War, they fail to understand and accept that the cause they so faithfully cherish was fought, and the soldiers who fell under its banner died, to preserve the right to own another human being! 

The whole foundation of the South was built on slavery. Today’s Republican electoral domination of the South is based on gerrymandered districts and restrictive voting rights laws that diminish the power of Afro-Americans. 

The Confederate battle flag has come to represent a distilled segment of disobedience, of rejection of the common good. Rebellion. A belief that majority rule does not apply if it undermines outdated, biased, principles. 

It is interesting to recall that during the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, or the resistance to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one, to my memory, ever rallied dissenters by waving the Confederate flag. Yet, when the nation finally started to recognize and do something about inequality in the 1950’s and into the 1960’s, the Confederate battle flag reappeared across the South. 

Coincidence? Hardly. The Stars and Bars were meant to send a signal that just as Afro-Americans were not equal citizens in the Old South their status would be no different in the New South.   

Anyone who defends the public showing of the Confederate flag except in a display inside a museum just doesn’t get it. And if they haven’t after all that happened in Charleston and around the country over the last year, they probably never will.

Veterans Day Commemorations, Good and Bad

They picked up our garbage today as they normally do on Tuesdays. Last Tuesday they didn’t. It was Election Day. An homage to the right we enjoy in a democratic country to choose our leaders. 

But I am more than a little befuddled by the choice of our local government and union officials (I’m assuming the sanitation crew and the rest of the public works team are unionized) to consider November 11 as just another ordinary garbage collection day. The day we have designated to honor those who fought on our behalf to preserve the right to vote freely and live in freedom should not be a throwaway day. Veterans fought to preserve the rights of workers to unionize. How could any union, or for that matter non-union, worker not honor their sacrifice? 

Garbage collection is suspended 10 days of the year. Memorial Day, when we remember those who died in defense of our country, is one of them. So is Columbus Day. Given all we now know about the impact discovery of the New World by Europeans had on indigenous populations, perhaps we might want to rethink our commitment to the Great Admiral and instead rededicate our devotion to those who served and protected our freedom and way of life by giving Veterans Day its proper respect. 

Despite being of the optimal age for service during the Vietnam War, I am not a veteran. I earned a deferment for being underweight for my height (for details. Follow this link: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/11/veterans-day-salutes.html).

I thought I’d share with you a recent post on the jewishcurrents.org Web site about who served in the Vietnam War:

The first American casualty of the Vietnam War was killed during a training mission on October 21 in 1957. Of the 58,193 Americans in the military who died in that war, only 269 were Jewish. Jews were protesting instead of fighting: In 1964, they were twice as likely as Protestants and Catholics to favor a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam; by 1970, when a majority of Protestants and Catholics still favored fighting or even escalating the war, half of American Jews favored an immediate pullout. A 1966-67 survey by the American Council of Education revealed that the best single predictor of anti-war campus protests was a high proportion of Jewish students.

Have you seen the new Air Force TV commercial? It’s a slap in the face of Barack Obama. The ad features inspirational quotes from four presidents: Reagan, Kennedy, Bush II and Clinton. Not a word from, or even an image of, Obama. Shameful! I’ll resist detailing why each of those presidents had tarnished times as commander-in-chief. Like it or not, Obama has been a wartime president. He should have been included in that ad. 

Speaking of shameful, what’s with all the recent Nazi memorabilia stories? In the last six weeks three tasteless Nazi-related stories surfaced:

First, a supplier to Sears and Amazon placed on their Web sites rings bearing the Nazi swastika. Though quickly removed, it was a stunning example of poor taste topped by the second example, that of a Swiss company that somehow felt it appropriate to put pictures of Hitler and Mussolini on packages of its coffee creamer. 

The third incident is more sinister. Unknown parties earlier this month stole a sign above the gate to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. The sign bore the infamous slogan, “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free), that the Nazis placed in their forced labor and death camps. 

It’s a chilling reminder that reactionary forces are on the rise in Europe, again.

One year before the guns of the Great War went silent at 11 am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 my mother was born in Lodg, Poland. With two sisters (a third would be born in America) and a brother, she traveled to New York in 1921 with their mother to join their father who had emigrated earlier. She would be 97 if alive today.

Back to the Stone Age

In the wake of the killings of four American diplomats Tuesday night in the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, now thought to be perpetrated by adherents to or sympathizers with al-Qaeda, and angry mobs in several Moslem countries protesting against the United States and other Western countries over a less than flattering depiction of the prophet Mohammed in a movie produced by right wing Christian conservatives, it’s time to ask a fundamental question—would we all be better off reconsidering monotheism in favor of good old-fashioned polytheism? 

