Charity Case and other stories

Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s taught author Tom McCann to stand on his own two feet, take things like a man, take care of himself -and others- not to be taken care of. Only once was he in the position of being called a charity case. The story of that degradation gives this book its title. The most evil experience of a young kid's life makes tough reading. But read on. These fascinating Brooklyn stories of Tom's have been known, so far, only to those close friends who have heard him tell them. An incomparable storyteller, he would spin out these tales with deep feeling for the strange paths people's lives take: Rocco, big heart, strong body, Tom's protector who could not protect himself; Harold, the druggist who would try anything; Uncle Willie and his mother, the Duchess, who subjected him to the mystic curative powers of the linden tree; Uncle Freddie, the lovable loser who lived by his own rules, would spend or gamble until his pockets were empty, but marched home from the battlefields a war hero; Alvin, with the botched bris and the hatred for cats; and Father Hess, the monster in a Roman collar who taught Tom the uncharitable side of being a charity case. This is the way they were, the lives they led, in a special place and time - Brooklyn, NY, in the 1940s and `50s. Tom's stories take you there, make you feel all the color, camaraderie, and occasional cruelty of the strange and sometimes wonderful people who shaped the world he grew up in.