Black rock, p.1
Black Rock, page 1
Black Rock
John G. Jung
Copywrite 2022 John G. Jung
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved.
ISBN 9781005508388
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Other Books by John G. Jung:
Eden 2084
Last Tree Standing
Sound in the Night
All Around the Circle
Brain Gain
Streets for All
Seizing Your Destiny
Broadband Economics
From Connectivity to Community
Performance Metrics for Sustainable Cities
Innovative Solutions for Creating Sustainable Cities
Introduction Author’s Note
Chapter 1 Wrong Side of the Tracks
Chapter 2 Goodbye Heidelberg
Chapter 3 Voyage
Chapter 4 Arrival
Chapter 5 Black and White Television
Chapter 6 Learning English
Chapter 7 Bullies
Chapter 8 Our House
Chapter 9 Kindergarten
Chapter 10 Angie’s
Chapter 11 Water Off a Duck’s Back
Chapter 12 Flips
Chapter 13 Halloween
Chapter 14 Freddie
Chapter 15 Beat the Champ
Chapter 16 Moving Day
Chapter 17 Change
Chapter 18 The Mob
Chapter 19 Hannah and Xavier
Chapter 20 Ski-Dek
Chapter 21 Mr. Kellogg
Chapter 22 Funeral
Chapter 23 Avery Bannister
Chapter 24 X-Factor
Chapter 25 Scout
Chapter 26 Fred, Rufus and Alec
Chapter 27 Fire
Chapter 28 Post-Fire
Chapter 29 Justice
Epilogue
Introduction – Author’s Note
The following story is a fictionalized account of a young immigrant boy named Lucas and his family living in the community called Black Rock in the 1950s and early 1960s. I have tried to write it in the tone and language of life as it took place in that time period. I apologize if some readers might be offended by the language and verbal descriptions that I have included, but I believe they were necessary to make it as authentic as possible for the reader. It is not intended to sound vulgar or racist. Nor does it intend to defame any culture or race. Needless to say, this book is not intended as a story for young readers.
Black Rock is a coming-of-age story about children living in a community filled with immigrants, generational poverty, and families with marginal incomes. It is also a story that delves into the challenges that their families experienced. However, the concept of living on the wrong side of the tracks was never a concept that these children felt growing up. But they experienced the full thrust of its social structure including abuse by bullies, verbal and physical assaults, mob violence, racism, and threats to life and limb. But it was also the best time of their lives. Despite poverty and degradation by perverse individuals, the overall community and its values shine as they learn to accept and help each other, no matter who they are or where they came from.
Chapter 1
Wrong Side of the Tracks
“The Poor Side of Town” is a 1966 song sung by Johnny Rivers that acknowledges there are different cultures in every town. These can be articulated through physical demarcations. Being from the wrong side of the tracks. Or coming from mean streets – where people live among violence and crime that keeps people poor and socially deprived. It could also be described as living in the slums, in bad neighborhoods, or being from the gutter. Or as Billy Joe Royal’s 1965 ode to the downtrodden went:
Down in the boondocks
Down in the boondocks
People put me down
'Cause that's the side of town
I was born in.
I love her, she loves me
But I don't fit in her society.
Lord have mercy on the boy
From down in the boondocks
People have aspired to rise above poverty and the limitations imposed on them since time immemorial. The struggle to do so is different for everyone. Some seek a new life elsewhere to gain a better life for themselves and their families. Every once in a while people succeed. Yet, without any fault of their own, many try and fail. They are beaten down. Or perhaps they become weary of trying and grow complacent. They may harbor grudges for those that succeed. They may covet the success of others and desire to pull them down before they rise any further. On the other hand, in the words of Hellen Keller: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” And above all, love can happen, even on the poor side of town.
I grew up literally on the other side of the track. Some would say it was the wrong side. Black Rock was separated from the City of Buffalo by the tracks that came across the bridge from Canada to Squaw Island and looped around Black Rock and Riverside and swept north through Tonawanda and into Niagara Falls, where it looped back over the Whirlpool bridge back to Canada. The pocket of houses that existed in Black Rock was a haven for the immigrants that came to America before and after World War 2.
Black Rock was not always deemed to be the community on the wrong side of the tracks. Initially settled in 1792, the village was incorporated in 1837, taking its name from a large black limestone rock that rose out of the Niagara River, aiding in evolving a natural harbor and ferry crossing to Canada. Due to this proximity to the Canadian border, Black Rock became a significant part of the underground railroad harboring fugitive slaves on their way across the Niagara River. However, in anticipation of the construction of the Erie Canal, the black rock was removed by dynamite.
