The Rockaway Boys and Maggie

By Don Kellin

This novel for young people ages thirteen to a hundred and ten, set in the middle of the Second World War, in the Rockaway, Long Island of Radio Days, is powerfully relevant to all readers in light of September 11 and the new reality. The young heroes and heroine are under attack by a Nazi espionage squad who have landed on Long Island to destroy the bridges and tunnels that form Manhattan’s lifeline.
The adventure story weaves itself around many events that both could have and actually did happen. For these teenagers and their families whose brothers and sisters, sons and daughters were off fighting the war, their summer at the beach was colored by worry and helplessness. Fortunately for Donny and his friends, they find the chance to “do something big—something that counts” right under their noses in the sand under the Rockaway boardwalk. And unfortunately for the Nazis, Donny has a streak of relentlessness that will not be intimidated.
The story also brings us a portrait of the developing race consciousness that will sweep the nation after the war. In the character of Sepal Joe, we discover a seemingly fearsome black man who lives under the boardwalk, trying to survive the loss of his family in the deep south. His opportunistic partnership with Donny, Maggie and Ben forms a tense foursome that is hardly ready for what fate is about to deal them.
And finally, The Rockaway Boys and Maggie offers today’s readers a genuine opportunity for catharsis. We can experience here that there was another time, not too far distant, when New York and America were also under attack from powerful forces that wished to destroy us. All of us, including young people, rose to the occasion then, and we eventually triumphed, though not without great sacrifice. This gang offers us great adventure, but they will also be an inspiration to people of all ages who may be worrying how the new challenges that confront us now will turn out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Kellin
• Release date: Jun 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989617000

Don Kellin

Photography and Dance: As a teenager, the artist, writer had photography exhibitions at two New York Galleries and various other venues. Kellin studied briefly with Martha Graham and danced professionally at age sixteen. He became a pioneer in the evolving mambo dance scene and was recognized as one of the first pure mambo dancers in the country. The dance team, Don and Terry, opened for a number of headliners including Tony Bennett..Industry: During his seventeen-year insurance career with The Massachusetts Indemnity and Life, Kellin, at age twenty nine, became the youngest officer in the almost 200 year-old history of his company. His management approach, techniques and training methods increased the company’s volume exponentially and impacted the industry. He retired in 1976.Kellin came out of retirement to partner a boyhood buddy and create Cabinet Masters of California in 1977. The company grew from its 300 square foot room rented from a local kitchen manufacturer, to the nation’s largest regional kitchen remodeling company occupying 30, 000 feet under roof and remodeling a hundred kitchens a week. By the time the company was sold in 1995, it boasted 56,000 customers.Consulting and Mentoring: In the ‘80s and early ‘90’s, Kellin did corporate consulting on employer/employee relations and management techniques. He lectured weekly at high schools, particularly in less affluent areas, focusing on students who were going right into the work force out of necessity. A series of motivational essays about using work primarily as a tool for self-discovery, increasing self-esteem and reaching ones potential, many taken from his ‘Work For Yourself No Matter Who You Work For, although unpublished at the time, found their way into the hearts and minds of hundreds of students and changed their outlook and destiny. Some of those essays will be published on this site along with other observations.Writing: Kellin concentrates on writing as a full time pursuit. The Rockaway Boys and Maggie,’ his first novel, was optioned for a film by Director Mark Rydell. Kellin was one of the oldest new writers invited into the Playwright’s Unit of the Actors Studio in 2003. His new play, ‘Damaged Goods,’ has found a producer, Excerpts from his new novel,, Van Courtland Park, can be read on his website along with short fiction, essays ranging from motivational to travel, magazine articles, political blogs and a gallery of fine art photographs.

Book preview

It was an orderly mess back then, not anything like what’s going on now. The world was divided into good guys, bad guys, those who sat in the stands rooting for one side or the other and the jerks with their heads in the sand making believe the World War II inferno was on another planet. By 1942, the heat from that inferno was being felt from the Arctic to the Antarctic (talk about global warming). The bad guys were going to take over the world, including the sand and the heads buried in it--unless the good guys, including those of us at home, did something spectacular.

Chapter One

Donny Becker started wanting things his way while still tethered to his loving mother, Esther. The other moms-in-the-making would touch each other’s bellies to feel their babies kicking, but Esther Becker wouldn’t let them touch hers for fear her unborn baby might fracture a friend’s finger. Donny stopped doing the conga just as he slid out of her, feet first, into Doctor Herschkowitz’s latex-covered palms, May 16th, 1929, three weeks premature, hell-bent on dining alfresco.

