Praise be to Allah!

Jesus is in da house. The White House, that is.

On Sunday, the Christian faith’s holy day, the “Lord’s Day,” The President of the United States chose to post a picture of himself on Truth Social as a healing Jesus Christ.

Like most Sundays, Donald and Melania attended their favorite Church. Perhaps inspired by his pastor’s plea to the congregation to “be more like Jesus,” Donald took the sermon literally. He just forgot the parts about loving thy neighbor, healing the sick, and feeding the hungry.

Good Christian that he is, Donald spent the rest of the day on social media, first berating Pope Leo and then posting a blasphemous illustration of himself in flowing robes as a healing Jesus Christ. This is the same “Blessed be the Peacemaker” who, only a week ago, threatened the mass termination of an entire civilization.

Trump’s Christianity is as authentic as this AI-generated illustration.

Praise be to Allah!

Postscript

Today is National Siblings Day, and like many, my relationship with my own sibling is strained. We are not estranged per se, but the relationship with my older brother is awkward, void of genuine connection, and filled with decades of disappointments and hurts.

It is not distance that keeps us apart. My only sibling lives less than 10 minutes from my home. It is disinterest and detachment.

But on this holiday, I had another ace in the hole

I have another set of siblings in reserve.

Sort of.

It is a long, twisted story,y and on National Siblings Day, it seems right to share it.

My Mother’s Final Story – The Secret Siblings Who Saved Me

When my mother first told me I had a new sister, I reacted with the exuberance of a lonely seven-year-old only child. I had visions of endless shared activities and deep secrets whispered in the dark of night with this built-in forever best friend. But I wasn’t seven when I learned I had a new sibling. I was 52. And I wasn’t an only child. I had an older brother. And he was abusive.

Long past her childbearing years, my mother, Betty, was 81 when she shared this secret, plus another one. I not only had a sister, but a new brother too. Mom died six months later in 2008.

The previous fall had been a difficult one. Earlier that year her cognitive abilities had begun to diminish as rapidly as her mobility.  By late September, after a bad tumble, she ended up in a Long Island rehab.

Every evening, my brother Andy and I made the 40-minute-drive to visit her from our homes in Huntington, N.Y.

Relations with my brother were strained. The dynamics between us had not changed much since we were seven and ten, and the decades of his bullying, anger and selfishness had taken their toll. Friends pointed out that his indifference bordered on cruelty, urging me to disengage from him permanently.  But for me, family fidelity trumped everything, including my mental health. Despite his hurtful behavior, he remained very much a part of my life.

My mother’s drab institutional room in the rehab was dimly lit. I sat on the single lumpy bed opposite her to chat while my brother plopped down on the lone Naugahyde chair and hid behind a copy of a crumpled newspaper as was his habit.

After a perfunctory catching up, my mother’s voice shifted into a serious tone. In a clear, even voice, she announced that Andy and I had new siblings. A sister. And then as she toyed with the zipper of her velveteen tracksuit, after a long pause, she added. “There’s a brother, too. Twins.”  Two siblings in one quick swoop.

Bemused more than shocked at the improbable and fantastical news, I felt a surprising sense of anticipation and hope. My feelings fragmented as I shifted into a younger, eager part of myself— one who so longed for this. For siblings I could count on.

With a clarity and cogency that had eluded her in recent months, my mother explained her long-hidden alleged secret, seemingly relieved to finally share it with us.

Two years before she married my father, she wanted us to believe that this affluent, urbane young woman had given birth to twins but was forced to give them up for adoption.

In 1954, four years after my parents were married, they moved to a large sunny apartment in Far Rockaway, N.Y., with their precocious two-year-old toddler Andy. Somehow, as though by a miracle, six years later, the twins she had been given up ended up living in the very same oceanfront garden apartment house as my family.

Her eyes widened as she described how she would go downstairs in the building on Seagirt Blvd. to sit with the twins on a park bench overlooking the white sandy beach.

Who brought these children to the park? Who were their adopted parents? That  was never clear, and never would be. Had this move to the Wave Crest Apartments been a strategically planned one or just a stroke of luck? Or was this all just in her mind?

Then she dropped another bombshell. My brother and I had met them.

My mind raced, going through the Rolodex in my mind of possible suspects who had appeared throughout my life. A flurry of questions rushed out of me. But she didn’t —or couldn’t —answer them.

My brother and I exchanged looks. While Andy remained skeptical because of Mom’s cognitive impairment, he couldn’t say for certain it wasn’t true. Normally a reserved woman, my mother was so convincing in the detailed telling of this elaborate story, it was hard to believe she had made it up on the spot.

