L. Jack Davidson Part III: "It Was Her Home..."

Jack didn't stay in Salvador for too long....

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When we first moved to Salvador, the first two years, my father was a little bit apprehensive to make too many commitments, so he rented—at that time, this was the Golden Fifties of Salvador. There was a lot of money. People went away for six months at a time. So the first six months we went into a furnished house which happened to be right next to Alfredo and Paulita Widawer, the house that they owned in the same street—which was very important in my life, because Don Alfredo is the one who started taking me to synagogue at the time. After that house had been the house where the Geissmars had lived, and they had just moved out, so that house was there and free, so we moved into it for six months. Then we moved for six months to the Wiener’s house, because they went away for six months to Europe. Then we moved for six months across the street from the Widawers. And then I think we moved for six months into the Widawers’s house , because they went away for six months. And then my father finally rented a house of our own and furnished it and so on and so forth. So the first two years we lived in four separate—four different houses.

(Not easy.)

No. Especially since it was the first time in our lives when we were not with both parents. It was right after the divorce, so it wasn’t easy.

(Then in New York, did you live in Manhattan?)

Yes. I lived in Manhattan and went to the Walden School, a progressive school on the Upper West Side. Great school. Also a terrific influence on my life.

(Is it that method?)

No, it wasn’t a method school, it wasn’t a Waldorf school or anything like that, no. But it was a very, very liberal school. I mean, to me it was shocking at the time. I remember arriving in fifth grade, I think it was fifth grade, or it was sixth grade, and the first day you asked what the teacher’s name is, and they said, “Lea.” And I couldn’t get myself to say “Lea.” I raised my hand when I had a question and I said, “Miss Lea,” and the whole class cracked up. That made a big impact on me, because it was the kind of school where you called your teachers by the first name and all that. But I spent many very happy years there. I liked the school, and I think that a lot of my ability to think and analyze and have a little bit of criteria in my life comes from the liberal education of the Walden School—which no longer exists. As a matter of fact, from that school—do you know the story of those three guys that got killed in Mississippi because they were registering blacks to vote; Andy Goodman was one of them, and he was one grade above me at Walden, so I knew him, you know. That’s the kind of people that were there. That’s the kinds of issues that we dealt with, even as relatively young children, and that was, I think, quite enriching.

(Was your mother already remarried at that point?)

Yes. My mother got remarried almost immediately. I think she got divorced to remarry.

(So you had a stepfather?)

No, because he lived in Chile and that was never a very stable marriage. They had four children and they were married for many years, but it was never a very stable marriage. So no, I never had a stepfather.

(So you lived with your mother and your sister?)

I lived with my mother and my sister or with my father. I never lived with a stepmother or a stepfather. As a matter of fact, both of them remarried, my father thirteen years later, my mother immediately, and somehow I never, ever related to those people—I had good relationships with them—as stepparents. It was always my mother’s husband and my father’s wife. That was the relationship. That’s how it stayed, even though at different points I was close to one or the other, at different times in life I liked them and at other times I disliked them. But it was never a stepparent. It never infringed on the parental. It was always my mother’s husband and my father’s wife.

(Probably pretty revolutionary at that point in time, at least in Salvador.)

Well, it didn’t come up in Salvador, because my father—yeah, it was revolutionary for my father to be a divorced man. He had a difficult life, because society didn’t—there was no room for a divorced man in this small society. But he didn’t marry until I was an adult, I mean, while I lived with him and his wife for six months in the house after they got married , it was the six months before I got married. I was never a child in their home. I was—we shared the house, if you will. And my mother—while I visited their home, I was a guest. I never lived there. The home that I had with my mother, even after the divorce, was not my mother’s husband’s home.

It was her home.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC