Chapter I: Before Anabel

        I was born in 1920 to Barney (Bernard) Barahal and Esther Blitz (Barahal). The family lived in Detroit, Michigan, but my mother went back to Toledo, Ohio, to give birth with the help of her own mother. Later my sister Shirley was born, following the same routine.  My earliest memory, when I was still in a crib, was waking up at night to see my parents fighting.  I also remember being walked to Hastings Elementary School the first day, shocked and scared to death by the novel sight of so many kids playing.  It was my first glimpse of black kids as well, which frightened me.  I have no memory of the classes or teachers.

        I think my father, who carried a blackjack (a leather sack filled with lead shot), was a bootlegger, taking advantage of the Detroit River as the boundary between the US and Canada.  We never discussed it, but I put two and two together.  Officially, he delivered Jewish bread from bakeries to stores:  oval rye, and for Friday nights, Challah.  

        I got out of the house as much as I could, mostly playing baseball in the neighborhood.  When I was about 12 years old, I would go to Tigers Stadium and stand at a door, waiting for a guy to come out and pick a few kids to set empty buckets in right or left field to pick up foul balls. That’s how I got to see the Detroit Tigers play for free. 

        The Tigers had the first big-time Jewish ballplayer in the major leagues: Hank Greenberg.  The 1934 World Series was beyond my reach, but I remember the big riot that happened when the St. Louis Cardinals ran the score higher and higher.  Garbage hailed down on them from the Detroit fans in the stands, but the field got cleaned up and the game and the series finished with St. Louis on top. 

Alan and Shirley

        About that time I returned home from school one day earlier than usual, having been hit in the head by a foul ball and driven home by the school nurse. I walked in the door and discovered my mother with her boyfriend just getting dressed in the bedroom.  He did not say a word and left quietly.  I never mentioned it to anyone and began talking about it only late in life.

Allan and Shirley

        In high school at Detroit Central my favorite subject was politics, which I studied with Mr. Fishman, who was the first person to get me thinking in a more radical way.  He assigned us Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, which turned out to be important in my life.  It was the first book that presented people struggling to make a living, driven out of Oklahoma by high winds and dust.

       After graduation, I went to Wayne State University, the U of Michigan being beyond our budget.  I majored in history. Holland Michigan, founded by the Dutch, produced two professors who had a great influence on me:  William Bossenbrook, a tall historian who made history look alive.  I took four classes from him. My philosophy professor was also great. He took us to see the painter Diego Rivera who was working on a mural at the Detroit Library. Our professor even introduced us to him.  Rivera's mural showed the workers of the Ford Motor company unionizing, and the bosses in Detroit tried to shut it down.

        My parents saved all the money they could so I could go to Harvard for graduate school, which I hated.  I had far better teaching at Wayne State.  At Harvard I was friendly with George Mosse, a refuge from Hitler’s Germany. I was unaware at the time that he was in love with me, but he mentions that episode in his autobiography.   I finished all the course work for the Ph. D. before abandoning the program to go to sea as a Merchant Marine.  WWII was beginning, and I wanted to be out there contributing to the struggle.

        As the war ended, I was invited to return to Harvard to finish the Ph.D., but I was so disappointed in the school, the teaching and what it all cost that I decided to do something else. 

       One night I was walking in an old Jewish neighborhood in Detroit, when I met up with a friend who was on his way to a party for veterans 

at Anabel Hill’s house. She had been married to a pilot who was shot down and killed in the war.  I knew who she was and always liked her.  My friend offered to call her and ask if he could bring me. I went.  We met, and boom, boom, boom, what a lucky break it was for me!    

Chapter II:  Love

        At the party, I saw people I hadn’t seen for years. I also talked politics with Anabel, and she invited me over for dinner at her apartment, where she lived alone. At dinner, she told me about her father, Frank Earnest Hill, a poet, professor, Shakespeare scholar, and translator of the Canterbury Tales. She told me about her mother, Elsa Hempl Hill, who was also a college professor. She told me how her adventurous parents took her across the Atlantic 12 times, always by sea.  It was during the depression, and there were very few people on the ships.  She and her family were treated like royalty. 

         She told me how she attended boarding schools in Austria, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, before she went to college at U Michigan. In Austria, one of her teachers was Isadora Duncan. On bath day at the school,  Duncan took the first bath, and her students followed, using the same water. 

         When Anabel was a teenager, her mother once even dragged her to a speech given by Adolph Hitler. I was fascinated to hear all this, and we got along very well. At the end of the evening,  I had to admit to her that my parents were expecting me home.  She said,  “We can’t let that happen!”  On my way home I worried that I would never see her again, but six months later we were married.

           At that time, I led an education committee for the 1.5 million members of the United Autoworkers CIO. We led book clubs for autoworkers in Detroit. One of the books we promoted was Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith, a white woman who openly criticized segregation and worked to dismantle Jim Crow laws, We also promoted Fashion Is Spinach, by Elizabeth Hawes, an early feminist and champion of people’s rights to wear the clothes they wanted.

First  Southern Summer School U. A. W. - C. I. O.

Highlander Folk School 1944

        I had trouble with my parents about the relationship with Anabel, because they did not want me to marry a non-.Jew.  Most of those six months I worried that I was breaking up the family.  One day I would decide I couldn’t do it, the next that Anabel was the person I wanted to spend my life with.   My mother threatened suicide, because she couldn’t face the rest of her family.  My father never discussed it with me, though I knew how he felt.  Ultimately that decision cost me my relationship with my parents, whom I saw only a handful of times thereafter.