While my brother questioned the story’s veracity, my mind went into overdrive. I immediately envisioned new Passover seders with two new place settings of my grandmother’s Royal Crown Derby bone china to add to my snowy white holiday tablecloth. I could taste the homemade desserts my new sister would bring for Thanksgiving; and feel the strong, protective, reassuring arm around my shoulder from my new big brother.

I trusted my mother’s story with the innocence of a child, because in that moment, emotionally, I was one. The loneliness I felt with my own detached brother made it easy for me to want to believe.

But these new found siblings would reside more in each of our minds than in reality.

Dementia Meets Dissociation

Though my mother had dementia,  I have a dissociative disorder. Dissociative disorders are a mental health condition that involves an occasional loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, identity, behavior, and surroundings. Our conditions can both disconnect the line between truth and fiction. But in that imagined space, we were in harmony. Her story met my longing. It was a perfect storm of needs meshing together in each disordered minds. For a few precious months, we both believed. And now a new narrative could be written.

I wanted a sibling do-over.

I understood the logistics of this actually happening seemed far-fetched.  When I phoned my father asking if there was a remote possibility the story was true, he laughed knowingly, saying my mother had spoken of the twins years ago. But he dismissed it as nonsense without offering any explanation.

Still, the lure of the siblings was too compelling. And so for several months— even after my mother returned home from rehab—we kept talking about my new siblings at every visit.

Though I never learned either siblings names, I discovered my sister was a doctor. A doctor! Oh, how I had longed for a doctor in the family. My own personal WebMD. More importantly, someone who could help with the practical hands-on care of my aging parents so unlike my hands-off brother.

While my sister was an unmarried, prosperous, successful professional, her twin brother, Mom explained was more of a sad sack.

“A good-natured schnook,” she said through mouthfuls of creamy tuna fish, at the family dining room table.

Never accomplishing much and not very bright, he was, by her account, very sweet.

I’d take sweet. I didn’t need intellect. A schnook was fine by me. I’d even take a schlemiel.  It was the opposite of how callous my other brother had been to me.

Plans to meet were vaguely discussed. My mother shared details of phone conversations she supposedly had with them with me. My sister, she assured me, looked forward to meeting me.

And then, just like that, the narrative changed again. One afternoon, as my mother rearranged the framed family pictures on the mahogany breakfront, she casually announced that both siblings had passed away in December.

She didn’t offer an explanation, and I didn’t ask for one.

Like the end of a fairy tale, she might have read me at bedtime, she closed the book. The story was over.

The End.

No one lived happily ever after.

I was crushed.

There would be no boisterous crowded table at Passover, no birthday celebrations with presents to open, and no lengthy phone calls filled with concern and support.

I was left alone with my surly brother and there would be no new siblings to rescue me from this neglectful relationship. There would never be a sibling do over.

The only viable “do-over” would have to be in my expectations of my brother.

A few days before Mom died, she looked up at me from her hospital bed, her thin, blue and white standard issue gown slipping from her shrunken shoulders to reveal an unnervingly bony chest, so unlike the pillowy soft bosom I would lay on for comfort as a child.

With hopeful, Wedgewood blue eyes locked into my teary ones, she asked, “Can I have a do-over?”  Those words haunt me still.  I knew this was not about a game of golf. This was about her life.

I squeezed those familiar hands with the long tapered fingers that had once held mine tightly while crossing busy streets “Of course,” I whispered.

This secret, lodged in her mind only to leap out 58 years later, was likely constructed to shore up the deteriorating infrastructure of her life and unhappy marriage— one that was faulty from the start.

But for those few months, her secret helped spackle in the cracks of my own fractured mind.

It gave me a glimpse of possibility. It delivered new life— and hope. And maybe that’s exactly why she told it to me.

Yesterday, Melania Trump, a former low-level model, sashayed up to the White House podium as if she were walking the runway at a Paris fashion show.

She stood there with her freshly blonde highlights, her steely eyes cold as ice, with a rising fury as she spoke to the American public.  In her thick Slovenian accent, America’s First Lady read from a prepared script to exonerate herself from something no one had accused her of.

Yet.

Her fractured command of the English language was as grating as the fractured fairy tales she attempted to spin.

She has never been friends with Epstein? Come on, Melanie, copious photo evidence says otherwise.

Claiming not to be a victim of Epstein? Who the hell ever said you were?

