One American Dream

by Bernard Beck

  “Mind if we take a look?”

  And with one smooth movement the policeman who had been holding my arm reached inside my shirt and withdrew the envelope.

  “Well, what have we here?” he asked mockingly.

  “I don’t know,” I replied truthfully, “the man gave it to me.”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know his name, sir.”

  The policeman tore the envelope open and rifled through the money that was inside. “And where are you bringing this envelope?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you that, sir,” I stammered.

  “And why not? You know you’re in really big trouble!”

  “Sir, they said they would hurt my mother. If I tell you they will hurt my mother!”

  “Look, kid. Don’t bullshit me. I’ve heard that sob story before. What do I care about your mother? You wanna go to jail? Is that what you want?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, if you don’t tell me where you’re bringing this dough then you’re going to jail,” he explained.

  The policeman had let go of my arm, and he was standing with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Where do you live, kid?”

  “The East Side.”

  “Look, kid, we can let you off, or we can book you. It’s up to you. All you gotta do is tell us who you’re working for and sign a statement. You’re running numbers and that’s a crime, and you could end up in jail. If we book you it will go on your record for the rest of your life. You’re going to have an arrest record. You won’t be able to get into the army, or go to school, or find a job. Anything. So here’s the deal. You tell us where you work, and we don’t book you. OK?”

  “Sir, I can’t do that. They’ll hurt my mother.”

  The other policeman, who had remained silent until then, turned to his partner. “He’s just a kid, and he’s scared.” Then he turned to me, “Look, kid, I want to let you go home to your mamma, but my buddy here is kinda tough, and he’s the boss. So, do me a favor, you don’t have to tell us anything. I’ll write the paper myself, and all you need to do is sign it. What do you say? We got a deal?”

  “No, sir,” I answered, starting to cry. “I need to take care of my mother, and they said they would hurt her. I promise. I never did this before today, and I’ll never do it again.”

  “Oh yeah?” the first policeman said. “And how have you been supporting your poor mother until now?”

  “I’ve got a regular job, but I tried to make some extra money,” I sobbed.

  “Where do you work?” he challenged.

  “Newspaper delivery service. I do two routes in the morning.”

  “How old are you, kid? And why aren’t you in school?”

  “I’m eighteen, and I already finished school.”

  “I say you’re about fifteen, and you quit school. Am I right?”

  But I didn’t answer. I was worried about what would happen to my mother and me. I figured that if I told the police where I worked, the boss would definitely hurt my mother, but if they found out that I had been arrested and didn’t tell, then it would be OK. I figured that I could offer to pay them back.

  The first policeman was still talking. “OK, kid, it looks like we’re going to have to book you. Now, if you don’t mind, put your hands behind your back, and I’m going to cuff you.”

  At the police station they told me to sit on a bench, and they hooked one of my handcuffs to a ring in the wall. Policemen came and went, and sometimes they brought other people that they had arrested into the room. But these people eventually were led away, and I stayed by myself. No one spoke to me, and I was too frightened to ask anyone what was going on.

  Finally, at around five o’clock, the policeman who had hooked me to the bench came back into the room.

  “I’m going to take you in front of the judge now,” he explained. “Go into that bathroom and wash your face. You need to look good for the judge.”

  The policeman held me tightly by the arm and led me into an elevator and then down a long corridor. We stopped in front of a closed door. The policeman knocked and then walked in.

  “This is the boy I told you about, your honor,” he said to the judge.

  The judge, sitting behind a massive desk, didn’t look up. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said with a slight German accent.

  The policeman showed me where to stand, and stood beside me.

  Once he finished his task, the judge asked me my full name, date of birth, address, and where I came from.

  “I was born in Europe,” I answered as clearly as I could, “but I grew up in New York.”

  “And what about your parents?”

  “My father came here first, and then my mother and I came. But something happened to my father, and we never found him.”

  “No father, eh? Who supports you?”

  “I do, sir. I work on a newspaper delivery truck.”

  “This paper says that you were running numbers. Is that true?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. I was trying to make more money. I don’t make enough on the truck.”

  “Doesn’t your mother work?”

  “When she can, but the bosses are mean, and she keeps getting fired.”

  The judge told me to tell as much as I could about my family and what life was like at home. He asked about my friends, asked again why I wasn’t in school, and where I was working.

  I tried to answer as completely as possible. It seemed to me that the judge wasn’t just asking questions for the record but was really interested in what I had to say. I told the judge about how hard life had been when we had first come to New York, and how I hated having to ask people for help, and that I just wanted to be an American. I told the judge about my job and about waiting in the schoolyard after school and wishing I could read better.

  But then the judge stopped asking questions, and the room got very quiet. He took off his glasses and put his hand over his eyes like he was very tired. I thought that it seemed as though he was about to cry. I looked at the policeman who was standing next to me, but he just shrugged his shoulders and stood there. Then the judge thanked the policeman and told him that he could leave and that he would handle it from there.

