The Upheaval

When Ann Landers was asked, "What makes a successful marriage?" she replied, "When the rocks in her head fit the holes in his."

An apt description for the wife of a geologist, but it took me forty-five years to realize that neither my rocks nor his holes could be ground to fit.

In the beginning, in 1949, we were a stable family, a father with a secure job as a geologist with Standard Oil of California, a mother who was a part-time teacher in the Kern County school system, and two young children, a three-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy. Cheryl and Rod were my husband's children from a previous marriage, and Buster, my husband, adored them both.

"My Cheryl is beautiful. The boys will swarm around her like bees to honey."

But it was his son, Rod, on whom he lavished his praises and hopes.

"This boy is brilliant. He will be famous. He is talented, sharp, perceptive, and clever. He's smarter than any child I've ever known. Rod is a genius. I feel sorry for parents who do not have children as exceptional as Rod and Cheryl."

Our family life began in Taft, a hot, dry, dusty, bleak, desert oil town in the Southern San Joaquin Valley of Central California. When Standard Oil transferred us to Bakersfield two years later, we were delighted to live where there were big shady trees, blooming shrubs, green lawns, and well-kept streets. Always eager to make more money, Buster decided we could accomplish our goal by buying run-down properties, upgrading them, then offering them for rent. So landlords we became. Because my husband was often out of town on business, the upkeep and managing of our rentals became my responsibility.

It was a Friday afternoon. I was atop a high ladder, stapling acoustical tile across the discolored, peeling ceiling of our latest acquisition, feeling very triumphant because I had managed to nail the furring strips to which the tiles would be stapled twelve inches apart across the whole ceiling all by myself. The two rows of acoustical tiles that I had stapled so far looked fresh and clean. Eager to keep working, I stopped when I saw a tall stranger bounding into the room.

"Mrs. Ivanhoe?" he called out.

"Yes."

"Your son is a thief," he unceremoniously blurted out.

The heavy stapler slipped from my hands and fell to the floor with a bang.

"Your son is in jail. I'm a private detective hired by the Bakersfield High School, and I've been trying to nail this kid for six months. He's been stealing chemicals from the high school lab all that time. What kind of a mother are you? Don't you know what your kid is doing?"

That evening I had the difficult task of phoning my absent husband with the shocking news.

"I'm to go to juvenile hall tomorrow to talk to the authorities. I'll call you when I know more."

Once before, I had been to juvenile hall, but that time as a substitute teacher. Never, never, never could I have imagined I would visit as the heartsick mother of an inmate. When I arrived at the hall, everyone was very gracious to me. I was ushered into a room where a kindly-looking man sat behind a huge desk. He stood up when I entered.

"Please sit down, Mrs. Ivanhoe. We have sent for your son. He'll be here shortly."

I had been determined not to cry, but when they brought Rod in dressed in prison garb, an olive drab jumpsuit, ill-fitting and much too big, hanging loosely on his small frame, he looked so little and helpless. His head hung down and his eyes were red. I began to cry.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cry."

"Most mothers do," the man replied gently as he reached in a drawer and handed me a box of Kleenex.

Shock. Tears. Anger. Sorrow. Recriminations. Bewilderment from two saddened parents. Rod and a friend of his admitted to stealing chemicals from the high school lab. Their goal?

"We wanted to make an atom bomb."

Rod was put on six months probation and required to report to his probation officer every three weeks.

Buster was a devastated father.

"I am so ashamed. I can no longer face my family and my friends. This has been on the radio, in the newspapers here and even in Canada. I cannot live in Bakersfield any longer. We are going to move!"

And move we did. In 1961 we became gypsies moving from place to place with no permanent home. We were Cygani (gypsies) for the next twenty years.

Getting Ready to Roll

We had lived ten years in Bakersfield, long enough to put down roots, long enough to have a wide circle of interesting friends, long enough to be actively involved in community affairs, long enough to have a feeling of belonging.

That all ended. The day we sold our house, I feared that our lives would never be stable again. We became gypsies, moving from rental to rental in Southern California.

Disgusted and discouraged with everything and everyone, my husband quit his oil company job as a geologist and decided to be on his own as an independent oil consultant geologist-geophysicist.

"Now I'm free to go anywhere I'm called." But no one called him, and Buster became increasingly irritable, morose, and bitter, often angrily denouncing his son.

"How could Rod do this to me?"

The son he had idolized and glorified had shattered his father's dreams. If I tried to talk to Buster about Rod, he withdrew.

"You can't possibly understand my pain. You are a stepmother. I'm his father. I'm the one suffering."

Determined to find work somewhere, anywhere, Buster pursued his dream of becoming an international petroleum consultant. Day after day, he sent out his lengthy résumés to oil companies across America. He expanded his job search to Europe and Asia. He made phone calls to any geologist or geophysicist he had ever heard of. Each day he waited eagerly for the mailman and rushed to answer a ringing telephone. No luck for weeks. Then it finally happened!