He wanted out, the much relieved Esther Becker announced to all who would listen.

My ‘tatella,’, Donald, wanted out, feet first, three weeks before my due date, and he got his way.

After he was launched, Esther’s tatella needed something to occupy his every minute or he would scream until the china vibrated in the family breakfront. That heirloom had finagled its way through generations in Russia, the lower Eastside, Harlem, until finally settling opposite their dining room table in what was half of the tchotchske-challenged Becker living room in apartment 2C of 3220 Steuben Avenue in the Bronx. The space between the dining room chairs and the breakfront was so narrow, no one except Donny’s two-dimensional sliver of an aunt, Ceil Becker, could sit there, as if she were wallpapered against the remarkably uncomfortable straight-backed dining room chair.

Donny liked to chew on Esther’s nipple even when he wasn’t hungry, and when her sore nipples were on the lam, he’d want the mobile, not to look at, but to take apart. As Donny cajoled his way into his teens, he still had to be occupied almost every minute of every day and most of every middle of every night. While his neighbors escaped into slumber, his genes impelled him to cling to a few more hours of the precious twenty-four. From conception, needless to say, Donny Becker possessed an innate need for stimulation.

The summer of 1943 had been like all the others since the war began--not quite fun. War or no war, a few days after school ended every June, Donny was one of the thousands of Jewish kids who rode the tsunami of parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts escaping the stifling New York City tenements to the shore at Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York. Like the Canadian geese and Monarch butterflies whose genes dictated their yearly migration, their Jewish genes insisted they migrate to the cooler coast, to their rented bungalows and the soothing scent and sounds of the Atlantic Ocean, before the neighborhood pavement back home became a griddle.

Since the war started, neatly folded miniature flags, layered between bathing suits and towels, accompanied the tenement geese on their migration. The flags summered at the coast in bungalow windows. Each had a red border defining a white perpendicular rectangle that had one or more stars in it. A blue star indicated a loved one was serving his or her country. A gold star meant that the life of a loved one had evaporated--and the lives of those staring out the window had changed forever. During the summer of ’42, the summer Donny met Maggie, the tenement geese weren’t the only ones making their way to the coast. Nazi U-Boats were doing the same coming from the opposite direction across the Atlantic moving toward the silhouettes of troop and cargo ships backlit by the glow of Manhattan at night. Millions of tons of U.S. ships and war supplies destined for England had been torpedoed and sunk along with the futures of many onboard.

Two of those U-Boats had orders to launch more than torpedoes. On June 1st, four trained German saboteurs were dropped off a mile or so off the beach at Amagansett, Long Island, New York. A few weeks later, four more landed on the beach at Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville, Florida. Their collapsible rubber boats contained clothing, explosives and thousands of dollars in cash. Maps and well-laid out plans to destroy railways, bridges, water works and war plants were recovered from each. J. Edgar Hoover proudly announced the capture of the saboteurs and their failed mission. But, although the country was spared physical damage, the psyche of the east coast and the nation wasn’t. The war was no longer somewhere out there over the horizon being fought by loved ones. The beaches of the east coast were no longer just a summer paradise. They were a line of defense the entire country depended on.

*************

The Rockaway bungalows were a bargain. Nestled along the narrow streets that led to the boardwalk and the beach, steeped in the scent of aging wood, damp sand and salt, the modest, mildewed clapboard boxes dotted this once carefree mini-world that lay far from the teeming garment center, flights of tenement stairs, the roar of elevated trains, the rumble of subways under foot--but not far enough away from the war.

For four of the last five years, Donny’s mom and dad, Esther and Sam Becker, and his brother, Eddie, shared a bungalow with Lou and Hanna Gold and their daughter, Lisa.

Every summer Sam would exclaim, Over ninety days and nights for three hundred dollars--three bucks a day! What else is such a good deal?

Having your own store, Sam, Lou would respond, jealous of those ‘geese’ who could afford their own bungalows paid for with skimmed cash from their store’s tills. Cash is king, Sam and Lou would chant in unison before they downed their ration of Slivovitz.

The three-hundred dollars would buy each family one bedroom for the parents, one for the kids (no matter how many), a shared kitchen and enough nooks and crannies from which the unseen Donny and Eddie could observe Lisa Gold’s high-wire act as she wobbled on her mother’s stilts from the kitchen at the rear of the bungalow to the porch where she stood, balancing, and looked out over the Twenty-Ninth Street ramp to the boardwalk at the humongous asphalt parking lot/softball field whose right and left field fences were deep enough to contain all but legitimate homeruns. A few minutes after sun up, every Saturday and Sunday morning, Lisa would run up to the boardwalk to Jerry’s Knishes, buy a cherry cheese knish right out of the oven, then hurry down the boardwalk ramp flipping the scalding wax papered-covered treasure from one hand to the other. Then she would take her place on the bungalow porch rail and nurse the treat while taking in the athletic prowess and physiques of the few young, tanned softball players permitted to play with the older, chubbier, hairier, paler, sweatier ‘pros’--that is until a car parked at home plate.

