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While Hall's resolute belief in Marxism restricts his vision, it helps explain his ability to retain power. So, too, does his aw-shucks Americanism. He is a smart, if not brilliant, fellow who connects with the common man. Even though he named his golden retriever Yuri (after Andropov), Hall has cultural tastes that are all-American. He guffaws at the hit TV show America's Funniest Home Videos. He reads the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, along with the African Communist. And he raises few complaints from his Yonkers neighbors. (In the 1960s, when he started a huge excavation, neighbors wondered whether Hall knew about an impending Soviet nuclear attack. But it turned out he was digging a garage, not a bomb shelter.)
His wild past is hard to reconcile with a man who paints primitive pictures of woodpeckers for kids, collects art and grows organic vegetables at his son's house on Long Island. During the summer, Hall frequently arrives at the office, his car trunk laden with squash, lettuce, eggplant and potatoes. Last weekend he fought the stress of world events by clearing from the yard trees downed by Hurricane Bob. Elizabeth, his wife of 56 years, applauds him as a good family man. Indeed, how can anyone think ill of Hall when he beams so about cooking pancakes for his four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, or shares his secret for making tasty beef stew. (It's the apples.)
Is anybody still afraid of Gus Hall? Well, the FBI keeps tabs on him. "This is sort of the last chapter of a long scenario," says Pat Watson, FBI deputy assistant director. But even the feds know the party is over. There's plenty of evidence. The party daily newspaper has become a weekly. Its cable TV show, People Before Profits, has been suspended. Membership has dropped about 25% in the past year.
This last communist, forlorn and nearly forgotten, is more lonely than loathsome. His glory days, when he battled the "old, big lie" that communists were hiding everywhere, hatching plots to overthrow the government, are gone. Today what Hall calls the "new, big lie" -- that the red menace is ready for burial -- is true. Hall, years ago, thought socialism was just around the corner. "But when you get older," he says with customary dexterity, "you have to say there is more than one corner." The only thing lurking around the next corner, however, is the dustheap of history.