  The judge stared at me for a long time. “Do you prefer to be called Jack, or do you have another name?” he finally asked.

  “Jack, sir,” I answered.

  “OK, Jack, I’m going to offer you a deal,” the judge said. “How much money do you make on the truck?”

  “I make fifty cents an hour, about fourteen dollars a week.”

  “And you and your mother live on that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “OK,” the judge said, “here’s the deal. I will give you enough money for you and your mother to live on, let’s say, twenty dollars a week, but you have got to go to school full-time. Not only that, but you have got to be one of the best students in your class.

  “Every Thursday after school you will come into this room, and you will sit over there and wait for me. You will bring me all of the homework that you have done for the week. You will bring me your report card when you get it. You will bring me every single note that your teacher gives you, every test that you get back. Everything. I want to know exactly what you are doing in school every day. If you’re doing OK that week, then I’ll give you the money. But if I find out that you screwed up, even once, I stop giving you money and you go to jail. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir. Only . . .”

  “Only what?”

  “Only I’m not so good in school. I don’t read good, and everyone else is two years ahead of me.” I felt as if I was about to cry, and I chewed on my lip to hold it back. “What happens if I can’t keep up?”

  The judge looked up at me intently, “Son,” he said, “you are in Ame
rica. And in America, with hard work, anything is possible.”

  Then the judge reached into the top drawer of his desk and took out a paper. He dipped a pen into his inkwell and wrote a brief note. “Take this to Miss Baker at the high school. If you can’t find her, ask someone, but don’t give it to anyone except Miss Baker. She’ll tell you what to do. And here,” he said reaching into his pocket, “is twenty dollars. Take it home and give it to your mother, and I’ll see you here next Thursday.”

  The judge waved his hand, indicating that I was to leave.

  As I was leaving, the judge called out to me. “Jack,” he said ominously, “don’t fuck up. You might not get a second chance.” And he waved me out of the room.

  __________

  Many years later I learned that Judge Adolph Heimlich had been the ambitious child of an upwardly mobile merchant family in Berlin, Germany. He had attended the best gymnasium in Berlin and had studied law in Zürich, Switzerland. It was his parents’ intention, nearly from the time of his birth, that he should study law, and that he should go to America, and that, after he established himself in America, he would bring his younger siblings over.

  But, once he arrived in America, he encountered many unexpected obstacles. The first was the language barrier, which he felt he could overcome through intense study, but the second was much more difficult. Most of the best law offices were known, at that time, as “white shoe” firms, which meant that they were managed exclusively by white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants and no Jews were allowed. He was forced, by the merciless combination of snobbery, lack of credentials, and rampant anti-Semitism, to open an office of his own. He shared this office, which was on a side street off the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, with an accountant and a salesman. He had very few clients, and, of these, even fewer had enough money to pay him his full fee.

  Although he had very few clients, the location of his office turned out to be fortuitous when the local Democratic Party opened an office in the adjoining store. As luck would have it, they were looking for a local candidate to run for the position of Municipal Court Judge, and, having nothing to lose, he allowed his name to be put on the ballot. It was a predominately Democrat district, and his election was a foregone conclusion. He closed his struggling law practice and became a full-time Municipal Court Judge, to which office he was regularly reelected. Although he finally had full-time employment, he did not make enough money to pay for his siblings to come to America, but he was able to help young Jewish teenagers like me. He married a local high school teacher, and they lived modestly in the apartment that he had taken above his original storefront office.

  From time to time, he would encounter young boys who, he felt, had the potential to turn their lives around. He had five such boys coming to his office every week, one each afternoon. We each thought our situation was unique, and we were never aware of each other. The judge and his wife were childless, and they lived frugally so that they could afford the one hundred dollars per week that he gave us.

  They were careful not to get too involved in our personal lives, they never met our parents, and they never had contact with us after we finished high school. In moments of depression, they would reassure themselves that we boys were their surrogate family, and that what they were doing would make a difference.

  Chapter 2

  It was a struggle, but I tried faithfully to keep my end of the bargain. I worked very hard in school, but learning didn’t come easy to me, and it took me much longer to do my work than my more experienced classmates. When I told the judge how hard I was finding it, he spoke to the principal of my high school and arranged for me to get tutoring to help me catch up. I went to special tutoring classes after school and on the weekends, and even a special program during the summer.

  Eventually, I started doing well in school, and, as my confidence grew, my grades improved. And every Thursday, as I had promised that first afternoon, I went to the judge’s chambers and waited and reported, exactly as I had been instructed. The judge never failed to ask me about my mother, and he even gave me extra money to buy her a birthday present. In the summer, the judge arranged for me to work after classes as a porter in the Henry Street Settlement House so I could make a little extra money.

  In the middle of my senior year of high school, the judge told me that I should apply to City College. He said that the dean was a friend of his, and that he was expecting my application.

