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My Story
Do you remember knocking chestnuts down from your neighbours tree on a crisp fall day, sledding down a hill in the winter and your first close dance in junior high school?
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American Promise is a warm, engaging poignant story about growing up in the '50s and '60's in a deteriorating Rust Belt city. It is about overcoming adversity and the social and educational ecosystem that enabled me to achieve my dream of becoming an engineer. I share many charming anecdotes of life in the '50s and '60s, such as knocking chestnuts out of a tree on a nippy fall day, that you will never forget.
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It is framed in the broader social context about social and educational inheritance. Not the traditional family inheritance but the inheritance of the ecosystem that gave me the right breaks to make it. I ask the question: Would a poor kid growing up in the same house today have the same breaks I had?
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This short charming, lyrical book could be considered a set of engaging short stories recounting anecdotes from my childhood years in the'50s and my formative years in the rock and roll '60s. If you grew up in that time period you would love this book. It is a must read for anyone who has become or is thinking of being an engineer. Young people striving to achieve their career dreams would find it motivational and instructive.
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Book Excerpts from American promise
A young man waited at the bus stop on the corner of Arthur and West Onondaga Streets on a wet, cold night in early March. The bus was his lifeline. It connected him with his education, a part-time job, when he could get one, and his friends. Tonight, he would take the bus to a downtown bar, a nightclub for young people where he would meet his good buddy and maybe some girls, if he was lucky. He had just walked downhill two blocks from the rundown hundred-year-old rental house where he lived on Grant Avenue. He should be depressed, given his situation, but he was not. He was young. His whole life stretched out before him, and with the right breaks in his life he could make it. But would he?
As the warm days of summer gave way to the cold, clear, nippy days of fall, our hill erupted in a brilliant display of color. The hill was populated with many old maple, oak, and chestnut trees. At the corner of Arthur and Grant, right near my house, there existed a large old horse chestnut tree. We would throw large sticks to knock the spikey horse chestnuts from the tree which we would collect and put in pillow case sacks. I can’t begin to describe how much fun this was. We would shuck the spikey shells, recover the brown chestnuts, and make things like necklaces from them. I even got hit on the head once by one of those sticks. Unfortunately, this fun activity is lost to history. There was an insect blight that killed all the horse chestnut trees in Syracuse.
The Bellevue Mother's club arranged dances every Friday night in the auditorium, and we attended every single one of them. Rock and roll music had just established itself having emerged from sho-op-de-bop three- and four-part harmony choral groups. It was intensely happy, fun music to dance to. For the fast dances we would do a kind of modified jitterbug. When the boy raised the girl's hand, she would twirl under the raised hand. It was great fun and we loved every minute. For slow dances my favorite group was the Fleetwood's who sang romantic, soft music such as 'Come softly to Me."
reviews for American promise
Vincent J. Smoral's eloquent memoir, "American Promise — Growing Up to become an Engineer in the '50s and '60s" was conceived one night when he was searching the internet and reminiscing over bus schedules in the neighborhood where he grew up in Syracuse, NY. It led him to wonder whether a kid today, in similar circumstances, could access the advantages that he claims were chiefly responsible for his success, or as Smoral puts it, "have the breaks that I had so many years ago." But as the story unfolds, it becomes apparent there is more to Smoral's success than fortune and the ecosystems that enabled him to achieve his dream of becoming an engineer. Perseverance. The will to overcome adversity. "American Promise" is a chronicle of pulling up bootstraps in a hardscrabble environment—the like of which is hardly suffered by Americans today, given the current social safety nets in place.
Smoral recounts how his father's relentless pursuit to preserve a Depression-era frugalness at home and in his business was socially crippling; and his mother's illness and its rather uncomfortable consequences were particularly acute. But hard times don't necessarily equate to a mean and unkind life. Smoral shares cherished memories growing up in a declining industrial city—special moments that many Americans growing up in the '50s and '60s can relate to. The autumn camaraderie of collecting chestnuts, harvested in stealth from a kind neighbor's tree. The wonder in the intimacy of dancing close at the junior high school dance.
Smoral's demanding navigation through Syracuse University is a testament to grit and determination and clever machinations. The old school courtship of his first real girlfriend—and her immigrant parents—is charming. His account of getting his dream car is brilliant—and, interestingly, considerably longer than his tribute to his beloved bride.
The scenes and early chapters of his life are described with such literary poignancy and wit, it's difficult to reconcile that the author is coming from an engineering background. The book offers much, including Norman Rockwell-quality illustrations from the author's daughter, artist Anne Smoral. "American Promise" is a fascinating retrospective.
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WAYNE COOPER,
Writers In The Spirit
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