Seems to me the ancients fought wars just for the sake of conquest, not in the name of religion. It was a whole lot easier back then to know your enemy and to defend yourself. Nowadays, at least from the time Jehovah told the Israelites to rid Canaan of the seven nations who lived there, or maybe even before that when He smote the Egyptians with 10 plagues so the Hebrews slaves could be freed to worship Him in the desert, societies have been killing each other over which one has the one true god. 

Back in those idolatrous times, gods didn’t move around. They had territorial boundaries. Only when monotheism expressed a universal presence did the concept of a singular god residing everywhere take hold, with the inference that He could be conjured up to save the souls of Indians, Black Africans, Asians and other indigenous peoples not privileged to have been touched by the grace of Jesus or Mohammed. 

Of course, even those so graced have not been immune to religious warfare. Catholics have fought among themselves. Catholics have fought Protestants. Russian Orthodox have fought among themselves. Christians have fought Muslims. Muslims have fought Muslims. All of the above have fought Jews. Religions that espouse peace and love for all are guilty not just of denying peace and love to outsiders but also to sects within their own religion. In the name of god, how could we allow such a defamation of religion to occur?

Muslim extremists have usurped their religion’s embodiment to the world. The West is appalled by Sharia law practices. In Northern Mali, thieves had hands and feet cut off in public demonstrations of justice. Accused of adultery, men and women have been stoned to death in Afghanistan. Honor killings are still common in backwater villages. Western nations are powerless to stop these practices. Indeed, many Muslim extremists welcome a return to the era of the Caliphates, back to the 7th to 12th centuries. 

Perhaps we should let them go back in time. It is futile and foolish to believe we will ever be able to soothe the savage breast of a people who reject Western culture and codes of behavior. As insulting and provocative as the film “Innocence of Muslims” may be, it fell within the bounds of freedom of speech cherished by Western societies. This wasn’t the first time the Muslim world has reacted violently to the alleged slander of Mohammed. Nor can we expect it to be the last, given our tilt away from censorship except in extreme cases of national security. Perhaps the answer is disengagement.

Let’s put aside for a moment the West’s collective need for oil buried under the sands of Arabia. Let’s consider how we might disengage and assist the Muslim world in its quest for yesteryear. Let’s start by not supplying them with any modern convenience—no TVs, no cars, no cell phones, no computers, no radios, no modern medicines, no irrigation projects, no aircraft, no trains, no Internet, no indoor plumbing, nothing but handwritten books, no modern military equipment. You get the picture. 

Naturally, this idea has more than its share of problems and hyperbole. We’d never get the industrialized world to embargo its goods to Muslim countries. And we still need its oil. But we really must figure out a way to stimulate a culture war within Islam, forcing its citizens to choose if they’d like to live in the 21st or 10th century.  

During the Vietnam War, General Curtis LeMay suggested we bomb North Vietnam “back into the Stone Age.” I’m not comfortable with that game plan. I think we’d have a better shot at world peace if we voluntarily return to idolatry. 

The Loss of Innocence

When did you lose your innocence? When did the reality of death intrude into your idyllic concept of life?

For me, and for most of my Yeshivah of Flatbush high school classmates, it happened the summer after we graduated, when we found out Moe Radinsky had died.

We had known Moe for a scant two years, yet the impression he left on us was that of a figure larger than life. Indeed, he was larger than most of us, no less than 200 pounds, a husky 6’2” or so, with thick, dark, wavy hair, and a gap-toothed smile under horn-rimmed black eyeglasses. He entered our lives at the beginning of our junior year, a transplant to Brooklyn from Seattle. Who knew there were Jews in Seattle?

Whether from nervousness or a sense of confidence, he tried to ingratiate himself by cracking puns whenever possible. They were not good puns. But we grew to love, or at least tolerate, them. More to the point, we grew to love Moe.

Typical of our cloistered upbringing in the 1950s and 1960s, of the 110 students in our graduating year of 1966, only 19 chose a college outside New York City’s borders, and most of those were Ivy League schools. Moe, on the other hand, enrolled at the University of Chicago, the subject of a NY Times article in Saturday’s sports section. Once a powerhouse of college football, the University of Chicago abandoned the sport in 1939. A club football team sprouted up in the late 1950s (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/sports/ncaafootball/at-the-university-of-chicago-football-and-higher-education-mix.html?_r=1&hpw).

A devout fan of the University of Washington Huskies, Moe joined U of C’s club football team. There is no known record of his prowess on the gridiron, but as was related to me during the summer of 1967, he was playing with his young nephew one day when the child kicked him in the shin. Since the pain did not ebb after a few days he sought medical attention. Tests revealed he had bone cancer. He died a few months later.

Teenagers, for that is what we all were at the time, believe they are invincible. Moe’s death shattered that mirage. The Vietnam War raged half a planet away. But that war barely touched us beyond the pictures on the nightly news. We were all draft-deferred. We were safe. Our 2S draft classifications sheltered us from danger.