The village of Black Rock was a rival to the town of Buffalo as the terminus of the Erie Canal and consequently, potentially the county seat. Despite losing out to Buffalo for the terminus of the Erie Canal, a portion of the northern part of the village, below Scajaquada Creek, was awarded a canal lock at the foot of Austin Street that generated power, attracting industries and a railroad to service them around the village.
Factories, such as the Pratt and Lambert Paint Foundries opened in 1849 as the railways expanded into the area. Flour mills also flourished along the Niagara River in Black Rock, creating wealth and prosperity for the industrialists in the mid-1800s. They settled further south and west in Buffalo among the cultured class that eventually built the museums, art galleries, and universities in the Deleware Park area. But the factories and mills also created jobs for many people who settled near the industries.
As a separate entity, the village of Black Rock developed and maintained its own utilities, market area, and sense of community. They even had their own political structure. Many of these people were descendants of German, Polish, and Eastern European immigrants. While the village of Black Rock was annexed by Buffalo in 1853, its residents retained a strong sense of independence. They also retained their connection back to their families in Europe. Before the turn of the century and during and after the wars in Europe, many immigrants that arrived in Buffalo sought out neighborhoods, such as Black Rock, where they could adjust to life in America among their own culture and language before being assimilated.
If you lived in Black Rock during this period, you entered the community across busy rail crossings at grade leading to Tonawanda Street. The BeltLine, a freight and commuter line, created one of the busiest railroad grade crossings in Buffalo at Amherst and Tonawanda Streets. Eventually, to ease the burden of these busy rail crossings, viaducts were built at Hertel, Austin, and Amherst Streets, further creating a wedge of housing between the rail lines and the Niagara River. But it also formed a sense of separation of the village of Black Rock from the south and east sides of Buffalo.
As new Polish immigrants arrived, they began to settle on the east side of the tracks where more and newer plots of land were available. As Black Rock became increasingly industrialized and few opportunities for housing expansion existed in the old neighborhood, younger family members moved north to settle in a suburban area they called Riverside, overlooking the Niagara River to Canada.
By the 1950s, Black Rock was further cut off, this time through the construction of the New York State Thruway system along the edge of the Niagara River, limiting the residents’ access to the river where they worked at the mills. But the river was also where many of the residents lived their lives swimming, fishing, and picnicking in the summer. Even their picnic ground on Squaw Island was turned into a sewage disposal site by the city. It seemed as if the rivalry for the county seat and the terminus of the Erie Canal many years earlier festered into the City of Buffalo bullying Black Rock, its smaller cousin. When the City of Buffalo won both of these prizes, it saw Black Rock as a little village that it could deal with on its terms. Black Rock was a wealthy and prosperous little village. It was
Chapter 2
Goodbye Heidelberg
Why would someone want to leave their home? What forces them to do this? Politics? War? Climate Change? Family ties? Economic Opportunity? Survival? These are questions that millions of migrants are forced to consider at some point. Many have the resources to decide to move. Others don’t. Perhaps they’ll move to the next village or city. Or perhaps they’ll move to the next region or apply to move to another country or even across vast oceans to another continent.
Our family chose to move across the vast Atlantic Ocean. I can still recall my father donning his off-white trenchcoat to head to Bonn for the paperwork necessary to arrange for our family’s emigration process. Julius Bergman was a medium-sized man of average build. He had come through the war without any external scars but suffered medical and emotional scars internally. Over his 42 years, he was always a slight man. He stood there with his dark brown hair slicked back, covering a balding spot at the top of his forehead, holding the papers for all to see.
“Wish me luck,” said Julius, smiling broadly and speaking in an excited voice. “This is it, the last set of papers that we need to submit. We should get our passports and visas by tomorrow and we can leave next Friday as planned.”
My father’s emerald blue eyes glistened as he spoke. He had wanted to emigrate to the United States from his hometown in Heidelberg since before the war. His older brother had in his mid-thirties and he should have then, but he just started his construction company and he was finding much success with it. Emigrating in the mid-1930s didn’t seem to be an advantage for him, a single man in Heidelberg at the time.