There is a bomb waiting to drop, and it’s not the one on Iran. Someone has the goods and the receipts and is willing to spill the tea.

Theories abound.

One big motive to speak up is possible revelations that Melania helped procure girls for Jeffrey when working as a model ( escort) for model agent Paola Zampolli and Paolo and Jeffrey colluded to place her with Trump as his girlfriend to further his involvement in the trafficking ring. Zampoli, working for a modeling agency in 1995 met the model Melania Knauss and sponsored her immigration to the US the next year, introducing her to Donald Trump.

Paolo recently had Trump deport his baby mama, Amanda Ungaro to Brazil, and, angry, she is threatening to tell all.

Melania may claim ignorance about the sordid Epstein enterprise, but she has single-handedly revived the saga and moved the conversation back on Epstein.

Her motives? Maybe only her hairdresser knows for sure.

I feel as though I have woken this morning from a fevered dream.

Like most of you, my stress level yesterday was at Def Con 1.

It has not diminished because someone pressed the pause button with this faux ceasefire. This is merely a commercial break from the regularly scheduled programming of destroying our democracy.

Despite being on the brink of complete disaster, we are met with silence from our government.

It is a collapse of leadership. There are no guardrails. No one is pulling the emergency brakes.

Our flaccid Congress sits on its hands, seemingly impotent to intervene with this madman as he impulsively careens about destroying our nation, our values, our way of life, and our national reputation.

They have all been blown to smithereens.

There is no waking up from this nightmare.

As an unhinged, demented Donald Trump continues to go verbally nuclear around the war in Iran, the very thought of his erratic, tiny fingers anywhere near the button for the nuclear codes sends cold war shivers down my spine.

I have worried about this particular Donald-driven doomsday scenario for a decade now.

From the moment this deranged, incompetent, ill-informed reality TV show host was improbably elected in November 2016, the idea of a President Trump in proximity to nuclear bombs exploded in my head, embedding its toxic fears deep into my brain.

The doomsday clock was ticking once again.

Dr Strangelove 

On New Year’s Eve 2016, my husband Hersh and I decided to stay home, open a bottle of champagne, and watch Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear weapons, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the  Bomb. With the ominous reality of Trump being sworn in as president rapidly approaching, it seemed an appropriate film choice.

The truth is, having caught a cold war chill I have never shaken, I have never stopped worrying about the bomb. The thought of electing an unhinged man as president with access to the nuclear codes made me very anxious. 

The plot of Dr. Strangelove, released in January 1964, suggested that a mentally deranged American general, Jack D. Ripper could order a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without consulting anyone, including the president. As I watched the film’s final iconic scene of  Major T.J. “King” Kong, played by Slim Pickens, joyously riding the nuclear bomb to his death, hootin’ and hollerin’ as he waves his cowboy hat, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine Trump in the same scenario.

For 10 years, Dr Strangelove has haunted me.

Now that Cold War satire feels more like a documentary.

It took a madman like Trump’s second term and his current crazed escalating threats about “Bombing Iran back to the Stone Ages” to bring that movie back into high relief and raise my stress levels to Def Con 2.

General Curtis LeMay (L) was the role model for Kubricks mad general Jack D Ripper in Dr Strangelove, (R) Slim Pickens as Major TJ “King” Kong

Ironically, the originator of that remark, “Bombing them back to the stone ages” came from that cold war warrior, General Curtis Le May in reference to North Vietnam. The former Air Force Chief of Staff was the role model in Dr. Strangelove for the heavy-jowled, cigar-clenched between his teeth General Jack D. Ripper, who sends nuclear-armed B-52s against the Soviet Union all on his own because he has become completely paranoid. And psychotic.

Le May’s aggressive pro-nuclear stance was legendary.

During the early Cold War years, as head of Strategic Air Command, LeMay was regarded with a combination of respect and abject terror. Armed U.S. bombers were airborne round the clock, and the nation’s capacity for devastating nuclear retaliation was unquestioned.

His policy-if a Soviet attack seemed likely, he would “knock the shit out of them before they got off the ground.”

Sound familiar.

During World War II, LeMay was a legend. He directed the devastating firebombing of Tokyo aimed at crushing Japanese resistance and believed in winning wars through maximum rapid violence.

The celebrity general on the cover of Time Magazine in August 1945 who was brilliantly and heroically profiled, had become a demonic clown in the eyes of many Americans by the 1960’s.

