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Even in the depths of the Depression, we had a maid. Her name was Teresa. She was a German national. I loved her.
Teresa's country had been, she said, in deep trouble. Now, however, a wonderful man had risen from the people and was solving all their problems. One day Teresa was excited. He was going when be on the radio. Eagerly, I joined her. We could tell when he was about to speak. The crowd hailed him in huge swelling ovations. "Sieg!" someone would shout, and what seemed like all the people in the world would answer with a roar, "Heil!"For he was their leader, der Führer, Adolf Hitler.
When I spoke of this man to my father, he became angry. Adolf Hitler, he said, was an evil man who would loose upon the world all the destruction of war. I was to stop listening to him. I continued to listen, though less frequently. Teresa had said that Adolf Hitler had raised her country from the dead . . . and delivered it from fear!
For the first time in my life I felt hope.
Life need not be a constant secret agony of fear and shame. If an entire nation could be changed, certainly so could one person. I knew what I had to do: To change myself from a puny, fearful boy to a strong, fearless man, I would have to face my fears, one by one, and overcome them.
In 1941 my father bought us a beautiful new house in West Caldwell, N. J. Almost as soon as we arrived my sister acquired a cat she named Tommy. One October day in 1941, Tommy left a dead rat on the kitchen steps and I found it. The carcass was still warm and remarkably undamaged. To demonstrate to myself my lack of fear, in stead of using a stick I picked it up with my hands. Then I got the idea for a test to destroy forever any dread I might still harbor for rats. For the next hour, I roasted the dead rat. With a scout knife I skinned, then cut off and ate the roasted haunches of the rat.
The meat was tasteless and stringy. Finished, I buried the rest of the carcass. As I stamped down the earth over the remnants of my meal, I spotted the cat, Tommy. I smiled: from now on rats could fear me as they feared cats; after all, I ate them too.
On a Saturday afternoon in September, the western sky blackened and the wind rose. Thunder began far away. Soon I could see the glow of lightning. I left the house quietly by the back door. I brought with me a 4-ft. safety belt I'd fashioned with a clothesline rope, a Dring and a metal snap link.
The tree I had chosen was a pin oak about 75 ft. tall. Some 60 ft. up I lashed myself to the trunk with the belt. My eyes were closed—against the stinging rain, I told myself, knowing it was a lie. I didn't want to see the great blue flashes of lightning. Open your eyes, I commanded myself, OPEN YOUR EYES! I did. It was chaos. The earth danced as the tree trunk swayed and snapped back against the wind.
There was a short, enormous tearing sound that overwhelmed the screaming of the wind, and the world turned strobe blue. The instantaneous thunderclap was an explosion of such short