CultureWatch Book Reviews: Local Stop in the Promised Land

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The Local Stop of Gregg's title is the upper West side of New York City, which Gregg calls the Avenue, from the early 20th century through the 1950s.Gregg, who lived in the neighborhood, so authentically recreates its ambience and its residents that the novel reads like a compelling urban ethnography. Gregg’s evocative dialogue and descriptions wonderfully express how the Avenue impacts each resident in unpredictable ways, as we follow their lives and relationships throughout the book.

Books

LOCAL STOP IN THE PROMISED LAND

By John Telford Gregg. 2014

Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; paperback, 636 pages, and Kindle

Reviewed by Serena Nanda*

The Local Stop of Gregg's title is the upper West side of New York City, which Gregg calls the Avenue, from the early 20th century through the 1950s.

Gregg, who lived in the neighborhood, so authentically recreates its ambience and its residents that the novel reads like a compelling urban ethnography. It reveals the many layers of change that occur as diverse poor and working class immigrants and rural black migrants are pulled into the area by the hopes of a better life in the promised land of America. Gregg’s evocative dialogue and descriptions wonderfully express how the Avenue impacts each resident in unpredictable ways, as we follow their lives and relationships throughout the book. The characters are not stereotypes but moving portraits of individuals painted in sharp, distinct colors. In place of a single, mechanical narrative line, a series of individual arcs peculiar to each unforgettable neighborhood resident is its own plot, through which the reader shares the earthy, unbidden humor, the joyous anticipations and the deep pathos of life on the Avenue.

Gregg describes the impact of changes in the neighborhood over time, as massive post-war low income high-rise projects are constructed and chain stores begin replacing the Mom-and-Pop groceries on the Avenue. On a personal note, although I had a Bronx childhood Gregg's local stop played an important part in my family history: my father and his sisters were deposited as children in the long famous and now defunct Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York.

The First World War drove the young, unwilling soldier George Kassos away from his Greek village onto the Avenue, where he established a delicatessen with his devoted wife's help, and raised a family. Steinhauer, a licensed German wurstmaker, emigrated from his impoverished hometown typical of post-WWI Germany to open a quality meat market for a clientele of the Avenue's then sizeable, relatively prosperous German population. 'The Troubles' in Ireland drove many an IRA wanted man and other Irish folks seeking a better life than that of their stony native soil onto the Avenue. Some landed in construction jobs, trucking or similar work downtown. Others became bar owners — and barflies as well — as the years moved on. Ten Thousand Victories Maan Sing, was chosen by his family in China to leave his wife and child behind and establish himself in America, on order to sustain his kin, which he accomplished by opening up a laundry in a slot on the Avenue as advised by his New York clansmen. Others from Poland, Hungary and Puerto Rico found niches on the Avenue, where their dreams and lives altered with more recent times.

As the Allies fight on to victory in WW II, the Avenue bars prosper; some put in dance bands, and crowds of the young military men who would become 'our greatest generation' cavort, Lindy Hop and get drunk with the women holding up the barstools. The comic, racy dialogue of these interactions will bring laughter and tears. The family-owned sidewalk groceries that have kept up with the times stocking Coca-Cola and carryout meals, cigarettes and American beer, find themselves busier than their earlier downturns would have predicted. But Gregg also describes the poignant disappointments and heartbreaks of that raucous period, following a mailman's delivery of what he recognizes as a military condolence and a Gold Star for a widow and mother whom we have come to know earlier in the story.

Even as the Allies continue to victory, the news of the fate of the millions of Jews stranded in Nazi occupied Europe intrude on the thoughts of Hersh Meltzer and Joe Rabinowitz as their once thought of plans to visit their relatives in the old country have literally turned to ashes. Later, others from Poland, Hungary, and rural blacks from the American South, found a niche on the Avenue, where their dreams and lives altered, in subtle and unsuspected ways. Stan Pukowski's accidental encounter with his neighbor Lil Czubukowalowiscz after his mother's death, bends his arc unexpectedly towards a comforting relationship he never sought and which surprises him as he learns something new about himself. And Buffie, a migrant from a beloved black farm family in the South, escapes the racism and hardships of her rural life to the Avenue, becoming its sole black inhabitant, although her limited skills and racism, Northern style, grant her only the unhealthiest and lowest rung of employment opportunities.

Eventually, the trickle of Puerto Ricans to the Avenue becomes a flood, importantly altering the whole tenor of the neighborhood. Some prosper, some do not, but their voices all speak with the images of their island's sweet pleasures and natural beauty. One of the novel's most affecting scenes takes place in a bar, between Calley and Richie, two brash Irish boys from the neighborhood who moved on to better surroundings in the suburbs, as they revisit the world of their childhood. They emerge from the evening with unanticipated — and unwanted — reflections about their lives and families that make each of them fervently swear, for different reasons, never to make that journey again. Ralph Fasanella

Local Stop in the Promised Land immediately brought to mind an on-going American Folk Art Museum exhibition, Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget, of the 'social reality' paintings of the artist, whose theme of "who we are and where we came from" is so movingly depicted in Gregg's novel. The exhibit continues until December 1st.

Modern Times, 1966, oil on canvas, 49 ¾ x 104 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Maurice and Margo Cohen, Birmingham, MI

*Professor Emeritus, Anthropology. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

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