Referring to the Vietnam war LeMay declared that if all else failed, the U.S. had the capability to “bomb the North Vietnamese back to the stone age” and to “destroy every work of man in North VietNam if that is what it takes.” Such outbursts turned even formerly sympathetic military opinion against him.

General LeMay ended his career, becoming George Wallace’s running mate for President in 1968.

The grandparents to the MAGA movement.

Today, Trump’s threats seem to escalate with each new post he makes on social media, and the nuclear bomb isn’t out of his realm of thinking. His unhinged, vulgar Easter Post was obscene and evidence of a severely disturbed man.

Yet with a single phone call, the commander-in-chief has virtually unlimited powers to rain down nuclear weapons on any “ perceived” adversarial regime and country at any time.

The scary thing is that there are no checks and balances.

The President has absolute control. There is no advice and consent by the Senate. No second-guessing by the Supreme Court.

Trump, who likes to say he doesn’t spend a lot of time conferring with others ( “my primary consultant is myself”–would be free to launch a civilization-ending nuclear war on his own any time he chose.

America failed to heed Stanley Kubrick’s warning. Trump is proof. 

With his temperament, Donald Trump is an object of mass destruction.

As an unhinged, demented Donald Trump continues to go verbally nuclear around the war in Iran, the very thought of his erratic, tiny fingers anywhere near the button for the nuclear codes sends cold war shivers down my spine.

I have worried about this particular Donald-driven doomsday scenario for a decade now.

From the moment this deranged, incompetent, ill-informed reality TV show host was improbably elected in November 2016, the idea of a President Trump in proximity to nuclear bombs exploded in my head, embedding its toxic fears deep into my brain.

The doomsday clock was ticking once again.

Dr Strangelove 

On New Year’s Eve 2016, my husband Hersh and I decided to stay home, open a bottle of champagne, and watch Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear weapons, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the  Bomb. With the ominous reality of Trump being sworn in as president rapidly approaching, it seemed an appropriate film choice.

The truth is, having caught a cold war chill I have never shaken, I have never stopped worrying about the bomb. The thought of electing an unhinged man as president with access to the nuclear codes made me very anxious. 

The plot of Dr. Strangelove, released in January 1964, suggested that a mentally deranged American general, Jack D. Ripper could order a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without consulting anyone, including the president. As I watched the film’s final iconic scene of  Major T.J. “King” Kong, played by Slim Pickens, joyously riding the nuclear bomb to his death, hootin’ and hollerin’ as he waves his cowboy hat, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine Trump in the same scenario.

For 10 years, Dr Strangelove has haunted me.

Now that Cold War satire feels more like a documentary.

It took a madman like Trump’s second term and his current crazed escalating threats about “Bombing Iran back to the Stone Ages” to bring that movie back into high relief and raise my stress levels to Def Con 2.

General Curtis LeMay (L) was the role model for Kubricks mad general Jack D Ripper in Dr Strangelove, (R) Slim Pickens as Major TJ “King” Kong

Ironically, the originator of that remark, “Bombing them back to the stone ages” came from that cold war warrior, General Curtis Le May in reference to North Vietnam. The former Air Force Chief of Staff was the role model in Dr. Strangelove for the heavy-jowled, cigar-clenched between his teeth General Jack D. Ripper, who sends nuclear-armed B-52s against the Soviet Union all on his own because he has become completely paranoid. And psychotic.

Le May’s aggressive pro-nuclear stance was legendary.

During the early Cold War years, as head of Strategic Air Command, LeMay was regarded with a combination of respect and abject terror. Armed U.S. bombers were airborne round the clock, and the nation’s capacity for devastating nuclear retaliation was unquestioned.

His policy-if a Soviet attack seemed likely, he would “knock the shit out of them before they got off the ground.”

Sound familiar.

During World War II, LeMay was a legend. He directed the devastating firebombing of Tokyo aimed at crushing Japanese resistance and believed in winning wars through maximum rapid violence.

The celebrity general on the cover of Time Magazine in August 1945 who was brilliantly and heroically profiled, had become a demonic clown in the eyes of many Americans by the 1960’s.

Referring to the Vietnam war LeMay declared that if all else failed, the U.S. had the capability to “bomb the North Vietnamese back to the stone age” and to “destroy every work of man in North VietNam if that is what it takes.” Such outbursts turned even formerly sympathetic military opinion against him.

General LeMay ended his career, becoming George Wallace’s running mate for President in 1968.

The grandparents to the MAGA movement.