  In the end, I proudly graduated from high school in the top ten percent of my class. On the Thursday before my graduation, the last Thursday that I was obliged to come to Judge Heimlich’s office, he came around from behind the desk, and, with tears in his eyes, he shook my hand.

  “Good job,” he said. “I am very proud of you. I knew you could do it. As I told you when we first met, this is America and anything is possible. Never forget that. Everything is possible in America, even for a Jewish kid from Eastern Europe. Now the rest is up to you.”

  “I wish there was a way to thank you,” I stammered, “but I don’t know how. You did so much for me that whatever I do or say won’t be enough.”

  The judge took a deep breath. “Make a difference,” he said softly, still holding my hand. “That’s all the thanks I need, just make a difference.”

  That same afternoon, when I went to the Henry Street Settlement House to do my work as an evening porter, my boss called me into his office.

  “I know you’re graduating from high school so I’m not going to beat around the bush,” he said. “You’re the most reliable worker we have on our staff. I’d like you to consider staying on here full-time after your graduation.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” I answered stiffly, “but I am planning to go to college in the fall, so that won’t be possible.”

  “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear,” my boss said with a smile. “I want you to be my assistant. You’ll have that office over there, and you’ll be in charge of the day to day maintenance of the complete complex. The pay is three grand a year to start.”

  Three grand a year and my own office! That was a level of pay and prestige that I had never even thought possible. So without hesitation, and with a broad smile and a hearty handshake, I gratefully and enthusiastically accepted.

  __________

  I never did go to college.

  But I loved my job. I was now making a comfortable salary and was learning every aspect of building construction and maintenance. I was the first to arrive in the morning and the last out at night. Believe me. I would have slept in my office if they had let me. I was everywhere throughout the building and took on additional responsibilities whenever I could. I treated everyone with respect, and both the senior management of the Settlement House and the workers liked me.

  But, although I had a good job and was now reasonably financially secure, I was not happy about my chances to fulfill my dream of being one hundred percent American. Real Americans, I reasoned, have a family and live uptown in a nice house. I, on the other hand, was still living with my mother. I was just a glorified janitor working in a building that serviced the needs of immigrants on the Lower East Side. Even though I now had money, and an office, and even though I went to work in a suit and a tie, I was still a maintenance manager. I dreamed of being a wealthy, powerful executive somewhere near the top. A real American.

  I was very well aware that I didn’t have the knowledge, skills, or connections to become an executive, but ambition dogged me. Just as I had jealously, those many years ago, yearned to be among my friends who were in school, I now looked enviously at the “uptown swells” and yearned to be one.

  __________

  Five years quickly passed, and I wasn’t any closer to my dream of becoming a real American. When I had first started my job at the Settlement House, I had figured that I could always quit and go to college. But now, five years later, I hadn’t gone to college, and I wasn’t ready to restart th
e struggle, yet my dream still gnawed at me. Time was running out, and now I needed to find some kind of shortcut. I simply had to get rich immediately. There was just no other way.

  I had tried industriousness, and it had only taken me so far. It now became clear to me that, no matter how hard I worked in the future, I would not be able to move up the economic ladder far enough to be a real American. Only one solution remained, and it was as plain as the nose on my face: I had to marry a rich, uptown girl. The only way an immigrant guy like me with no money, no credentials, and no special skills could become instantly rich was to marry a rich girl.

  This may sound presumptuous, or maybe even cocky, but I was getting desperate. My dream of being an authentic American had taken me away from my street friends, and now I was nowhere. I was afraid that I would never achieve my new goal of being an affluent, uptown American, and I was not willing to settle for anything less. In my mind, being a real American was more than language and dress; it was style, and I now aspired to have “uptown” style.

  But how? I knew very well that real rich, uptown, American Jewish girls would not be interested in a poor immigrant kid from the Lower East Side like me, no matter how well I spoke and how well I dressed. I figured that I would have to find an immigrant girl whose family had recently become wealthy, and who were just entering uptown society. She would have to be a girl from my social class whose family had recently made a lot of money, but still valued their immigrant ties. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone like that.

  And to make matters worse, although I had ambition, I had very few social skills and even fewer connections. My main social outlet was the Henry Street Settlement. People took classes there, and socialized there. I had met a few girls at these events, but they were poor girls who took classes after work in order to move up the economic ladder. Plus, the circumstances at the Henry Street Settlement, with me being a staff person and they being clients, weren’t right for socializing.

  But once a year, the Henry Street Settlement House, in conjunction with HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and B’nai Brith, the three most popular Jewish organizations in New York, held a dance in the Broadway-Central Hotel on Broadway and West Third Street—one of the fanciest hotels in New York. It was, for the young people in the Jewish immigrant community of the Lower East Side, the social event of the year. Parents of girls scrimped and saved for months so that they could buy their daughters a suitable dress because they hoped that their daughters would meet eligible Jewish boys. This could have been an opportunity for me to meet a rich girl, but, in point of fact, most of the girls at the dance were just as poor as I was.