Growing Up

In 1932, Uncle Allen moves the family to the first floor of a two-family house in Belleville, New Jersey. Aunt Pat dislikes the landlord because she views “the propertied class” as her enemy (83). The landlady further infuriates Pat by putting a poster of Herbert Hoover on her front door. Pat wants to rip it down, but Uncle Allen gives her a better idea: put up a poster of Roosevelt. She immediately sets out to get one. Without a car or phone—“luxuries for the rich”—she walks. Baker joins her, wanting to “save American from Herbert Hoover” (85). He notes that if he had lived upstairs with the landlady, he might have become “a hard-money Republican” (86). Since chance put him on house’s lower level, he becomes a Roosevelt Democrat.

Having only known hard times, Baker does not understand the Depression is destroying hopes and that his Uncle Allen achieves a “heroic feat” by keeping the family fed and sheltered (86). Baker does not realize his family is poor and that he is now his mother’s best hope for improving her family’s fortunes. She turns her attention to ensuring he makes something of himself, spending her idle hours on his