Today, Trump’s threats seem to escalate with each new post he makes on social media, and the nuclear bomb isn’t out of his realm of thinking. His unhinged, vulgar Easter Post was obscene and evidence of a severely disturbed man.

Yet with a single phone call, the commander-in-chief has virtually unlimited powers to rain down nuclear weapons on any “ perceived” adversarial regime and country at any time.

The scary thing is that there are no checks and balances.

The President has absolute control. There is no advice and consent by the Senate. No second-guessing by the Supreme Court.

Trump, who likes to say he doesn’t spend a lot of time conferring with others ( “my primary consultant is myself”–would be free to launch a civilization-ending nuclear war on his own any time he chose.

America failed to heed Stanley Kubrick’s warning. Trump is proof. 

With his temperament, Donald Trump is an object of mass destruction.

As one Detroit retail buyer solemnly told Time, “Davy Crockett is bigger even than Mickey Mouse.”

While our nation is at war in the Middle East, our commander-in-chief thought it clever to post a picture of Davy Crockett or more accurately of Fess Parker as the King of the Wild Frontier from the wildly popular Disney TV series airing in 1955. Let’s hope he’s not contemplating arming our soldiers in Iraq with Davy’s favorite weapon- the reliable “Old Betsy” 40 caliber rifle.

Thanks to Walt Disney, in the summer of 1955 America went c-a-crazy over Tennessee legend Davy Crockett the coonskin-capped, bear wrestling, folk hero, who was never caught dead without his reliable  “Old Betsy” 40-caliber rifle.

Baby Boomers were positively obsessed with an American frontiersman who died more than 100 years before they were born.

The Davy Crockett coonskin cap that millions of boys and girls lusted after was inspired by the fur headgear worn by buckskin-clad,  actor Fess Parker as the fabled 19th-century frontiersman, in a series of five programs that were broadcast as part of the Disneyland television series. Airing in five one-hour installments from December 1954 to December 1955, the show was insanely popular: Nearly 12 million viewers tuned in to each episode.

And just as many wanted the official Frontier gear merchandise.

Some 3,000 Davy Crockett products ranging from lunch boxes to wristwatches, were released:

Children wore coonskin caps to school and wore them to bed.

They wore them with their Davy Crockett plastic fringe frontier costumes while they played with their Crockett trading cards, their Crockett board games and puzzles, their Crockett color slide sets and their Crockett powder horns. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were packed in Crockett lunch boxes, and time was kept on Crocker watches.

Their beds were covered in Crocker bedspreads and they slept in their official frontier pajamas. Children even eagerly washed their faces if it was a Crockett label soap and towel. They pestered their parents for Crockett toy muskets and Crockett bubble gum and Crockett rings and comic books.

All told, some 3,000 Davy Crockett products ranging from lunch boxes to wristwatches, were released.

It may very well be the most profitable fad Gen Z has never heard of.

Kings of the Frontier

Even my Queens-born and raised Papa Moishe got into the Davy Crockett spirit, donning my brother Andy’s recently acquired coonskin cap. Family Photo 1955

1955 was dubbed by Time Magazine as “The Year of the Coon Skin Hat.”

Crockett frenzy was in full force.

Not noted by Time was the fact that it was also the year I was born, and the year my urban N.Y. parents ventured out into their own new frontier – the wild suburban plains of Western Long Island.  Articles branded new homeowners like my parents as “Brave Suburbanites Are Today’s Davy Crockett’s.”

Late fall 1955 I may not have had a coonskin cap but my brother’s little tricycle had its own raccoon tail hanging. Vintage photo, Sally Edelstein and my paternal grandmother Rose on our newly built block.

That August my family moved into our newly built ranch house on a newly paved street appropriately named Western Park Drive.  At 5 months old, I may have seemed oblivious to popular culture but through osmosis, it was absorbed. All around me, Davy Crockett’s life and death were endlessly replayed in backyards up and down my development.

Little boys with their faux fur raccoon caps, the tails bouncing up and down, chased after one another, hunting for pretend bears with their official Old Betsy rifles. Little girls had their own cooncaps marketed just for them called “Polly Crocketts” made of white fur.  Neighborhood teens might have been swooning over Elvis, but boys were transfixed by a tall and handsome Fess Parker as King of the Wild Frontier.

The TV program portrayed Crockett as a frontier Superman.  Played by Parker a hulking 6’6” actor,  Davy was depicted as someone who routinely killed bears bare-handed, pursued truth and justice, and carried the weight of America on his shoulders.

