Land of Dreams
by
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The falling snowflakes speckled the field, gently blanching the earth's grays and browns. I barely felt the cold as I stared at the double tombstone under which my parents lay. At least they had a known resting place, not like my brother Morris, who had wandered far from home. Beyond them stretched an endless field of tombstones. At first I saw them as solemn markers, then as the finger-tips of their occupants trying to claw their way out . Finally they were accusing fingers pointing heavenwards, wanting justice for their earthly days. No living person was within sight, but the buzzing traffic on the nearby expressway was a reminder of the world outside. As I stood there, the landscape slowly transformed itself into images of my parents, not the time-worn persons they had become, but the spirited couple of my childhood. I found myself staring into memories that flashed across the screen of my mind like unedited film clips, until the scenes slowed down to September of 1938.
Death, the Great Depression, Trade Unions, Gangsters, War, and Pogroms were abstractions; I lived in the moment-to-moment details of my child's life... I heard but barely understood my parents, who had survived pogroms and revolution in Russia to escape to their Land of Dreams...they survived (the Great Depression) with Poppa's working and Momma's frugality. I did not know the dangers we faced that year: the gangsters that Poppa challenged in the painters union, the naturalization investigators who could discover Poppa's falsified birth date and his participation in the Russian Revolution....I had the murkiest impression of a world tottering on the brink of destruction yet keenly felt the triumphs and disappointments of my small, yet all-encompassing universe. I faced a class bully, a stern Irish-American teacher, a pretty Hebrew teacher and an authoritarian rabbi. I had as allies a brother who was often my savior and sometimes my nemesis, a pious grandfather, an overprotective mother and a father who tried to toughen me for an unjust world. I also enlisted the help of Superman, Buck Rogers, Jack Armstrong, Dick Tracy, Moses, Abraham and God. I was convinced of our inevitable triumph - weren't the Good Guys supposed to win? They did in the radio serials and comics. .. As the cold snowflakes dissolved on my cheeks, merging with my tears, I was snugly in bed...
Chapter One September Evening, 1938
'Where can they go? We waited two years in Warsaw for visas.'
Momma's plaintive voice pierced my sleep with its mixture of entreaty and indictment.
'If America and Europe sent soldiers, they'd take Hitler by the throat-'
I stirred, responding to Poppa's anger, which I was familiar with from his right hand as well as his voice. I hadn't yet learned that his anger shielded him from his fears.
'Why should they care about the Jews?'
That was Momma sounding hopeless.
'But millions of Christians will be destroyed along with the Jews-'
Poppa was sometimes optimistic about Christians helping Jews.
'Who cared about the Jews in the Big War?'
Uncle Sol! Poppa's older brother, sometimes serious, often funny.
I stopped listening until Momma mentioned the contrabondyst, whom she said could get her sister's family out of Russia. Poppa said that would be like throwing money out the window. Uncle Sol, usually neutral in such disputes between Momma and Poppa, said, 'Even a mouse couldn't escape Stalin's police.' I made a mental note to discover who was this contrabondyst. I didn't understand all of their talk, but not caring to go to sleep, I used the shaft of light from the kitchen to make shadow animals on the wall. Morris, six years older than me, had a menagerie that danced on the wall. If he was home now--and in the mood--he could answer my questions. He could also be as vengeful as the Dragon Lady in Terry and the Pirates. Above his bed was a poster of Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis. Morris made model airplanes and fantasized that he would fly some day. How could I--or even he--imagine where his dreams would take him? He and Poppa argued about the poster: Poppa wanted to take it down because Lindbergh was an anti-Semite; Morris said he still was first to fly the Atlantic. Poppa no longer slapped Morris for being fresh. I was not sure whether it was because Morris was in high school or Momma standing between them and saying he was too big to be hit. Since I was much younger, I wasn't as lucky. If I misbehaved, I could still risk getting a smack . But I must admit, Poppa no longer hit very hard.
'Experience is the name people give to their mistakes.'
I was amazed at how long grown-ups could talk about the same subject. Where did they get all those things to say? One or two sentences was all I could think on any topic.
'But if necessary, a bear can learn to dance!'
Uncle Sol said funny things!
'There'll be bloodshed, war-'
Momma again. Even if I didn't understand her, I resonated to her worries, which hovered about her like an invisible cloak.
'They let this madman take Austria and now he wants Czechoslovakia! Give a bear honey and you'll only whet his appetite.'
That was Poppa, but he sounded like Uncle Sol. My mind reeled trying to understand them. Where was the Ruhr? What was the Anschluss? Who would dare get close enough to a bear to give him honey? Some things I understood, like Momma wanting to rescue her sister's family in Russia. What I knew of war was from the illustrated cards that came with chewing gum, including one of Japanese soldiers bayoneting Chinese. I knew who the Bad Guys were: the Germans and Japanese. The Good Guys were us, along with the English, the French and Chinese. Who was this madman--the meshugener-- who aroused their anger but also terrified them? ...
