REVIEW: TRACKS THROUGH OUR LIVES

Stories told on the Philly El Trains

Professor Emerita Carol Breslin PhD. Gwynedd Mercy University, 2019

John McCabe’s work entitled Tracks Through Our Lives: Stories told on Philly El Trains, is a superb, very readable collection containing twenty sharp, sensitive, lyrical renderings of moments in city life in the 1950s and ‘60s.  On display are the experiences and characters drawn together by the settings at various stops along the Frankford Elevated Train Line that runs from North to Central Philadelphia.  Most of the stories are attributed to Danny Fisher, a journalist and longtime friend of the author, although the voices of other friends are sometimes heard.  As Danny and the author ride the trains from childhood days in parochial school into adulthood, they build memories that each stop will evoke as the little boys grow into thoughtful, caring, insightful, story-telling men.

Though the setting for these stories is very specific in time and place, it does not impinge on the universality of experiences found here.  Humor, suffering, dysfunctional families, racism, compassion, cruelty and abuse, neglect, poverty, mental illness, spiritual insight, great generosity, indifference —truly, “God’s plenty”—are represented and given dimension.

In an effective opening story “Under Mellow Yellow Streetlights,” the author introduces the reader to his North Philly neighborhood and several friends who will figure rather prominently in later stories, allowing the well-known electric streetlights of the period to shine briefly on each one.  This is followed immediately by “The Cleansing:  Catholic School Days,” one of the most disturbing, yet poignant, stories in the collection, in which a regularly scheduled visit of the parish assistant, Father Connelly, interrupts what has been an explosive morning in in the classroom.  The young priest’s question: “Is there any part of your education and the time you spend in class causing you to love God?” leads to an unintended  and intimate revelation on the part of the priest himself that elevates this piece of writing to a very special realm.

Several coming-of-age stories appear, including “The Lemonwood Bow,, in which a young boy’s dream of becoming a skilled archer is dashed when he gazes upon the mangled body of a dead rabbit killed by his hand, and   “The Red Scarf,” which tells of  the generosity of neighbors to a neglected Danny and his disappointing experience at Boy Scout Camp. One very funny, sweet story, “The Painters,” depicts a young boy’s crush on an older woman, a drunken attempt to repaint her car by his father and his father’s cronies, and her long-term devotion and generosity to the boy. 

 Race figures prominently in “Among Day Laborers,” in which one character’s doctoral research on the importance of slaves to the pre-Civil War economy is juxtaposed to a senseless killing of a young man of mixed-race by a young black man as four men—two older and white, and the two young men of color-- work to fill a defunct swimming pool on a very hot day.  Race also serves as the central theme in “Sidewalk Sanctification” when a young mummer encounters deep and hurtful prejudice among his fellow musicians.

The collection pays serious attention to atomic testing conducted by the government in the Nevada desert in stories like “The Wedding Guests,” “Sweeping Enrichment” and  “Any day at the VA”, and mental illness receives extraordinarily insightful and sensitive treatment in “The Mission in South Bronx.”  But there is plenty of comic relief throughout the book, especially in stories like “The Painters and “The Cabin Fixer.” 

This delightful book closes with a story in the author’s own voice, “The Day of the Dance:  an Irish American,” a beautiful story of father/son bonding, achieved in part by a couple of cheese sandwiches.  In it, the author tells of a fishing trip taken by himself as a 12-year-old, his father and several of his father’s friends.  The day ends successfully--fish caught, a long drive home-- done mostly by the boy, the men being drunk-- and a celebratory dinner and dance.

You, too, will feel like celebrating as you read this rich collection of carefully constructed and truly thoughtful stories.

Japanese Review of REIKO AND THE VISITOR

 Akio Matsumura

Dear John

I am very pleased to inform you that I finally read your wonderful book.

Let me point out my thought now and later I wish to spend time talking with you after July 6th when my Canada Rotarians are scheduled to discuss my suggestion with the new President of Rotary International Jenifer Jones. 

1.       I fully understand the reason why you made a fiction story instead of a documentary story ((you have a military classified agreement) This is a more powerful expression.   Stranger than fiction.

2.       This story has given me the good reason why we met at the same age and why you tried to reach me.  Your elder brother connected us.

3.       I like to send my letter to all International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in 65 member countries and my regular contact people.  I like to prepare my letter by consulting the message in it. 

4.       Your EPILOGUE is well written and expressed your core thoughts on nuclear weapons, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims.

5.       It indicates that you have studied a wide range of Japanese and Japanese culture for which I thank you.

6.       Congratulation on your inspiring book

I am very much looking forward to talking to you in July

Yours truly

Akio

   BRIDGET TO HER WRITER

I saw how you sat in the rain waiting.

Writing on damp paper on the beach.

Finding wordy shelters from windy thoughts.

Even listened secretly to voices below our room.

You’ve read the others over and over

Making changes in their deathless prose.

Words like young women walking slowly.

Did you hear the blackness when it came?

Yes, you laid awake or dozing off the same.

The words chosen, repeated, changed.

The people going in and out of you.

The work adrift, floating open for them.

And you wonder what volition you have made.

Did you study through to zymurgy?

Or until they don’t really object about the same,

As when you only talked of them.

What will remain when you think of the ending?

Thinking, literally to zymurgy, will that do?

Even faintly sweet completes your dictionary.

On the pages of that book of words it is last.

But you still drink sweet tea beneath the grapes

Businesspeople come, fixing their collars.

Always a little late, smiling so thinly.

You ask in silence, did any read my books?

jmccabe ©