During the four years the Beckers and Golds shared the bungalow, Lisa had transformed from an amorphous, almost invisible thirteen-year-old to a bona fide distraction. Both Lisa and Rita Hayworth were born in Brooklyn. Eddie had started to notice that Lisa and Rita now shared some far more interesting features, and he pointed them out to his transfixed brother.

Mr. Okun, master salesman at Barney’s Boy’s Town, had used the word while fitting Donny for his Bar Mitzvah suit pants.

Young man, how does it feel in the crotch? Okun asked as he pointed down there. Donny had answered, Okay, I guess. Had Okun asked the question while Donny was gazing at Lisa’s new ‘features,’ Donny would have mumbled, Sort of funny.

This was the summer Eddie had intended to grace Lisa with his attention. But a month before Rockaway, while coiled at the home plate painted on P.S. 80’s concrete diamond, he turned in the direction the pitcher was gesturing and saw the ashen Esther Becker, one white-knuckled hand grasping the chain link, the other, what looked like a letter. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Eddie struck out for the first time in memory.

Donny often reached across the two-foot span that separated his cot from Eddie’s to make sure he was still there in the darkness. That night, the day the letter from the draft board came, Donny opened his eyes and saw Eddie sitting at the edge of his cot, a flashlight in one hand, the letter in the other.

What does it say? asked Donny. Eddie read with his interpretation: ’Dear Eddie, things are tougher than we thought. We need you to win the war. Get over here as fast as you can.’ And it’s signed by President Roosevelt himself.

Eddie stared at Donny for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders, When you gotta go, you gotta go. He turned off the flashlight. There was no Goodnight, kid, no sounds of compressed springs or the rustle of sheets. Donny, propped on his elbow, stared into the dark knowing his brother was still sitting there, letter in hand.

Within ten weeks, Eddie passed the Army induction physical, finished eight weeks of basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was one of the two thousand wide-eyed khaki-clad passengers on the Santa Paula, a troop ship headed somewhere east. Eddie’s departure left a crater in the Becker family, a persistent anxious moment, a skipped heartbeat that stayed skipped.

Chapter Two

The Golds always went home the Tuesday after Labor Day along with ninety-nine percent of the tenement geese. And while they were back in the city making the adjustment from escape to reality, the Beckers had clung to the ‘escape’ for five more days until late on the Sunday before Public School 80 and De Witt Clinton High School opened their thickly-painted brown doors to vacuum up their bleary-eyed, bronzed students. Year after year, during that magical Wednesday to Sunday, Donny and Eddie each had their own bedroom--except for this year. One bedroom was unoccupied. Eddie, like hundreds of other boy-men who had rarely traveled more than a few subway stops from home, was thousands of miles away fighting a war. This first summer that Eddie and Donny were separated, while Lisa, Lou and Hanna Gold and all the others not working the night shift or gazing at the ceiling worrying about a loved one slept, Donny, lying in his secret space tucked under the bed covers, bathed in the dial’s glow from his new amber-colored Bakelite Crosley 517 Fiver Radio, searched for news about the war. The ‘Fiver’ was quite an improvement over the four-year-old crystal radio set Donny had built from a kit he received as a Chanukah present from Uncle Joe and Aunt Ceil last year. Unaware it was now obsolete, the crystal set awaited Donny’s return from Rockaway. It lay where it was left, across a few button depressions on his striped cot mattress, aerial and ground wire trailing between the mattress and wall to the steam radiator where the ground ended, wrapped around the valve. The aerial wire continued up over the radiator top where it often passed an aromatic apple or two slow-baking through a winter night in a syrup-stained tin before it snaked under the window, painted stiff, an eighth of an inch from the sill, then dangled for three stories between old tenement brick and the black Bronx night. The abandoned crystal set had been a conduit to places forever etched in Donny’s imagination. Every night for almost a year, while Sam was snoring, Esther was knitting and Eddie was papering another model Spitfire or was out with his buddies at Jim’s Pizza, Donny lay on his pillow, his earphones on, crystal set on his chest. Gazing out his almost-closed window at the black sky and stars, he had been transported from the four walls of his eight by eight bedroom to the music of swinging orchestras, the sounds of tinkling glasses and the buzz and applause of dancers levitating over current events atop elegant rooftop ballrooms of regally named hotels.