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About the Book
Land of Dreams is a coming-of-age novel about a ten-year-old boy in 1938-1939, the year America was struggling out of the Depression and Europe was staggering into war. Al, the adult narrator, relives that fateful year. He is witness to the struggles of his immigrant family: his father risking his life to oust the gangsters from the painters union and avoiding deportation because he falsified his immigration papers; his mother trying to smuggle her sister's family out of Soviet Russia and worrying about her own family as well. Al has his own conflicts: being accepted by his Irish-American fourth grade teacher, dealing with the class bully who dislikes him because he's fat and Jewish, escaping his mother's overprotectivness and trying to make sense of his family and the world. While he daydreams about Native Americans in nearby Crotona Park, he meets a black classmate whose grandfather is an Apache survivor of his tribe's 1890 Florida imprisonment. Another classmate, whose father is a physician, introduces him to the middle-class. His triumph in being chosen Santa Claus in the school play is turned into disaster when his mother forbids him to portray 'that Christian saint;' only his older brother's intervention resolves the crisis. In Hebrew School, his rabbi rejects a Chanukah play as too militant and fires the teacher who selected it; but Al and his 'Maccabee' classmates plan their own rebellion.
Besides the serious themes, we witness the mishaps at the Christmas and Chanukah plays; the 1938 World Series in which the Bronx Bombers win their third victory. In his struggles, Al enlists the help of the 1930s comic strip and radio heroes (e.g., Superman, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tom Mix) as well as Biblical characters (e.g., Noah, Abraham, Moses and God) to confront formidable enemies: the school bully, the immigration police, the autocratic rabbi, Adolph Hitler, the Evil Eye, Death and the Brooklyn Dodgers. When his father considers pursuing the American dream by going into business with the help of a wealthy Atlanta brother, Al is devastated by the possibility of moving from the Bronx. Yet Al resonates to his father's conflicts about abandoning his union principles and to his mother's fears, he learns how a decision that brings joy to one family member makes another miserable. He resonates to his grandfather's Orthodox morality (and mortality), his brother's dedication to science, his father's principles, his mother's possessiveness and fears, one uncle's humor and another's ruthless pursuit of wealth. When everything is on the verge of working out, Al's world collapses with the death of his grandfather. His parents, who fled Europe and moved numerous times in America, assume responsibility for the grandmother and must again move.
During that fateful year, many of Al's childhood beliefs are demolished: the Good Guys are not always the victors as in the radio and movie serials; threats come not only from outsiders but also from family members; stability and order are not the laws of the universe or his family; transience and capriciousness play crucial roles in life. Yet despite the disappointments and conflicts, Al has the security that only family can provide. While Al was involved in his child's moment-to-moment existence, as an adult he realizes that his father was a hero and his mother dauntless, both trying to protect their family in a world where security is illusory.
Comments from editors who read the novel included, 'You're certainly a competent writer,' 'evocative...interesting, admirable,' and, 'the author captured the protagonist's point of view with sensitivity and warmth.' A literary agent wrote, 'a strong piece of writing and an important examination of the immigration situation in the late 30's and as it largely remains today. You have a talent for portraying characters and making them surprisingly knowable and real. The protagonist, his parents (especially the mother), his older brother and his teacher were all strongly rendered and profoundly human characterizations.'
About the Author
The author was conceived during the week of the stock market crash in 1929 and born nine months later in Bronx Hospital as the nation plunged into the Economic Depression. He was the younger son of Russian Jewish immigrants who had escaped pogroms, World I and the Russian Revolution to settle in the Bronx. His father was a house painter whose economic improvement was marked by the family's moving from apartments in the South and East Bronx to within sight of the Grand Concourse. He went to neighborhood public schools and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. He left the borough to further his education at the City College of New York, Saint John's University and lastly at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he obtained a doctorate in psychology.
His work career started in the Bronx in the summer he turned sixteen, when he was a messenger for Western Union. In those days, telegrams were delivered by bicycle, and it seemed that most recipients lived on the top floor of five story walk-ups. In college he delivered newspapers in the Bronx to earn carfare and textbook money (the City University was free). The college literary magazine published his first story; he was encouraged by a renowned English professor to pursue writing. However, as a first generation American he had absorbed his parents' values to pursue a more secure career. But first he left school -- and the Bronx -- to become a steel worker and union health and welfare officer in Buffalo, New York.
After returning to New York and obtaining his doctorate, he taught at Columbia and the City University. His research was published in national psychology journals and he made numerous presentations at national and one international meeting. He still has a psychotherapy practice in -- where else? -- the Bronx. While working with today's immigrants, he has been writing memoir fiction about his parents' immigrant generation, which is practically gone, and his brother's World War Two generation, which is fast dwindling. Two short stories were published and he is working on a sequel to Land of Dreams, which takes the family through World War Two. He divides his time between his psychotherapy practice and writing about a past generation that except for ethnicity and race confronted problems similar to those of today's immigrants; the saga going back to the time when our earliest Homo Sapiens first ventured from their savanna homeland. The author still finds time to bicycle in the Bronx and spend time with his wife, grown children, daughter-in-law and grandson.