It was a hot June day in 1936, and down Douglas Boulevard in Chicago, three "big shots" were pushing an old, dilapidated, rusty-looking, tire-deflated 1926 Dodge truck. It was hard, even for members of Habonim, to realize that the three were none other than Nahum Guttman, rosh Kvutza; Julius Cohen, business manager; and myself, the super truck driver-to-be, and that this little scene was actually the first practical beginning of Habonim's second Kvutza in America at New Buffalo, Michigan.
Only three weeks remained before the opening of Kvutza. The previous week, we had received our first application with $1 deposit. In these three weeks, we had to revive a place which was once a beautiful Farband camp, Tel Hai, but which had been ravaged by fire. The fire had left a desolate spot, now overgrown with weeds and grass and ruins all about. The advance crew would have three weeks of unceasing work to get the place in shape for the opening, and we were pushing that truck to a garage to get her running, for upon her depended all the transportation of haverim and materials for this crucial period and for the Kvutza season itself.
She had been given to us for nothing. The haver in whose lumber yard she was stationed after serving some time at our short-lived Hehalutz training farm in Indiana was glad to see her go. But we knew she would run again, and so we pushed her slowly to the garage and told the mechanic to get her in running condition for that evening. He looked at us and grinned, shook his head, and said he'd see what he could do.
In the evening when we returned, she was indeed able to run-but no telling how. She needed a new generator and new battery. We could take the chance of using her that night if we wanted, but he wouldn't advise it. We decided to take the chance.
Trembling, I got into the driver's seat. The Dodge was old, the driver completely new. Julie and Nahum, fearlessly risking their lives, got into the. seat next to me. We started her up, and then somehow managed to drive to the center. Here we picked up fourteen brave souls and were on our way. The streets of Chicago are renowned for their holes and bumps and I didn't miss one of them. Cries of "ouch" rang out and the people along Western Avenue stared.
After a harrowing hour and a half we were finally out of the city, when the battery went completely dead. We had no lights. What should we do? Turning back would mean another precious day wasted. We looked up at the sky and saw that the moon was full. It was now about midnight and the traffic was not very heavy. We decided to continue. One of the haverim climbed up on top of the cab and shone his flashlight down on the road in front of the truck. With the aid of that flashlight and the full moon, and through the grace of an inefficient police force, we finally reached Tel Hai. Those in the back were frozen from the cold night air, those in front roasted from the heat of the motor, but all the way, there was spirited singing and joking.
After a few hours' sleep and a little more pushing, we got the Dodge started on her way back to Chicago-just Julie and I. Before we left, we tried to think of a name for our truck because we could already see that she was to be an important factor in the life of Kvutza. Then on the way, when she began sputtering over a little hill, I urged her on by calling out, "Come on, Kvutzie! " and thus she was named.
Kvutzie was the cause of most of the joy and sorrow of that first season. Her every arrival was the source of the greatest excitement; her every departure, the source of the greatest fear, for who could tell when or if she would return? The most spirited singing of the summer and the most gleeful laughter took place aboard her on trips to the beach and back.
Kvutzie became a legend. Songs were written about her. We played guessing games as to what time she would return from a trip, how many flats she would have, and whom and what she would bring back with her.
Miraculously, she served us through the entire summer. Then we decided to take a number of haverim 1000 miles to the seminar at Accord, our New York Kvutza. "What? With Kvutzie? Never!" Well, we'd see. We had her gear fixed so it would stay in high. Then we went to buy her new shoes at an old junk yard about two miles from Michigan City. There, aided by a Jewish girl of about twenty, who had inherited the junk yard from her father and who was sitting among old rims and tires and spare parts writing a book, we found four almost new tires for Kvutzie.
What a night that was! We packed eighteen haverim into the back of Kvutzie and started the trip! It thundered and rained, and everything was against our getting there. Frightened parents trembled as Kvutzie pulled out of the dirt road onto the highway at three in the morning. But we survived the trip, the rain, the mountains, and the sixty hours of traveling. We arrived at Accord amid great celebrating (and without a single flat tire on the entire trip).
There, at Accord, we sold Kvutzie to the Hehalutz farm at Creamridge, New Jersey. But Kvutzie had been run ning on love and sympathy. Without them, she soon died. They dismantled her and used her parts on other trucks.
Others may remember the camp fires, the overnight hikes, the discussion, the comradeship, the wonderful spirit, that first season of Kvutzat Tel Hai. I remember Kvutzie for she was the creator of that spirit, a spirit which could take a dead object and give it the soul that Kvutzie had. Only in the wonderful life that is ours at Kvutza could such a spirit come to be.
Moshe Goldberg, 1942