When a phone call came from Tel Aviv, inquiring whether Buster was available to immediately come to Israel, the answer was a resounding, "Yes!"

In the following years, Buster made numerous regular trips from California to Israel. His work was challenging; he admired the progress made by the Israelis, and they appreciated the honesty of his reports.

This job had opened the door to others, and soon, Buster was involved in oil exploration worldwide, culminating in an extensive trip from Israel to the Middle East and on to the Orient. His self-respect had returned, and he was a pleasanter man.

In 1963, after various moves across Southern California, we had established ourselves in an apartment in Beverly Hills. It was late on a November morning when Laura, my next-door neighbor, knocked on my front door. I opened it to see a weeping woman.

"What is wrong? What is it?"

"President Kennedy has been shot," she sobbed.

It was a moment I would never forget.

Cheryl had graduated from Beverly Hills High School and enrolled at California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks. Rod's grandparents in Iowa had asked for Rod to come and live with them. I was alone so much that my neighbors began to wonder if I was widowed or divorced or if I had ever married.

"This husband you speak of, is he real or a figment of your imagination?"

To occupy my time, I had enrolled in adult education classes at the Beverly Hills High School. In early December, one of the men in class stood up and made an announcement.

"I'm suing the City of Los Angeles. They leave the City Hall lights on all night in the form of a cross. That's using public funds to promote a religion, so I'm suing."

"But this is a Christian country," I blurted out.

The lady sitting in front of me turned and looked at me.

"How long have you lived here, honey?"

Until then I had not realized that Beverly Hills was predominantly a Jewish community.

A welcome letter arrived from Buster in the spring of 1964.

"Helen, I have just signed a long-term contract with Lapidoth Oil Company, headquartered in Tel Aviv. Why don't you close up our apartment and join me? The pay won't be much; we'll have to cover our own lodging and meals, but it will be a chance for you to see this remarkable country. You'll have to sell your little yellow Mustang and check with our attorney friend in Bakersfield to determine what else you must do."

My mind raced. Fill out change of address cards for the fourth time in three years. Pack. Sort. Call the movers. Sell the car. A friend bought my Mustang as a high school graduation present for his son. Later I learned that the son had totaled the car in an accident within three months.

My beautiful little yellow Mustang was now a heap of "junk."

Our attorney friend in Bakersfield met with me. "You seem to have covered all bases for your extended trip to Israel, but there is one important thing you must do."

"What is that?"

"How old is Cheryl?" he asked.

"She is eighteen."

"Helen, the age of majority in California is still twenty-one, so in your absence, you must have a court-appointed person with power of attorney to make any legal decisions for Cheryl. What if she needs medical care? Or a blood transfusion? Helen, this is something you must do before you leave the country."

As I stood up to leave, our attorney's parting words were very sobering.

"Pick someone you trust because that person will have more authority over Cheryl than you have ever had. Buster has never allowed you to legally adopt his children."

A test of true friendship and loyalty is the person who will voluntarily agree to have power of attorney over a friend's eighteen-year-old. Doris and Jim were such friends.

When I told Doris how grateful I was to her and to Jim, I said, "I couldn't be going to Israel without you."

"Then how come you are?" Doris laughed.

The weight limit on overseas checked baggage was a very strict forty-five pounds. I had devoted much time to figuring out how I could carry on extra items. My coat pockets were stuffed with heavier things, my huge purse was crammed, two garment bags were draped, one over each arm, the left one hiding a heavy shoulder bag.

"You look like a walking pile of things." Doris smiled when she and Jim saw me off at the Los Angeles International Airport.

Finally, I was on my way to Israel.

Israel, the First Bounce

Europe was familiar to me. In 1957, I had been on a three-month study tour of the continent. Flying in those days was very expensive. The only affordable choice across the Atlantic was by ship, a five-day voyage. Now here I was crossing the same ocean in a matter of hours, off to a land I'd heard of since childhood. Every seat on that El Al airplane was occupied by enthusiastic passengers who never stopped talking, eagerly voicing their anticipation of soon being in the land of their forefathers. Their excitement was obvious, as was mine.

When the captain announced, "We'll be landing at Lod Airport soon. Please stay in your seats until the plane has come to a complete stop and I have turned off the seat belt sign," several passengers jumped up and began reaching into the overhead bins.

"Stay in your seats!" the stewardess ordered sharply. "Stay in your seats until the captain has turned off the seat belt sign."

My seatmate, a middle-aged lady from New York City took a deep breath.

"Oh! I can already feel the freedom in the air," she happily exclaimed.

The very instant the plane touched the ground, the clicking sound of seat belts being unfastened filled the plane as all the passengers jumped up to reclaim their overhead luggage.

"Sit down! Sit down!" the stewardess kept loudly repeating. "Remain seated until the plane has come to a complete stop and the captain has turned off the seat belt sign. Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!"

No one listened. The stewardess gave up.