Far and away, the coonskin hat was the favorite emblem of young Crockett enthusiasts. For cold war kids, the caps embodied rugged frontier self-reliance and the American spirit of individualism.

Estes Kefauver adopted the coonskin cap as a personal trademark during his successful 1948 campaign for election to the Senate from Tennessee. He continued to use the coonskin cap as a trademark throughout his political career, which included unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956, an unsuccessful campaign for the Vice Presidency as Adlai Stevensons ‘s running mate in 1956, and successful Senatorial re-election campaigns in 1954 and 1960. Artist: Boris Chaliapin portrait from Time Magazine Cover

Ironically the coonskin cap had already been identified with a current Tennessean politician Estes Kefauver but it was Davy Crockett that put it on the head of 1 out of 3 boys.

For a period of three years, 5,000 caps were sold every day.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

Stores set up Crockett clubs marked off special Davy Crockett sections where youngsters could  find everything from a Davy Crockett peace pipe (98¢) to a complete Davy Crockett outfit with rifle, powder horn, cap, etc. ($7.98); a Davy Crockett guitar costs $4.98 extra.

Initially, Disney controlled the market, but unlicensed knock-offs were soon sold in virtually every clothing store in the nation.

Most of these hats were made from real raccoon fur, which subsequently rocketed from 25 cents to $8 per pound. To meet the demand, department stores, in a flurry of fur coat re-use, repurposed the material for hats from unsold raccoon fur coats, adding the coon tails to make the signature frontier accessories.

When the “raccoon supply became nonexistent,” said one trader, similarly-shaded critters were used as an alternative, according to Time Magazine. “Seattle’s Arctic Fur Company, which has been shrewdly buying up wolf pelts for years, is producing 5,000 ersatz coonskin hats daily.”

The Ballad Of Baby Sally

The show’s theme song — “Ballad of Davy Crockett” — rose to become a #1 Billboard hit: More than 20 singers including Bill Hayes, Fess Parker, and Tennesse Ernie Ford recorded the song selling 8 million copies. It was my mother’s go-to song to lull me to sleep in 1955. Vintage Family Photo Sally Edelstein September 1955 (R) Vintage Little Golden Record

To my surprise, coonskin caps were not made in infants’ sizes so I never got my own baby-size cap.  But as noted in my baby book, wiggling a raccoon tail in front of my face was a surefire way to elicit a giggle.

When I cried, I didn’t seem to respond at all to the choruses of  “Rock a Bye Baby,” my mother always claimed, but the constant sound of neighborhood children singing that drifted in through the open screened windows would quickly settle me down into blissful sleep:

“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee. Greenest state in the land of the free. Raised in the woods so he knew every tree. Kilt him a b’ar when he was only 3.  Davyyyyy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”

The 45 RPM record was also well played on our little portable record player. The sound of Tennesse Ernie  Ford’s folksy rendition still soothes.

When it wasn’t played to put babies to sleep The Ballad of Davy Crockett,  was the song of the summer.  making Your Hit Parade for 40 straight weeks, including three months at No. 1.

The real ballad of Davy Crockett though may have been as fanciful as my mother’s anecdote.

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett

The TV program heavily romanticized Davy Crockett.

Though the symbol of a self-sufficient frontiersman was pure catnip to cold war America sensibility, the reality is slightly different.  Ironically there is no definitive proof that Davy Crockett-the real man- ever wore a raccoon hat. According to most American historians, Davy Crockett was “ merely a legend created by commercial American pop culture.

Crockett’s public career was short and undistinguished, he was an ineffective legislator and he was of medium stature. Rt) Portrait by Charles Harding L) 1839 Crockett Almanac

Like Disney, Crocket himself was a master at myth-making retelling his story about frontier life in Tennessee in a series of popular Almanacs published in the 1830s.

Crockett was portrayed as an American Hercules —wading the Mississippi, steering an alligator up Niagara Falls, straddling a streak of lightning, wringing the tail of a comet, and kicking the sun loose from its frozen axis.

The real David Crockett may well have perished at the Alamo, but the legendary Davy Crockett was just beginning to live.

Davy Crocker was, in essence, a nineteenth-century celebrity—perhaps the first American to make a living portraying his own fanci­ful image.

He didn’t kill a bear when he was three, didn’t care much for fighting Indians, didn’t look like Fess Parker, in fact, portraits of him depict a stocky, middle-aged businessman of medium stature, and he didn’t go down swing­ing Old Betsy at the Alamo.

He left his favorite rifle in Tennessee.