His brother, Horst, in New York State, worked in a steel factory. And although Horst described America as a country with streets paved in gold, Julius figured he’s have to make significant changes in his life to be able to emigrate to New York. For one, he’d have to learn English. For another, he’d have to leave his friends and the family members that remained behind. He was also seeing a girl, named Marta, who would become his wife in 1936. Marta was shorter than Julius by nearly a foot. She was slender and had beautiful, long golden-colored hair that shimmered in the sunlight. She had a wonderful smile and large brown eyes. She wore sensible clothes The following year, Rolf, my oldest brother was born. My parents lived a wonderful life in Heidelberg with their young son, soon to be followed by the birth of my other brother, Frankie in 1940.
Unfortunately for Vati, as we called our father, he was eventually conscripted into the war in 1941. Despite his feelings about the war, he was sent to the eastern front. He quickly found himself on the outskirts of Leningrad to face Stalin’s Soviet Union Red Army.
“We arrived in the early morning hours of June 22, 1941,” explained Julius to his mates around a table in our kitchen. “We were part of Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb’s Army Group North. We set up camp on a ridge over-looking Leningrad. And there we would sit for the next two years pounding away at the city. I hated every minute of it. But I was lucky. I worked on transport moving around munitions. I never had to use a gun.”
I watched him tell this story in the kitchen. I was peering around a corner from the dining room, listening intently. His audience was other former soldiers who had their own stories. Many were funny stories about silly pranks between soldiers in their everyday camps. Others involved crazy sergeants and other officers. Some stories were less humorous and others were downright horrific to listen to. As the schnapps flowed and the cigarettes were passed around, the stories became even more gruesome. My father’s stories seemed sanguine compared to some of the other soldier’s POW stories.
“I handled munitions over the two-year siege,” said Vati, “But in 1943, while transporting munitions to the Finns along the front, I was captured by the Russians and sent to a POW camp near Leningrad where my construction skills were used for the next two years to rebuild parts of the city destroyed by Hitler’s forces. I was lucky. I was released early after the war ended in 1945.” He stuttered as he told the story. “You know, many of the nearly three million German POWs never returned.”
I could tell he had trouble telling his story. Shaking, he took a quick shot of vodka and several puffs of his cigarette.
“Sure, it was forced labor. The food, if there was any that day, was shit. And the POW camp was unsanitary. But they liked me and fed me and shared their vodka. Lots of it. Too much, in fact. One of my captures was named Serge and he fed me vodka as I worked. There was little water, but plenty of bottles of vodka. I was barely able to put up the bricks on a chimney. I looked at several that I built afterward and they looked off. I could tell that that day I had far too many vodka shots.”
With that comment, Vati laughed heartedly. He pushed back his dark brown hair and took another shot of vodka. He continued with his story. He and the other men shared their war stories over more drinks and smokes. That is when I learned that he was sick. He had POW liver, as one of the men called it. Others referred to it as cirrhosis of the liver. He would eventually die from cirrhosis mortality due to excessive drinking and not from a bullet. But that would be another couple of decades of suffering later.
Vati said that after the war, he returned to Heidelberg. He was cared for in the local hospital where he was diagnosed with his ailments and sent home. He and my mother had Hannah the following year and I was born in 1950. I was 4 years old when I learned we would be moving. I don’t recall my feelings about the concept of moving. I did however hear about it among my older siblings, especially Hannah. She was closest in age to me. As an 8-year-old, she shouted at my mother that she didn’t want to go. She would miss her friends. My mother tried to comfort her. I don’t recall my older brothers’ objections if they had any. They were teenagers. Rolf was old enough to stay and start his own family in Heidelberg, but the image of the “streets made of gold” in America excited him. He seemed to be all for it and brought his younger brother along with him in the excitement.
It wasn’t that Heidelberg wasn’t a wonderful place. It was. It is. It’s one of the few places in Germany that was left entirely unscathed. The Allied armies presumed that the historic city wasn’t of strategic purpose, but more importantly, the American army eyed it to establish a garrison there after the war ended. It is a beautiful town but work was elsewhere. Consequently, reconstruction work was far from Heidelberg, and it was hard and long work for little money.
With a growing family, it was hard to make ends meet. Mutti, as we called our mother, was also working night and day mending people’s clothes and cleaning other people’s homes to help make ends meet. Vati was away most days working in other cities and when he came home he was covered in white construction dust and was exhausted from the day’s labors. He used to read to me. That stopped as he began to work later and later into the evenings. At the same time, Vati was constantly urged by his brother and his family in America to join them. They had lived already in America for 19 years.