The airport bus into the city passed by a cluster of big trees on the left side of the road. Underneath those trees a large number of scruffy people appeared to be living under the canopy. Clothing hung from the branches, cooking equipment was stacked on the ground, makeshift chairs were scattered about. Several grubby little children clung to their mother's skirts. The whole area had the look of a cluttered permanent encampment.

When I embarked from the bus, I asked the driver, "Who are those people living in that encampment we passed?"

"What encampment? I didn't see any encampment," he replied. My first lesson in Israeli politics.

Our hotel was a modest building facing a peaceful blue Mediterranean. Our upstairs balcony gave us a view of the big luxury hotel next door and a sweeping view of the wide clean beaches on either side. Behind us the city of Tel Aviv. I looked forward to exploring the town. Each morning, after my husband eagerly left for work, I was on my own to do as I pleased.

For the next several days, I wandered about trying to decipher the strange letters on the street signs, stopping to taste the unfamiliar new foods sold by the street vendors—falafel, humus, tahina, couscous, pita bread, and roasted chickpeas. No one bothered me or paid any attention to me.

Restaurants were limited in the city in 1964, but each evening my husband and I managed to find a place to eat, often eating at a place on Ditzengoff Circle that displayed a plate with the evening's special in the window. One evening it was a plate with two almond-shaped pieces of meat, labeled in big print.

"Eggs of the male cow."

"What is that?" I asked my husband.

"It's bull's testicles. You are an adventuresome eater. Why don't you try it?"

When the plate arrived, there were two small almond-shaped pieces of meat, no salad, no vegetables, no rice or bread, just those two unappetizing-looking blobs on a big white plate. I stared at the offering and pushed it aside.

"Aren't you going to eat it?" my husband asked.

"I can't. I would feel like a cannibal."

Each day I boarded a local bus to explore place-names I had heard of since I was a child. Busy, bustling Jerusalem, everywhere ancient gates and monuments, narrow crowded streets, laden donkeys, bearded men and robed women—the whole city was a fascinating museum and there was never enough time before I had to stop to catch the bus back to Tel Aviv. The Wailing Wall intrigued me as I watched the bobbing heads of the praying men. Where were the women?

Listening to the informative and interesting Jerusalem tour guides was always a learning experience.

"Today," one young guide announced, "we are going to an area of the city we don't often visit. We're taking you to an ultraorthodox area of Jerusalem called Mia Sharim, a very religious neighborhood."

He smiled. "But I must forewarn you, we may not receive a cordial reception."

We didn't. Small boys tossed clods of dirt at our bus, shouting loudly as they ran alongside our slow-moving vehicle.

"It's nothing personal," our guide explained. "The residents of Mia Sharim do not like any outsiders traveling through their neighborhood, not tourists, not Israeli citizens, not visitors, not anyone."

In a sunny doorway, I watched a young man, dressed in a long black coat and a broad-brimmed black hat, sitting listlessly, twirling his thick, black, long side curls, occasionally stopping to scratch himself.

This group was in glaring contrast to the friendly industrious Israelis I had been meeting in Tel Aviv.

But nothing impressed me like the Garden of Gethsemane. As I stood in the ancient, quiet olive orchard, I thought, "Jesus may have stood here in this very spot two thousand years ago. Maybe Jesus leaned against this very same gnarled tree."

By bus I visited the Dead Sea, then climbed up Masada. From atop the rock, I looked down at the outline of the Roman encampments, where the Roman soldiers had waited to attack the last band of Jewish fighters about AD 72. History was all around me. Churches were everywhere dating back hundreds of years, and in every church, a request for money. In Bethlehem in front of the manger where Jesus is believed to have been born, a priest grabbed hold of my hand.

"Touch! Touch!" he whispered as he pushed my hand against the manger.

"Money! Money!" he grinned as he dropped my arm and held out his own palm.

Another bus ride took me to a British cemetery in the bleak, dry Negev Desert. When I opened the gate and stepped inside, I entered a green, immaculately manicured graveyard with tidy upright stones. Wandering among the graves, I read the names of the fallen, eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds from Australia and New Zealand, all buried so far from home when Britain fought Turkey. And for what? I was angered by the futility of war.

That anger returned another day when I was on a guided tour of the Negev. As we passed the British cemetery, the Israeli guide pointed out, "There is one Jewish boy buried in that cemetery."

"What about all the rest?" I thought.

In 1964, Israel was still a very young country. Every Israeli I met was proud of what had been accomplished since 1948, and their pride and dedication was deep and sincere. Some of them told us their memorable stories. I remember Kashi's story well.

Kashi was a young eighteen-year-old living in Poland before the start of World War II. The underground sent him a message.

"Get out immediately. The Gestapo are coming for you tonight. You have no time to lose."

Kashi glanced at his parents. They nodded their heads. He grabbed a knapsack and ran to his sixteen-year-old girlfriend's house.

"The Gestapo are coming tonight to get me. I'm going to try to get to Israel. Will you come with me?"

For a brief moment, she was silent.

"Yes!" was her positive reply.

Then she hurriedly hugged her parents, and the two of them dashed out the door into the night. She never saw her family again.