When the largest oak in the forest tumbles, tremors must run through all the other trees. So it was for many of us. Though grandparents and other relatives had passed away in most of our families, our collective consciousness about mortality and man’s finite existence had not really been challenged. Moe’s sudden passing so far away from all of us brought our innocence to an end.

No Sand in My Face

Jack LaLanne’s death at 96 is as good an occasion as any to take stock of my physical inventory and history.

I was a 98-lb. weakling. I didn’t get sand kicked in my face for the simple reason I stayed away from the beach because I was ashamed of my thin body. To this day I contend I never learned to swim, despite 14 years of summer camp, because I was embarrassed to be in a bathing suit. You could have played my visible ribs like a xylophone.

I’m still a skinny malink, at least in my own mind—I weigh just under 174 pounds narrowly sheathed over a six-foot frame. Muscles? Ha!

As a youngster, I saw all those Charles Atlas ads in the back of comic books. They had no effect on me. Neither did the raw egg-packed milk shakes my sister prepared for me as a youth. My parents threatened to send me to a reverse fat farm instead of normal summer camp, a place where they would stuff me with enough food to bulk me up. My mother said my lousy eating habits propelled her back to full-time work in my father’s business.

But I got the last laugh. I’m your faithful correspondent these days because I beat the military draft in 1970, the height of the Vietnam War. I beat the draft because I was underweight!

When my draft notice came, I took defensive action. The military has a height/weight standard. Minimum weight for six feet is 131 pounds. As I then weighed 134, I had 10 days to lose enough “fat” to get under the minimum. I immediately started the Stillman Water Diet, eating only proteins and drinking 80 ounces of water a day. No carbs, no fruit, no vegetables, just meat, fish, eggs and water.

My mother did a 180—instead of kvetching I was eating too little, she wondered if I was eating too much.

The fateful day at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, I tipped the scales at 124. Low enough with sufficient cushion (pun intended) in case they kept me for three days of observation and stick-to-the-ribs army food. Not to worry. I was 1-Y deferred for a year, never to be called back for another physical.

Over the ensuing 40 years I’ve added 50 pounds but despite being athletically minded I can’t get my body to tone up any muscle. Every so often I initiated a workout regimen, but I quickly lost motivation and commitment.

Gilda religiously goes to the gym. I’ve joined gyms at work and at home, but after an initial flurry of activity—preceded, I might add, by buying more than enough gym shorts and workout shirts to clothe a platoon of Arnold Schwarzeneggers—I lost interest. I think it’s that old body-shame thing, minus the water. Gilda tells me it’s all in my head, that no one is looking at me, that they’re all into their exercise routines. But if I’m looking at them, how could they not be looking at me?

Same thing applies these days to going to the beach, one of Gilda’s favorite excursions. Aside from not enjoying sitting under a broiling sun, I’m very self-conscious about my shape. The beach, after all, is a place people go to see and be seen. It is just not my scene.

It’s funny. When I played a team sport, I had no issue stripping down to the bare essentials. All the time I resisted swimming instruction during camp, I’d be playing basketball, soccer, volleyball, softball in shorts, often with no shirt on. No one ever made fun of my physique. When I pitched in a softball league for 25 years until two years ago, I wore shorts while other players wore pants. The opposing squad, even my own teammates, poked fun at my “chicken legs.” I teased back if they were distracting the batter it was to my advantage.

For all his dedication to creating muscles, Jack LaLanne said he disliked workouts. I couldn’t agree more.

Forty Years Ago Today

Two days after the Kent State University massacre of May 4, 1970, when four students were killed protesting the Vietnam War, I reported to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn for a military physical exam (anyone who has seen Arlo Guthrie’s depiction of his physical in the film Alice’s Restaurant can immediately identify with the experience—scores of young men walking around in their underwear holding clear plastic bags with their valuables while medics poke and prod them and ask for the odd “sample”) .

Rather than conjure up my thoughts of May 6, 1970, I’ll share with you a column I wrote 40 years ago under the title “The Crack of Doom” that appeared that very same day in Calling Card, a Brooklyn College newspaper I edited for 18 months:

“While you are sitting on the grass of the quadrangle or the cafeteria reading this column, I am currently seeking an Armed Forces Physical Examination. At precisely seven o’clock in the morning, I will have presented myself in Building 116 of Fort Hamilton to be tested as to my fitness to serve in the defense of our country. This quirk of fate, an issue of Calling Card coinciding with the date of my first formal introduction to the military, offers me a unique opportunity to express my predicament while, at the same time, undergoing the experience.