        When the time came to get married, Anabel and I got blood tests in Alpena, Michigan, on our way back from a trip north to the Great Lakes, where I was organizing ship workers.  

            Anabel had piloted a plane to meet me in Rodgers City, Michigan. A few days later we met during lunch at City Hall on Cadillac Square in Detroit. I brought my secretary from the union as a witness, and she brought her boss.  We managed to find a judge on his lunch hour, who graciously married us in the hallway.  Then we left City Hall and went to the Teller Hotel across the square for a wedding drink and something to eat before returning to work.  The waitress ignored us.  I intercepted her, only to be told, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve Negroes.” My secretary at the union was African American.

            The next day a group began picketing the hotel, and after several weeks the color line was broken. We were not there to witness that victory, because Anabel and I had agreed to take jobs teaching English for the Chinese Industrial Cooperative, a government organization in China. We were en route to that country, which involved boarding a ship in San Francisco.  We were all set with tickets but needed to wait a week for the vessel to prepare for departure.  During that week, Mao Zedong made his move and overturned the government of Chaing Kai Shek. We were staying with Anabel’s grandmother in Palo Alto, and once the civil war started, our job prospects evaporated and we were stranded in San Francisco.

            We realized later that we were lucky not to get involved in the violence of the Chinese civil war. In fact, we decided to settle in San Francisco, where I became a teacher at the California Labor School, and Anabel worked as a secretary there in charge of the office.  It was such a good school that students earned college credit. At first, we found an apartment in Mill Valley, California, a two-room place in the hills.  Then we moved to a studio apartment on Telegraph hill in SF for $50 a month. The same apartment in 2021 would go for over $3,500!

            I got laid off after a year at the school--which was strapped for funds--and then I failed to find new work, because Anabel and I were both blacklisted on account of our union work.  The longshoremen did not care, though, and they took me on.  I was glad to get a job, but I was not cut out to be a longshoreman. I had never done manual labor, having spent most of my life in libraries, and being a longshoreman was hard, brutal work: loading and unloading merchandise, from bananas-- which came on enormous, heavy, stalks--to circus animals, and all manner of machinery, clothing, and other goods.   Anabel also found work, capping bottles on a conveyer belt for Eleven Cellars Wine, or filling containers for Hills Brothers Coffee.

Life as a longshoreman on the docksn

        I was a longshoreman for fifteen years. One year we were on strike, and I got a call from the coordinator, Dick Wertheimer. He explained that a week earlier Paul Robeson, the athlete, lawyer, and opera star, had been singing in New York state, when a right-wing group organized a riot.  Robeson barely escaped. Now he was in California, getting ready to sing at a concert in Oakland. In the meantime he needed protection, and longshoremen had a reputation for being tough.  I spent over a week with Robeson at Stinson Beach, along with Wertheimer and two guys who had fought in the Spanish Civil war.

            Robeson sang for us in several languages, we played football together, and he snored loudly. Our week ended in Oakland, at the concert. we played football together (he had been a professional football player), and he snored loudly. Our week ended in Oakland, where we all went to his concert.we played football together (he had been a professional football player), and he snored loudly. Our week ended in Oakland, where we all went to his concert.

Chapter 3:  Teaching and Traveling 

            A few years later I saw an announcement for a Summer program at UC Berkeley for people who wanted to transition into public school teaching.  Coincidentally, I met a man at a party who had been CFO of a major clothing store in SF and had abandoned that position to go through the Berkeley program. He said it was the best thing he ever did. I decided to give it a try, and later Anabel went through the same program.

            Members of this program were put on a list of new teachers, which many Bay Area schools needed.  My first job was for a summer program in the East Bay,  where I filled in for a very popular teacher.  I thought he would be my mentor and teach me the tricks of the trade. No such luck.  He completely ignored me and left me to fend for myself with the disappointed students who expected to be studying with him.   As I started the class, five students stood up, and one of them asked, “Where’s Tradisco?” I replied, “I’m taking his place for the summer.”  They walked out. But I worked at it, and by the end of summer the remaining students were my friends. The mother of one defector called to apologize, saying she had heard that it was a very good class.

            After that trial by fire, I expected to teach at another school in the East Bay, filled with working-class kids, but I wound up at San Rafael High School, teaching the children of doctors, lawyers, and merchants, with a few lower-middle-class kids sprinkled in.  I stayed there twenty years, with my longshoremen’s hook serving me better as a wall ornament than it had on the actual docks.  My time as a teacher was one of the best periods of my life. Our children grew up, Anabel developed her career as a music teacher, violist, and ceramicist, and I got to work with colleagues I learned from every day and students who kept me on my toes.  My subject was US History, and I specialized in helping young people understand what was at stake in trying to figure out what path they would take to become citizens worthy of the burdens of democracy.  

            In 1973, the principal talked with me, Ed Cunningham (English), and Walter Belden  (Social Studies), about taking over a special program.  There was a wing of the school built during the FDR administration that had not been used in years.  He invited us to restart a program called NEXUS (bringing things together). We were glad to build an interdisciplinary course around themes like "life and death," or "war," reading books like The Death of Ivan Ilyich, or War and Peace. We had no restrictions about class time, as long as we stayed within the morning block.  We could take the students to the art museum for connections about war and peace. We could go to concerts in San Francisco. We even integrated ping pong. We team-taught this program for three years.