Uncle Walt turned Crockett’s name into a brand and turned the Tennessean’s checkered path into an economic boom.

Something Donald Trump is quite familiar with.

Wearing my hand-me-down Davy Crockett T-shirt I learned to spell by singing “M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E Family Photo of Sally Edelstein 1958

Sadly all fads sizzle, out but Uncle Walt had another one ready to launch.

The frontier fad lasted throughout the summer and into the next school year. In October, Disney premiered The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC, which started a whole new trend in children’s headgear: Mouse ears.

Soon the black felt Mouse Ears would supplant the coonskin cap in the hearts of baby boom children.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tonight’s seder is tiny.

But my table is full. It is filled with my family, and I can call up their spirit at a mere glance. It is set with my mother’s hand-painted  Seder plate, and with my great-aunt and grandmother’s china. We will say kiddish with my great-grandfather Abraham’s silver kiddish cup and eat the food with sterling silverware that my Nana Rose and great-grandmother Rebeca used at their own seders over a century ago.

I have only to look at the ceramic Miriam’s Cup and recall my Aunt Judy, who gifted it to me. The familiar wine-stained Maxwell House Haggadahs are the ones my mother got for free at our neighborhood A&P in 1959 and have been read from by family and friends every year since then.

If I feel alone, I have only to look down at my table and call up the presence of all my beloved family, and this tiny table is full, as is my heart.

Wishing all my friends and family who celebrate a very meaningful Passover.

Chag Pesach Sameach

When Noo Yawker’s shout in unison NO KINGS, people listen.

We the People spoke.

The temperature in N.Y.C. was unseasonably cool this past Saturday, but the chilly weather did not dampen the heat, the spirit, and the enthusiasm of the protesters at The No Kings March.

The crowd was on fire.

To be among the tens of thousands, standing shoulder to shivering shoulder with kindred spirits on my birthday was the very best gift I could have had.

More than 3,000 marches and rallies took place on March 28th in cities and towns across America during the third “No Kings” event, where millions protested against the policies, cruelties, corruption, and lawlessness of President Trump and his administration.

The Big Apple was bursting at the seams with American’s reminding Trump who this country belongs to.

No matter how many buildings he gaudily embellishes with his name.

From Central Park we gathered in the cold, chanting, and holding signs marching south towards Times Square. The crowds filled with babies in strollers and boomers with walkers, and every generation in between, stretched as far as the eye could see.

The decades of dedicated activism among the older protestors was palpable. They could easily be jaded and sit this one out after all those marches and protest they have logged in. But we were front and center, inspired and infectious.

We remember a time when America was a country to feel proud of. Not the sense of deep shame Trump has brought to this once great nation.

I have marched for women’s rights and gay rights, protested wars and nuclear proliferation.  But I have never marched for the very life of our country, for democracy itself.

Arriving in Times Square the energy was as vibrant and electric as the kandy-colored digital billboards, the LED displays and immersive advertising that pulsated jumping in motion, enhancing the enthusiasm of the crowd, so that the energy became one.

This was largest single day of protest in U.S. history.

We have our marching orders.

Organize. Resist. Repeat.

Every year on my birthday, no matter my age or hers, my beloved mother, Betty, would always retell the story of my birth. Her big blue eyes would light up, and with a sweet smile, she would recount the first time she set eyes on me, waxing on about what an easy birth it was.

Of course it was easy because she was knocked out for the entire experience.

Unlike today, when a baby’s birth is Instagramed from start to finish by enthusiastic parents, no family member witnessed my birth.

Both my parents were fast asleep.

My mom was out for the count thanks to a heavy dose of Demerol and Scopolamine, and my father was snoozing back home. No pacing the hospital waiting room for Marvin. Once Betty went into labor, he dropped her off at St. Joseph’s Hospital and skedaddled back to their apartment in Far Rockaway to be with my brother Andy.

No one but me would remember my birth.

So today, on my birthday, I remember.

By March 28, 1955, my lease in Mom’s comfy womb was nearly up, and the option for renewal was out of the question.

A creature of comfort, I was unenthusiastic about the prospect of relinquishing the premises and would have been happy to stay put indefinitely. Although the cozy quarters had become a bit claustrophobic and there wasn’t much of a view, you just couldn’t beat the amenities.

Regardless of my reluctance to leave, Mom was more than happy to serve an eviction notice on me.