“During my high school days I had a history teacher who often lectured the class on the culpability of the Vietnam War. Most of the students, including myself, were rather naïve about the situation , and therefore took a position that, at best, could be described as “our country, right or wrong.” As the years passed and my learning progressed, the wisdom and foresight of my mentor became clearer to me. The need for action on my part was required. However, again with the naivete of youth, I believed that by the time I’d finish college the conflict would be over, I’d be in graduate school, and the spectre of enlistment would pass. During my sophomore year at Brooklyn, the war kept escalating and graduate deferments were limited to medical students. The noose was beginning to tighten around my neck as the options left me became fewer in number. Since I’m not a pre-med student, I was advised by many to put my name on Reserve lists. But before I had decided to sign on the dotted lines, President Johnson made his historic speech of March 31, 1968, and new hope for my future was kindled. Why sign away my life for six years if the Peace Talks would end the cause of my troubles before I graduated?

“And so, like millions of other Americans, I was deluded into believing that the war had taken a turn for the better. Partly by saying that he had a secret plan for ending the fighting, Nixon was elected president. Yet, in his full year in office, more American boys died in Vietnam than in 1967, the year of major opposition to Johnson’s war policies. Time was running out on me, my senior year had half elapsed, when I finally came to terms with myself. I had put my name on one Reserve list in December, but the thought of becoming a soldier, even a reservist, every day grew more repulsive. I could no more be a member of the army than be a teacher in a public school. Both professions would mean a compromise of my beliefs. (now, after the recent Nixon speeches on the cessation of future occupational deferments, I find that I saved myself a good deal of time in deciding against becoming an Education major.) I had made a choice concerning my profession (journalism), but as to my future the decision was still in the air. Come graduation, where would I be—Vietnam or Canada?

“The answer to that question awaits the outcome of today. My only hope is that I flunk my physical; it’s a slim chance, but that’s what I’m basing my failure on—I’m underweight. If I flunk, I’ll be able to live my life normally until the next physical, and if I fail enough of them I’ll be free forever. But if I pass, the words “soul searching” won’t be strong enough to express the inner conflicts that I will have—Vietnam is wrong...I don’t want to learn how to kill...i don’t want to be killed...but I also don’t want to leave the country or my family...nor do I want to serve a jail sentence.

“My predicament is not unique, but by vocalizing it I have given expression to the fears, frustrations, and shattered hopes of a whole generation of young people. To them, to me, the draft is not a cold wind on the neck—it’s doom.”

(Editor’s Note: To read how the physical turned out, revisit my blog of November 11, 2009: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/11/veterans-day-salutes.html).

Saturday Night Bombings

The botched blowup in Times Square over the weekend brought back memories of a different Saturday night bombing 35 years ago.

Gilda and I were living in Seymour, Conn. I was a reporter for The New Haven Register. The nearby city of Shelton was my beat.

We had just settled into bed when the phone rang shortly after 11:35 pm., March 1, 1975. My boss was calling, asking why I was going to sleep when half of downtown Shelton was on the verge of being wiped off the face of the earth. Bombs had exploded inside the 475,000-sq.ft. Shelton Sponge Rubber Products Co. Plant 4 along the Housatonic River. It was, and possibly still is, the largest case of industrial arson in the United States.

I quickly dressed and drove the several miles to Shelton. Firemen and equipment, most from volunteer fire departments, converged on Canal Street from more than 20 neighboring towns. As the two-city-block-long factory burnt to a crisp shell, rumors started circulating. It was the work of radical Weathermen, it was said. Turned out the arsonists had kidnapped three plant employees and while tying them up safely in a woods in an adjoining town, one said they were part of the Weather Underground. It didn’t make sense. The plant was not vital to the Vietnam War effort. It made pillows and mattresses and other foam rubber products. But the reference to the Weathermen brought the FBI into the investigatory mix.

Within days authorities traced the suspects to a rented yellow Ryder van used to transport 500 pounds of dynamite and 24 55-gallon drums of gasoline into the factory. Among the 10 arrested were Charles D. Moeller, president of the company, and David D. Bubar, a Baptist minister and self-proclaimed psychic who counseled Moeller. The government alleged Moeller’s purchase of the plant from B.F. Goodrich the year before had financially strapped him. To relieve the burden, Moeller, under Bubar’s influence, had financed the arson, it was charged.

Moeller twice beat the rap, in federal and state court, though a civil trial found him responsible (much like the OJ Simpson situation), thus absolving his insurance company from any requirement to pay $68 million in damages on the building and its contents. Bubar, on the other hand, was found guilty of second degree arson. He served six and one-half years of a 20-year sentence. Seven other defendants also served time. The tenth was acquitted.

As spectacular as the fire was, the real tragedy of that night 35 years ago was the impact it had on the lives of the plant’s 900 workers and their families. The business never came back. The site was turned into a park. Other plants along the river either closed down or relocated. From being a once vibrant factory town, Shelton has evolved into a bedroom community for New Haven, Bridgeport and even New York, where another vehicle, an SUV, might prove vital in revealing who was behind the attempt to blow a hole in the middle of the crossroads of the world.