Before leaving for school one September morning in 1940, while moving the crystal set’s diode along the copper coil, Donny heard someone named Edward R. Murrow talking about more distant rooftops:

"Tonight, as on every other night, the rooftop watchers are peering out across the fantastic forest of London's chimney pots. The anti-aircraft gunners stand ready.

I have been walking tonight. There is a full moon, and the dirty-gray buildings appear white. The stars, the empty windows, are hidden. It's a beautiful and lonesome city where men and women and children are trying to snatch a few hours sleep underground.

There was no music playing from those rooftops. For months, Donny’s private world, once filled with images of fictional superheroes and villains and ballrooms swaying to the sounds of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, was usurped by London’s wail, the bark of the ack ack batteries and explosions that made his earphones vibrate. It lasted until the diameter of his yawns and the dark half-moons under his eyes gave him away. Then Esther had made sure the earphones disappeared along with Donny’s ride to his secret world.

While the war raged on three continents, fatigue had bullied Donny to sleep, until Eddie was catapulted across the Atlantic. From that day on, up-to-the-minute information about the war was as necessary as food and Yoohoos.

********

Puggy Friedman, 16, Mosholu Parkway’s devious war profiteer, knew he finally had Donny Becker, a source of envy and other debilitating emotions, where he wanted him.

He nixed Donny’s offer of a shiny new quarter and a half-full jar of Glovoleum. Puggy placed his hand holding the extra pair of earphones on his hip, extended his other, pointing to Donny’s pocket, then, palm up, his fingers gestured for more. Donny hesitated, then reached into his pocket and produced the legendary chestnut that had survived more battles in the Bronx than any other that had fallen from Van Courtland Park’s grove of majestic American Chestnut trees. Dangling from bakery string, it showed little evidence that during its regal two-year reign, it had survived the onslaught of every kid in the neighborhood who had approached each attempt to break it with their swinging chestnut with faux confidence that would erode after each unsuccessful strike would take bits, then pieces, then the rest of their doomed chestnut until it would fall to the pavement leaving the moist knot at the end of the string dangling in defeat. At least, Donny thought to himself, this opportunistic bastard, Friedman, forgot to demand the recipe for the secret liquid and storage technique that converted his soft chestnuts into concrete wrecking balls.

Donny handed the regal chestnut to Puggy who then tilted his head, and extended his hand again pointing to Donny’s pocket. No shopkeeper or anyone else for that matter could explain why the war effort created a shortage of bubble gum. One thing for sure--soldiers weren’t getting any. They weren’t blowing big pink bubbles as they fought their way through the jungles of the Pacific or onto the shores of Italy to save the world from demons.

It’s the only piece I have, reacted Donny knowing trading this hidden treasure away meant he would have to rely on abandoned, re-chewed, jaw-fatiguing, rock-hard Dubble Bubble pieces resting at the bottom of the jar of sugar-water on his bureau. Puggy shrugged he couldn’t care less. It was a rare moment when Donny didn’t have an edge, and his heart wasn’t prepared. It seemed to be beating outside his chest. He finally reached into his pocket and produced a fresh-wrapped piece of Fleer’s Dubble Bubble and handed it to the war profiteer.

Donny couldn’t take his eyes off Puggy as he untwisted the ends of waxy paper and exposed the bonus comic strip wrapped around the small, keg-shaped, sugar-dusted treasure. Puggy’s eyes never left Donny’s as he carefully removed the gum, cupped it in his left palm, then licked the sweet powder off the strip, read it, giggled, and put it in his pocket. Then he gently took the gum between his thumb and forefinger, craned toward Donny, transported the bounty to his mouth and licked his fingers. The ritual ended. The chew began. Donny salivated. His jaw moved in unison. His imagination supplied the flavor. Donny thought to himself, If pink had a taste it would be Fleer’s Dubble Bubble.

Puggy skipped away in victory. Donny stood there with a set of earphones that would now spend every day in the inside jacket pocket of his abandoned Bar Mitzvah suit and every night pressed against his ears as he nervously searched the crystal set coil for news about the war. He was completely exhausted just in time for ‘43’s summer migration to Rockaway and the ‘Fiver.’

Chapter Three

The war that kidnapped his brother and deposited him on battlefields thousands of miles away, made Donny feel like a helpless spectator, and it intensified his need for creative diversions that got him into trouble from time to time: not serious trouble, but prankish, mischievous trouble--like when he would stand on one side of a street and direct Ben Dribben and Maggie McCrane to stand opposite