Moments to Remember Operation Baby

The Stork is as Tame as a household pet! Childbirth is so much easier thanks to drugs and research.” Vintage ad Lederle 1951

Birthin’ Babies was serious business, and my mother Betty made sure she was prepared for “Operation-Baby.  She would never have dreamed of giving birth without the help of both pain-eliminating and memory-erasing miracle drugs. The combination of drugs promised to end the drudgery of childbirth. Mama had no knowledge of what occurs between the time she is given the injection and several hours later when the effects wore off.

Though there was some chatter about “natural childbirth” promoted by French physician Dr. Ferdinand Lamaze, for most women, that was a foreign concept.

“The patient,” reasonable mid-century American doctors were quick to point out, “who was interested in participating in her own childbirth experience was probably infantile, neurotic and downright delusional.”

My all-American Mom had an all-American delivery. Thoroughly up to date, she was thoroughly sedated and fastidiously prepped for “the operation.”

Lying flat on her back on the surgical table, the nurses strapped her feet in stirrups to make sure that she wasn’t going anywhere in case she changed her mind, while her wrists were securely tied to the sides of the table to prevent her from touching the sterile drapes when they were applied.

The Great Escape

My very last meal while still in the womb, the one meant to carry me through my big breakout to freedom, was a healthy dose of -“I don’t know what I’d do without it -Demerol” and “I don’t remember nuthin’ bout birthin’ no babies – Scopolamine,” the preferred aperitif for the boomer baby.

As the drugs began to slowly take effect on my mother, the attending nurse tried soothing Mom. Gently, taking away her cigarette and stroking her forehead, she encouraged my still jittery mother to think of pleasant, happy places.

Soon, Betty began muttering about the 1939 N.Y. World’s Fair of her childhood. Fifteen years earlier, as an impressionable 13-year-old, she had been captivated with that futuristic vision of the fair, like so many others. Again and again, visitors were told -“A greater world…a better world….a world which always grows forward…” Her enthusiasm had not faded in time.

That optimistic World of Tomorrow, bursting with brightness, abundance, and color, a spectacle of promise and hope, was so dazzling that it would saturate her dreams of a better world.

Transmitted to me as a child, her fervor for the fair’s inspired future was infectious,  confirming our belief that there was nothing that American ingenuity in science, technology, and industry could not accomplish.

It was unclear whether Mom was speaking in a woozy Demerol haze to the nurses or if her memories of the World’s Fair were meant for me in the womb, to coax me on… I could hear a muffled voice, like a recording, speaking of the wonders of the future now only minutes away. As though on a ride  at General Motors’ famous Futurama, I could hear her say:  

“Just beyond the darkness was the greater possibilities of the World of Tomorrow …New Horizons, new ways of living lay just ahead.”

Meanwhile, in utero, things were happening quickly. Without warning, a great tidal wave of water abruptly washed over me. The peace and quiet of my little tranquil Garden of Eden was all at once disrupted by a violent upheaval, followed by waves after waves of turbulence.

This was not a drill. Reluctant or not, I knew I had to quickly evacuate the premises, abandoning with it any hope of permanency.

How much time did I have, seconds, minutes, days?  I didn’t know. It was a big job getting a delivery organized to operate effectively, but then delivery was a big production or…. a big disaster.

The search and rescue team had to get the job done if I were to survive.

Great tremors, dozens of them in a matter of minutes in many places at once.

I panicked.

Would I be buried or trapped in wreckage of the placenta? Passages out might be blocked by rubble. A large part of my food supply might be knocked out. My water supply cut off. Normal communications could stop.

How much time would I have to prepare?

Terrified, I set out on my first solo journey on a streamlined, frictionless highway. Just ahead at the end of the tunnel, if I should make it, lay the greater possibilities of my own world of tomorrow.

Then with a sudden whoosh, I was out.

Like a mole burrowed deep in the subterranean who first pokes his head out of the ground, I was startled by a blast of bright light, brighter than the sun and the loud ear-piercing noise of the air conditioner sounding like the roar of jets.

I opened my eyes and suddenly today was the tomorrow my mother had dreamt about.

If I could believe my mother, a new world was opening up for me at an ever-increasing rate of progress. A greater world…a better world…a world which always grow forward.

Never sure where Mom ended and I began, she now seemed far, far away.

And where is my Dad in all this?

My father, like all the other fathers-to-be, is nowhere near any of this.

But unlike most of the other nervous, expectant fathers who were sent to the smoky, crowded waiting room to pace the tiled floors and hand out cigars, my father went home and went back to sleep. But that was okay because my mother was in a deep sleep herself.

No one but me would remember my birth.

And now you know.

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