By: Luellen Smiley
In the center of the room are an antique library table, a straight back chair, a table lamp, and clear space for spreading out papers and books. There is a window of light approaching the writing
In the center of the room are an antique library table, a straight back chair, a table lamp, and clear space for spreading out papers and books. There is a window of light approaching the writing desk, a deep cushioned club chair, a worn Persian rug and a fireplace. The study is off limits to dogs, cats, children and carpet cleaners. This is the room of my future.
How I got to imagining the study began in a very unpredictable fashion. I don’t know if this is a common experience, like noticing your teeth need cleaning or that you have been a less than tender lover lately, but this is what happened. I was sitting on the stair stoop taking a break between projects, when I noticed the box of government files I had stored temporarily beneath a bench. Randomly I picked out a file, and broke in as if I was breaking a deck of cards. The page I landed on is what ignited the idea of a study.
Before I get there, I have to explain that this week, and last has been a zigzag road of discovery. Sometimes, if we don’t fight the natural flow of disaster, we find enlightenment at the end. I wish more life lessons were accessible through conversation, books, and study. It is the old-fashioned trial and error course that leaves the lasting impression.
My own zigzag is aligned with an absence of academics and an overwhelming desire to return to the classroom, and open my mind to knowledge, and learn. I am a woman who orders catalogs from Universities, fills out applications and never sends them in. I enroll in classes and don’t show up, I drive by campuses and bite my lip because I was handed the opportunity to study and I fouled it up.
Getting back to the box of government transcripts and hearing Proceedings. This is from actual testimony conducted by the Immigration and Naturalization Department against my father. The INS investigation began in 1944, and continued until 1963. In 1948 he was convicted of falsely claiming American citizenship, and sent to prison for two years. He was also avoiding a deportation order. His family left Russia when he was a child and immigrated along with many Jewish families to Canada in 1914. He was naturalized Canadian.
I flip to the middle of the stack, and begin reading. This portion of questioning is into my father’s source of income. Shortly following the murder of Benjamin Siegel, Dad’s friend and high-risk employer, he decided to change careers. He was introduced to Lenoir Josey, a successful independent oil producer in Houston. Josey embraced my Dad. He offered him total rehabilitation; onsite training, support financially and socially, and a job in his family business in Houston, Texas. My mother and father packed up the Cadillac and moved to Houston January 1, 1950. He was 43 years old. This is an excerpt from the testimony.
Question: “ Mr. Smiley, there is on the desk here, in front of us, a series of papers and books, I believe relating to your scholastic studies. Am I correct in that statement?”
Answer: “Yes, these are term papers that I was required to write during my courses. I enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles, the first semester in 1953, and then it continued in a period of 7 semesters, evening courses, at USC, all in petroleum and geology.”
Question: “And do you wish to make available for review, these papers, in furtherance of your statements, that you had given all your time to the study of petroleum engineering?”
“Yes, indeed. That covers a period of 6 years which was broken up, as you wouldn’t ordinarily take 6 years to cover 8 semesters; it was all broken up, with my going back and forth for these INS hearings.”
Jumping ahead a few pages, I find this questioning representative of my father’s deviant character.
Question: “You have the right to make the first designation of country, to which you would prefer your deportation be directed. If you decline making any such designation, I have informed you that I am specifying Canada as that country, because I consider Canada to be the country of your nationality.” (Canada would not accept him; so they contacted the Russian Embassy).
Answer: “I understand that; I wonder about my two little girls who look for my support, whether they have a say in this matter; they are United States citizens.”
I then closed the file and recalled how his college studies were abated, and he was denied his degree. During preparation of the hearings, the INS investigated his enrollment at USC; they asked to see a copy of his High School Diploma. The administration office checked the file, and discovered there was none. The outcome was not that my father was expelled; it was that my father stormed into the admissions office, and called them to the rug for denying him his graduate degree. Every time he told me that story, his face turned multiple shades of red and purple.
I leave his story, and return to my study. I sat down at the computer, retrieved the printed 2003 catalog from Skidmore University Without Walls Program, and pulled up the 2006 application online. I filled it out, and sent it in. If my father can return to academics after his life story, anyone can....to be continued
Luellen Smiley writes a weekly column for the Del Mar Times in San Diego,CA. "Smiley's Dice" features the arts, adventures in living, and reflections on her father's gangster past. She splits her time between Taos, New Mexico, and Saratoga Springs, New York where she operates The Follies House, a summer Victorian Vacation Residece. Luellen is a freelance publicist, and creative non-fiction writer. She is an advocate for the arts,
in a world that she senses is starving for authenticity.
