Coming of age story set in 1939 Atlantic City is good summer read
The cover's Boardwalk illustration is by Margate resident Paul Lovett.
It is 1939, 10 years into the Great Depression. The United States looks on as Europe teeters on the brink of World War. In Atlantic City money is tight but summertime on the Boardwalk is still a magical time with big bands on the Steel Pier, well dressed men and women strolling the boards, pitchmen selling their wares and teenagers looking to have a good time.
Author J. Louis Yampolsky, encouraged by his granddaughter to write about his memories of Atlantic City, came up with A Boardwalk Story, a classic coming of age tale. The main character is 15-year-old Jack Laurel who lives in the Lower Chelsea section of town and hangs with his best friends Eddie, Bernie and Blinky.
As the summer of 1939 unfolds, Jack’s job at Krilow’s Kitchen Gadgets turns into an opportunity to become friends with a group of adults that will change his life forever. Jack learns what it feels like to be treated like an adult, to gamble his money in investments, to fall in and out of love and to do business with a mobster. The mobster angle in A Boardwalk Story gives it the ambience of A Bronx Tale but with ocean breezes.
Rubbing elbows with an older crowd is intoxicating for Jack. His new friends are Benny James, a ladies man, top pitchman at Krilow’s and a savant when it comes to mathematics. The Great Roland, a star on the Boardwalk as “The Mechanical Man,” is really a quiet 40-year-old named Morris. Alan Goran is a man who invests money in cocoa bean futures with Kreiger and Son and soon has new recruits for this moneymaking scheme that could really payoff if the United States goes to war. All of Jack’s new friends will also become reluctant partners with Bobo Truck, a notorious mobster who, like his other new friends, takes Jack under his wing.
Yampolsky is a retired accountant and while there are passages in the book that spend too much time explaining cocoa bean futures, the rest of the tale is an engrossing read, especially for fans of Atlantic City’s colorful history.
He gets the details just right. For example he talks about middle class families who move into the basement in the summer and rent out the top of their homes to help pay their bills. My family in Ventnor still did that in the late ’50s and early 1960s. Yampolsky also provides lots of tidbits about Atlantic City of the era, from the Steel Pier to the reason one beach was known as Chicken Bone Beach.
In an interview with AC Weekly, Yampolsky explains that while helping his granddaughter with a school history project, he couldn’t stop thinking about his memories of Atlantic City. “It was in front of me having talked about it and talked about it, and I decided I ought to write it down. I was writing and it morphed into a novel. I tried to portray a sense of the times and I think I did that.”
Yampolsky’s family spent many summers at the shore when they could afford it, staying at various boarding houses. Once he was a teenager, he worked in Atlantic City during the summer including at Krilow’s.
He isn’t a big fan of fiction and the occasional times he has read fictional stories he has been disappointed by the endings. “As a result,” says Yampolsky, “I wanted to give readers a satisfying conclusion. I didn’t want to cheat them.”
With A Boardwalk Story he has succeeded in his effort to keep readers entertained right to the finish.
A Boardwalk Story
A novel by J. Louis Yampolsky
Plexus Publishing
List price: $24.95
George Jackson opened the Steel Pier in 1898, less than 50 years after Atlantic City’s incorporation. He was followed by owner Frank P. Gravatt, a showman who realized the public’s appetite for an eclectic mix of entertainment in one location at one price, 25 cents.
The Catanoso brothers were already seasoned amusement-park veterans when they reopened Atlantic City’s Steel Pier with 14 rides in 1993, a scant 22 days after signing a five-year lease that extended to the year the famous Pier turned 100.
One year to the date Gov. Chris Christie signed landmark legislation designed to revitalize Atlantic City and set the surrounding region on a new course for economic growth, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) adopted the Atlantic City Tourism District Master Plan in a special meeting Wednesday, Feb. 1, at the A.C. Convention Center.
The famed wooden way can boast not only a rich history but a promising future as well. Originally commissioned solely to keep beachgoers from tracking sand into oceanfront hotels and railroad cars, Atlantic City’s Boardwalk has grown into a highway of entertainment and one of the country’s most noteworthy shore-side playgrounds.
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1. phyllis forakis said... on Jul 29, 2010 at 03:38PM
“i have read the book...In my enthusiasm for it, i recommended it to everyone i knew, who in turn, also came away from reading it with high enthusiasm..Aside from its wealth of history, and a clear and true portrait of the character of Atlantic City in those years, Yampolsky has brought to life a memorable anthology of significant characters who, all of us readers agree, would do well being immortalized in film. And aside from all that, it's fun to read.”
2. Lance Silver said... on Jul 31, 2010 at 04:13PM
“The Boardwalk, the surf, the characters, the intrigue of youth, love, lust and adrenalin producing stories, gambling, Hi Hat Joes, Chelsea and just plain Atlantic City New Jersey..........published by the very same publisher who brought you BOARDWALK EMPIRE.
A great summer read....as a mater of fact a great read anytime !
Lance”
3. MARVIN BERMAN said... on Aug 1, 2010 at 09:04AM
“IT WAS A GREAT DELIGHT READING THIS STORY OF ATLANTIC CITY IN FICTION BUT DEPICTING THE TIMES AS THEY WERE BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWING UP. I WAS A CLOSE FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR DURING
THOSE YEARS AND EVEN TODAY KEEP IN TOUCH WITH HIM AND HIS LOVELY. THE BOOK WAS A LABOR OF LOVE TO WRITE AND WOULD NO DOUBT ATTRACT A LARGE AUDIENCE IF PRODUCED ON TV OR SHOWN IN MOVIE THEATRES. THE LARGE SENIOR CITIZEN POPULATION AS WELL AS TODAY'S YOUTH WOULD FIND A COMMON THREAD OF LIFE TODAY AS WELL AS THEN”
4. Susan Ditmire said... on Aug 1, 2010 at 09:31AM
“The best book I read this year! Great Characters, Great descriptions and a really, really terrific Story. I look forward to the next book. This man can really write!
”
5. Anonymous said... on Aug 2, 2010 at 09:41AM
“A great historical novel, this book has a little bit of everything that makes for a good read; action, romance, atmosphere and well developed characters that the reader can truly care for and about. I would recommend it to anyone.”
6. Melvin Nebbish said... on Aug 5, 2010 at 12:38PM
“A real page turner and a great read. Hope to see much more from this new voice in the American lexicon.”
7. Debra Sitner said... on Aug 8, 2010 at 10:19AM
“A wonderful book of historical fiction. I have passed it on to so many friends and my children. It takes me back to my own boardwalk story, which is so much a part of my young life of Atlantic city summers. It would make a great sequel to "Boardwalk Empire", now being made into a movie. This is a great read for everyone of every age.”
8. Susan Hausman said... on Aug 10, 2010 at 03:42PM
“I read the book, then passed it to my husband, who passed it to other friends! It gets rave reviews from us and takes us back to a time fondly remembered. The same publisher published this great book as published the Boardwalk Empire. Well, this book needs its own movie, too, for sure!”
9. Anonymous said... on Sep 2, 2012 at 05:51PM
“Debra Sitner, you're an idiot.”